Schulz believed that using children gave the characters more authenticity. CBS executives wanted to use adult actors who pretended to be kids. Schulz thought more highly of viewers: He didn't believe they needed to be cued to laugh at predetermined moments.Īnother disagreement involved the voice work.
#A charlie brown christmas tv
Back in the 1960s, it was unimaginable to produce TV comedy without one. The first problem was the laugh track, or lack thereof. When the special was finished, it wasn't a hit with network executives. The team worked fast: It had only three months to create a script, record it, make a soundtrack and create 30,000 animation cells from scratch-all before the days of computer-animated design. Schulz pulled together Mendelson and legendary animator Bill Melendez, put an outline together and quickly locked down the sale. The bad news is we have to write it tomorrow,'" Mendelson said. The good news is I think I just sold A Charlie Brown Christmas. Schulz and I tell him, 'I have good news and bad news. And they said, 'We have to make a decision on Monday. Schulz ever considered doing a Charlie Brown show?' And I lied, and said, 'Absolutely, we've been thinking about it.' And this was on a Thursday.
"We got a call from Coca-Cola," Lee Mendelson, who produced the special, recalled. It was commissioned by a commercial sponsor looking to turn the nation's most beloved newspaper cartoon into an animated TV special.
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The 30-minute Christmas special wasn't birthed by the creative urge. So is the story of how it almost didn't come to be.īut first things first. But the story of how Charles Schulz's A Charlie Brown Christmas came to be is itself an American classic. America fell in love with the show when it first aired on TV back in 1965, and it's been a part of our lives ever since.