The (Insane) Creation of A Charlie Brown Christmas | They Thought it was Awful | History in the Dark
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- A Charlie Brown Christmas is now known as a famous holiday special that is watched by millions every year. Based on the popular Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, the special was written by him, produced by Lee Mendelson, and directed by Bill Melendez. But the development of the special was a rushed job that was carried forward by Mendelson's desire to create a Peanuts program for television. Many elements were done within days or weeks, and when CBS looked at the finished product they felt they had a failure on their hands. They were wrong.
🌲 Christmas Time Is Here -- • A Charlie Brown Christ...
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❤️ Charlie Brown Skating -- • A Charlie Brown Christ...
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#documentary #peanuts #charliebrown #charliebrownchristmas #snoopy #comics #special #christmas #holiday #television #cbs #truestory
As many times as I watch this one, The Great Pumpkin, and the Thanksgiving special, I still never get tired of them. I've been warching them since I was a child, and have fond memories of drinking hot (luke warm) chocolate and watching this special.
@@ericwillcoxen7856 Totally, I’m 48 and even bought the Charlie Brown CBS Christmas album to play around the holidays. I watch these with my family and daughters still to keep tradition. Cheers
The casting for the voice actors was perfectly chosen. When I read Peanuts, these are the voices I hear.
@@Jared-91 Exactly! Me too!
The real magic was finding Vince guraldi for the music.
I think music is even more iconic
Vince Guaraldi’s music is timeless.
The Story goes that Bill Melendez told Charles Schultz they would never get away with quoting the Bible in a cartoon. Schultz replied "Well Bill, if we can't do it, who can?"
Ironic that we can put any amount of violence and all manner of sex and perversion on tv, but saying a simple quote from one of the most printed and historical books is too radical and dangerous.
@johnharris6655 Schultz was the kind of guy, at least by way of Peanuts, that the Bible quote felt heartfelt and genuine rather than preachy and disingenuous as we are all used to hearing.
A Charlie Brown Christmas is about as sweet and unassuming as you'll ever find, anywhere.
When I was a kid, Christmas wasn't Christmas until we watched A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's the best Christmas special ever and I will die on that hill! Hehehe...
Crazy that it was so thrown together and was only saved because of the timeline.
I watched this yearly in the 70's as a child. For me, even being so young, the message of humbleness, gratefulness, and the message of the true meaning of Christmas has always stuck with me. Keep stories like these coming History in the Dark - excellent! Kudos to you!! Oh yeah, I watched every Charlie Brown animated feature I could find on TV :)
I’m glad they included plenty of Snoopy dancing. Just wouldn’t have been the same without it. It didn’t distract from the story one bit. In fact, it just enhanced it.
Yeah, I'm glad he got his way on a lot of other things....
Buy Snoopy being different and more animated is perfect
I absolutely love this special. My Dad is a HUGE fan of the Peanuts comic strip, and introduced my sister and I to the special from a very young age. Just last weekend, I played in a jazz band that actually featured Christmas Time Is Here, with vocals!!! This show is timeless, and always will be
I can not imagine my life without "A Charlie Brown Christmas." ❤
And the humble shall be exalted! Defines Charles Schultz,and Peanuts,in one sentence! Thank you 😇 😊!
I'm a huge fan of animation and also a huge Peanuts fan. I was born the year it premiered and remember it re-airing every year since I was old enough to remember. This retelling of the story was largely accurate but a couple of extra points are worth noting.
First, the reason why the special aired at all despite the suits at the network and Coca-Cola all hating it, was that TV Guide magazine, which was the main source in people's homes as to the upcoming daily TV schedule had already been printed and being mailed out to millions of Americans (it was published weekly). While pre-emptions of shows happened, since it was a show that was actually featured in the magazine as something people should watch, it would be a huge mistake just to yank it for a rerun of something else. The network knew they had a huge hit on their hands when TV stations around the country reported people phoning their main switchboards expressing their love for the show.
The folks at the network were also leery of the show having Linus quote directly from the Bible. Schulz stuck to his principles and insisted it remained in.
One of the main reasons for the pressure to get a new Christmas special on that year (1965) was the enormous success of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", which premiered in 1964. And while Rudolph was not the first animated Christmas special ("Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol" would premiere inn 1962), the success of Rudolph pressured TV execs to find something new to hopefully find similar popularity.
Vince Guaraldi's involvement was not only due to Melendez but to Schulz himself who was a fan of his music and he frequently performed in northern California where Schulz had moved to from his original home base in St. Paul, MN. It's really hard to make a lasting Christmas classic but "A Charlie Brown Christmas" had two of them, specifically "Christmas Time is Here" and "Skating" as well as the first appearance of "Linus and Lucy", which is now the default theme music for anything Peanuts. "Skating" would also be featured again in the first full length Peanuts movie, "A Boy Named Charlie Brown".
It's understandable why Bill Melendez would not be happy with his own work on "A Charlie Brown Christmas". It was rushed and it shows in some places with minor animation mistakes that there was just not time to redo. But this was a guy who had cut his teeth at Disney working on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", "Fantasia" and "Pinnochio" which were animation marvels by any standard. Then he spent a decade at Warner Bros. doing Looney Tunes cartoons during the era where they had the most lavish budgets to do really great work. And even though he'd done Peanuts before dating back to the Ford Motor Company ad campaign in 1959, he had more time for the cells he needed to complete and it was in black and white. Ironically when "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was a smash hit, he agreed to do two specials in 1966 including "A Charlie Brown All-Stars" and the venerable classic "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". At least the later special had the nine months to get right, as well as larger budgets to hire more staff. "A Charlie Brown All-Stars" was brought to the screen on June 8th, 1966, barely six months after "A Charlie Brown Christmas" aired.
Kids were just not cast as animation voices and to this day, the Peanuts specials are largely the only ones that buck that tradition for television. Lee Mendelson, who was always looking out for new voices since kids would quickly grow out of their voices once told a story about being in a shopping mall and heard a child who he knew would be a perfect Peppermint Patty. Sadly, the mother of the child thought he was crazy, didn't believe who he was despite being handed a business card and walked off. The only voice that wasn't a kid was the voice of Snoopy, which was Bill Mendelez's own voice. To this day, Mendelez's voice in archival footage is still used for Snoopy, long after he passed away.
In my opinion, the relative roughness of the animation adds to the charm.
I'm currently 25 years old and for as long as I can remember, each and every year during Christmas time, me and my mother would ALWAYS watch 2 movies together back to back. The original How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. This was very likely my very first introduction to the Peanuts as a whole and I absouletly adore the Peanuts. We even have a wooden tree with lights outside that we call our "Charlie Brown tree" due to me wrapping up the base of it with a dark blue blanket with Charlie Brown and Snoopy on it that was gifted to me by my grandmother years ago. This special always just makes me happy, both as a kid and as an adult. It takes you back to when you were just a kid like Linus or Charlie Brown during the Christmas season while telling a simple and effective story coupled with incredible music and a very important lesson to be learned. Christmas isnt about the gifts nor the lights nor the letters to Santa, its about coming together and appreciating each other and all the good things we have in life. Take a page from Good Ol' Charlie Brown himself and remember: Never let the commercialism ruin what Christmas is really about.
Same but my grinch was the jim carrey one. It had just came out and i was like 3 or 4. It was amazing and i watch it every year, along with Charlie Brown, and now j get to watch it with my little one ❤
Well, I'm 62 and for as long as I can remember, this and original grinch with Karloff are still my favorite Christmas shows. Love, wonderful life, love white Christmas, love Rudolf, love, miracle, etc. But it ain't Christmas till charlie brown and grinch come on!!!
I am not a boomer who despises technology, I love that it was on VHS and later Blu-Ray or Streaming. But back when I was a kid, you would come home from school for the start of Christmas vacation and that was when CBS would show Charlie Brown Christmas and all the other Christmas specials.
The most realistic prospects of how a lot of people fell about Christmas. One of the few special that address depression around the season
Sparky had mental illness .... it killed him.
A few things.
A. This video needs to blow up. You did an amazing job making it and everyone needs to see it
B. It was a Christmas miracle that this movie was made.
C. This special seems like a series of ef it, we'll do it live
i agree with everything you said
?
I love the Peanuts gang, as does my grandma. It is so hilarious how back then and now in the modern day, the special was basically cobbled together but, loved by many even to this day.
Of all the xmas classics I watched as a kid. This is the one best remembered. Like a warm hug at Christmas.
When you hear that soulful xmas dirge. You know exactly what's playing.
A couple of fun facts :
After it aired, the CBS switchboard lit up for days. It was as if "All of heaven had fallen on them"
Coke re-aired the special, this time on all three networks, CBS, ABC and NBC
My favorite scene is when a frustrated Charlie Brown asks what is the true meaning of Christmas. Then Linus takes center stage and recites the Christmas story from the Gospel according to Luke. That scene every time reduces me to tears. Simple and profound.
A timeless classic.
Charles Schulz, Vince Guaraldi, Lee Mendelson, and Bill Melendez gave the world a timeless gift of the gift of all time.
When Charlie Brown and Linus go to the Christmas Tree lot and find nothing but ugly aluminum trees, well that was a fad in the 60's. People were buying trees that looked like modern Art. Charlie Brown Christmas actually brought back the real tree.
The "Big City Greens" episode, "Dream Trees" features a tiny, needle-shedding Christmas that was the object of Cricket Green's dream. The episode ended with Bill Green musing about what Christmas is all about--Family.
Wonderful overview of A Charlie Brown Christmas. The Peanuts TV specials were a huge and defining part of my own personal upbringing. Am really happy to know that, despite the chaos of creating the special, it really ended up becoming a classic part of TV Americana. Sounds like the idea of keeping the story as simple as possible, plus using the best of what was requested along with Charles Schultz’s ideas, made A Charlie Brown Christmas the game changer that it was.
This is my all-time favorite Christmas special. It's gone down through all our generations since its creation as a tradition to watch every Christmas. ❤
The music puts me in the spirit of Christmas.
For me Charlie Brown is linked to Dolly Madison pie ads, in my memories.
YES! In the ‘70s, Dolly Madison sponsored ALL the Peanuts specials! I remember their cakes and pies having Peanuts characters on the packaging, too!
Charlie Brown killed the Aluminum tree
My all time totally Heartfelt Christmas time show! Thank you all! Merry Christmas Everyone!
I am not exactly surprised hard-boiled, "Madmen" era, NYC TV executives could not actually relate to the innocence that "A Charlie Brown Christmas" represents.
I'm 50 and don't remember ever watching this. I saw clips of peanuts cartoons growing up, but never an entire special that I can recall. After watching this one, it's got a strange appeal to it. It's soothing.... like the cartoon equivalent of taking a bubble bath.
I remembered watching this with my other 3 siblings in a sofa cuddled in a blanket in the TV. A few years ago rewatching this as an adult, I noticed the animation is not as detailed as the Thanksgiving or Halloween ones, so this explained it since it is the first one. Wonderful series.
Christmas isn't Christmas without watching A Charlie Brown Crhistmas
@@vap57 Yeah, no holiday feels the same without a Charlie Brown TV special! 😊
I watch all the peanut specials every year. My holiday phone wallpapers are from the peanut specials. I'm an old sentimental dork.
Fantastic video on the history of the Charlie Brown christmas special. I still hear the iconic music from the special every year at my workplace during december.
As a child in the early 1970s , i was going to a roman Catholic school and the bible verse by linus was something that made me love this show . I loved it so much as and adult in my 30s i bought the Peanuts holiday specials to watch at my leisure. I am so happy i got to grow up with them and many other animated movies.
8:53 "Casting" voice actors wasn't really an issue. It was mentioned that Schulz (the "Z" pronounced like in German, which we'd call "TZ", as the name is often spelled by others who have it) had worked before with Bill Melendez on Ford commercials, where some character voices WERE established before the Christmas special came along: Peter Robbins, etc.
It should be back on CBS for its 60TH Anniversary coming up in 2025!
I have a major problem with the narrator of this video-he keeps pronouncing Charles Schulz’s surname as “shoolz” when it should be pronounced “shoolts”.Others may not think this is a significant problem,but it impedes my ability to listen to this video without wincing.
When I was a kid in the 70’s and 80’s this was as much a part of my holiday tradition as opening presents Christmas morning.
Wish it could just go back to being shown exclusively on CBS and without commercial interruptions,especially for next year being the 60th(good grief!)anniversary of the show.R.I.P to Charles Schulz and Bill Melendez
Best Christmas movie EVER!!! 🎄🎅✝️⛪️🌲
Bill Melendez also provided the voice of Snoopy. Great video, bro. Merry Christmas!
When I was a kid, my Mom and I would set time aside to watch this every year
Well 👏 done! ❤🎉. Loved this!
Well done! I was in tears by the end as I grew up on these specials. I hope they never go away.
I absolutely love A Charlie Brown Christmas ❤ Christmas just isn’t Christmas without watching this, the Rankin specials, the Grinch, and Ralphie’s A Christmas Story. 🎄😊❤️
I’ve been watching A Charlie Brown Christmas every year since the 70s, will never get tired of it! ❤️
This could never and would never be made today!
Watching on Christmas. Excellent video! Thanks ❤
Incredible documentary and very well done!
Merry Christmas!!!
it was only until i got older that i realized how dark Charlie Brown could actually be and is and how much I relate to him.
The only Christmas TV show that tells the real story of Christmas.
Watched every year in the 60's & 70's. After each show ended I would run outside and look up at the stars trying to find that star from the cartoon's end in the sky. Continued watching into sdulthood and bought this, the Grinch, & Rudolph on dvd so my son could enjoy them too. We put those dvd's on every holiday season, and I still have them today. To me those shows are treasure.
I have never heard anyone pronounce Schultz like that before.
It's Schulz---no "t"
This cartoon is one of the things that's helps me through the holidays. I share Linus's monologue every year.
As a Snoopy fanatic this is one of my favorite videos. I grew up watching every year and still do.
Excellent Darkness. Your best yet. Here in the UK, the Peanuts specials are equally loved, if only rarely seen these days. Just one point - I don't think they would have worked without Vince Guaraldi, at least, at first. It was right to make it with Jazz, but what Jazz? Cue Vince's slightly overdriven (in a good way!), simple, joy-filled piano jazz, and it was PERFECT. I think a look at the life of Vince is in order, Darkness, from his slightly chaotic bringing up to his tragic (and a little spooky - look up snow in San Francisco, because it snowed for the first time in 35 years the day before) early death. My own personal favourite of Vince's is "Peppermint Patty", especially the slightly off-kilter live version. (There is a later version that is based on, but isn't the same as the original - it's good, I like it, but it's not the same.) So, how about it, a look at the life of Vince Guaraldi?
I actually have a mini aluminum foil tree that my parents bought for their apartment when they got married in 1963. I used to put it in my room as a kid, and I still use it in my office to this day. The funny part is that since the ones in the special are solid, I never quite made the connection.
Iconic is an understatement. I have watched it since the beginning….1965. I was five. A special show.
Best Christmas music ever...
I have one of those silver trees. We had one when I was a child. I remember we gave it to one of my teachers for a classroom tree. I bought one 20 years ago. It's in rough shape. I need to restore it. Paint the "trunk" and reglue the tensil. Plus, I want to get a light for it.
Another instance proving most executive ceo types are bad at judging what will be successful and what is a flop. I dare say most times its exactly the opposite of what they think.
More than ever in hard times, Charlie Brown's Christmas is the perfect Christmas gift to all viewers. The mature themes is a great message to kids to distill what is the most important parts: a time of giving, charity, and goodwill toward all. I like it playing in the background with a cup of eggnog and spiced rum, Bailey's hot chocolate, or a neat Scotch. Merry Christmas 2025, Peace and Goodwill toward all!
I watch this every year
Wow....totally awesome...touching even Kudos.
I had never heard the Jefferson Airplane story before! Those kids must have felt like the kings of the world, given how big the Airplane was at the time! Much as I love Rudolph and the Grinch, to me this is THE Christmas special. The simplicity necessitated by its rushed creation gives it a unique warmth and charm. A lot of people give lip service to “the true meaning of Christmas.” The creators of this show were among the few people who actually got that concept. (Oh, and a Bah Humbug to Apple TV for keeping this under streaming service lock and key. Just let CBS air it ONCE a year for old times’ sake, you miserable misers!)
The only Charlie Brown cartoons I watch are Christmas (I was 10 in '65 and instantly adored it!) and Great Pumpkin... all the rest just never had that certain "something" for me...
(Aside: in High School I played Linus in the drama class's production of Your'e A Good Man Charlie Brown 🤣🤣🤣)
My grandparents have a peanuts nativity set. And they have it out every year.
@Marx-109 Lenox still makes and sells a Peanuts nativity set. It is well made and charming. It includes the main items in the set, but you can add a Peppermint Patty Angel as well as the Three Wise Men. I have it sitting out in my house right now and I gave a full set of these figures to a friend this year.
Talk about ageless! This is a masterpiece.
Very informative and entertaining history lesson my friend!
Being 22 years old I do remember having a vhs player and we had this movie on the tapes absolutely loved it there was nothing better than watching this movie on tape 😂
Thank You 👍🏻 interesting.
Wow... It really is nothing short of a miracle anything creative and wholesome comes out of corp Hollywood. Been a fan of this special since the 80s as a kid. And after becoming a jazz fan as a late teen in the 90s really loved the sound track as well. Vince sounds A LOT like my fav jazz musician of all time Bill Evans.
I am totally going to find this and put it on for my almost 5 yr old tomorrow. Can't believe I haven't.
It comes down to: What do network executives know?
I'd like to teach the world to sing. Some of the ads are remarkable.
A lot is made of the hand drawn vs. computer drawn cells. However, there were shortcuts to hand drawing as well, The background could be reused if the shot was not moving, and the artist could use a "flip" cell by putting the previous cell on top of the new cell and using it as a guide to create the new cell with slight movement from the old one. This also works with the new cell on top if the cell is transparent. I used to create flip books for fun, and used these techniques.
As a child, I often wondered what an aluminum Christmas tree was. I assumed it was some new Californian thing but knew I would never want one because of Charlie Brown.
Here’s a funny thought… IF they did go with professional child actors to voice the Peanuts, Kurt Russell would most likely have been one of them being a prominent child actor at the time. lol could you imagine Snake Plisken doing the voice of Charlie Brown? Hahahaha.
Probably the heart and soul of all ❤
It's not pronounced "SHOOLZ."
Snoopy Rocks.
Well I grew up with the Charlie Brown Christmas and I just got schooled
20:20 I was born in 1963, and I've never had a fake Xmas tree. In fact, we never even bought a precut like in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"; we went to a tree farm and cut our own.
There was a series of Ford commercials that featured animated peanuts characters a few years earlier.
As the show's original production was very rushed, with Melendez and others unhappy with aspects of it, a few years after its 1965 debut, the show was "revised" to correct some of its shortfalls. For example, as they sang "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing", originally Snoopy was mouthing it along with the kids; for the revision, he was smiling, but not moving his mouth, which is how it's been seen ever since.
This video made me realize the creator's last name is Schulz, not Schultz....
Me too 😆
Pronounced like Schultz though
@mph1ish oh. I didn't know that...
Been a huge fan of Peanuts since I first found and read the small books belonging to my dad in the spare bedroom of our house many years ago. And Snoopy's Christmas by The Royal Guardsmen is one of my favourite Christmas songs.
It had heart ❤️
This cartoon is part of my childhood and I think part of my parents childhood as welI. I showed it to my children when they were young, but being that they were born in 1999 and 2006, they were not as impressed as I was at their age.
Schulz is pronounced 'shults' not like 'Dr. Scholl' s"
His name is pronounced Sholtz not Shoals
Charly was a bit complicated for a 5-year-old and I'm sure that's why Snoopy was so popular. Even at 5 years old I couldn't deny the Charly Brown Christmas though and then Peanuts gang as a whole as I got older. The Christmas time song still yanks at the heart strings till this very day. I listen out for it every holyday season and I heard it last Thursday actually. Charly Brown cartoons are somewhat melancholy though. It's that very melancholy mystic that led me to conclude that Charly Brown grow up to be Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins. Oddly enough, the Smashing Pumpkins have an album called Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. It's nice to finally see the story to this indelible holyday cartoon.
I absolutely see the resemblance!
The whole concept and theme of the entire Charlie Brown universe should never have been popular. It's somewhat dark, and the main character is a depressed loser who rarely stops complaining about how bad he's got it. But somehow, someway, against all odds, Charlie Brown has been universally loved and cherished by almost everyone. So it should come as no surprise that the Christmas special is also loved and cherished.
The only time in the year I would see advertisements for Dolly Madison.
I love it
Literally have what UA-cam's bots call the *Master* copy in my UA-cam Studio. The original broadcast with Coke sponsorship and uncut. Tried to upload it here Butttttttt
🤷♂
so comfy :)
A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Great Pumpkin & A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving are holiday classics. They 're simple yet entertaining cartoons you could enjoy and associate yourself with the characters. These cartoons had a simple message in each one. A generation grew up on them and continue to watch ,long after they became adults, as expressed in these comments. It's ok to show how they originated, such stories show where, when, who & how the creation became, it is not acceptable when super critical individuals viciously dissect them for the purpose of starting controversy. These holiday cartoons were broadcast during a time when censorship ruled television and life in general was simpler.
I think we all had one family member that could do the Snoopy dance.
To all the commenters who misspelled Mr. Schulz's name, there is no "T" in it.
Dave Willat (Charlie Brown Christmas chorus member on the original soundtrack)