“But did you notice Charlie Brown?”
“What’s that?”
“The world didn’t come to an end.”
As you have heard me grumble about previously, the Peanuts holiday specials no longer air on network television. They are exclusive to Apple TV or, as is the case in my home, a Blu Ray box set, because streaming services can suck it, especially ones that end a 50-plus year tradition. (Don’t get me started on this.)
But MeTV, my favorite channel in the world, is doing the next best thing. They are airing the first two Peanuts theatrical films. This article is about “A Boy Named Charlie Brown”, and soon I’ll do one about the tearjerkingest childrens film ever made, “Snoopy Come Home.”
“A Boy Named Charlie Brown” was released in 1969 and has the mark of its time all over it. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that you know it’s from 1969 fairly easily. In this case of this film the late 60’s aesthetic comes in special visual sequences, such as the national anthem at Charlie Brown’s baseball game, or perhaps most uniquely in the sequence of Schroeder playing a Beethoven piece. There’s also a nifty skating sequence with Snoopy at the Rockefeller Center alternating between ice-skating and playing hockey (complete with missing teeth).
This seems like a good place to dive into the music–and, I know, a good movie review is supposed to start with the plot, but nobody promised you this would be any good.
The most unusual song in the film is the title track, “A Boy Named Charlie Brown”, written and performed by Rod McKuen, a best-selling poet of the time. “Boy” and two other McKuen-penned songs, “Champion Charlie Brown” and “Failure Face”, are very unique simply by being the first vocal songs in Peanuts animation (aside from “Hark The Herald Angels Sing” in the Christmas show). “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” is a very warm, almost-schmaltzy song about good ol’ Charlie Brown. It surprises me that Charles Schulz went along with it because in 50 years of comic strips (and all the other animated specials for that matter) there was virtually zero sympathy or contemplation given to Charlie Brown’s roll call of failures (baseball, kite flying, etc.). That sort of thing was left to the viewer or reader to feel for themselves. But with lines like:
He's only a boy named Charlie, A Boy Named Charlie Brown. He's just the kid next door, Perhaps a Little more, He's every kid in every town. Well the world is full of lots of people, Here and there and all around. But people after all, Start out as being small, We're all A Boy Named Charlie Brown.
Now that really sets things up in a very different way. Of course, the songs can only have so much influence…at the end of the film, under an encore of McKuen’s warbling, Lucy pulls the football away from Charlie Brown. Some things will never change.
What did change, for this movie, was the role of Vince Guaraldi. The jazz legend, whose compositions including “Linus and Lucy” and “Christmas Time Is Here” will be forever identified with the Peanuts gang, saw his compositions, for the most part, reorchestrated for a more dramatic sound. Sez WIkipedia:
When discussing the augmentation of Guaraldi’s established jazz scores with additional musicians, [Peanuts animation producer] Lee Mendelson commented, “It wasn’t that we thought Vince’s jazz couldn’t carry the movie, but we wanted to supplement it with some ‘big screen music.’ We focused on Vince for the smaller, more intimate Charlie Brown scenes; for the larger moments, we turned to [John Scott] Trotter’s richer, full-score sound.”
I happen to like the fancified versions of “Skating”, “Linus and Lucy” and other compositions from previous specials…for a motion picture they seem right. When we talk about “Snoopy Come Home” next time, there will really be a big music change.
Okay, so: The plot of “A Boy Named Charlie Brown.” Our hero, who faces difficulty with nearly every aspect of life, decides he’s had enough and enters himself into his classroom spelling bee. Shock of shocks, Chuck is the winner! And so he moves on to the all-school spelling bee. Lucy (the definitive voice of Pamelyn Ferdin) starts making plans to be Charlie’s agent, while Linus and Snoopy help Charlie Brown learn the many peccadilloes of spelling. Snoopy plays along on his juice harp as Charlie Brown and Linus sing “I Before E Except After C”. in another inventive visual sequence with a flurry of words illustrating the rules.
Side trip! Whenever my friend Kroheim and I have visited what is now the Crossroads Music store, they always have a Snoopy juice harp in their display case–I think it even says “as seen in ‘A Boy Named Charlie Brown’ or some such. I can’t tell you how many times I have been tempted to buy that sucker just for the box art of Snoopy playing the juice harp (“Geer-goir-geer-goir-geer-goir:…something like that.)
Charlie Brown, with some juice harp hinting from Snoopy sitting outside the school window, wins the all-school spelling bee! Huzzah! All of the kids sing “Champion Charlie Brown”, which is probably my favorite song from the movie. It’s catchy, it’s a rare moment of celebration for Chuck, what’s not to like? However, when Charlie Brown and friends return home, CB slinks into his chair and exhales, thinking this whole thing is all over. Lucy, still gunning to be his agent, informs Charlie Brown that he has to go to the NATIONAL spelling bee! And this is where the melancholia sets in. CB is more than happy to take the schoolwide win, but he must go to the big dance. And anyone who has ever read a Peanuts comic strip knows he’s going to lose. It’s Charlie Brown. What’s remarkable about the film is the way they build tension and excitement for an ending everybody knows is coming.
That seed is planted at the bus station, where Linus hands over his prized blanket to Charlie Brown in hopes of giving him good luck. Again, Peanuts fans can see the result of this coming a mile away. But the trip to that point, and beyond it, is very entertaining.
Linus, as expected, begins clutching his skull, fainting and exhibiting complete and total withdrawl. He engages Snoopy to go to the big city with him (Snoopy plays his juice harp on the bus all the way there). They have a happy reunion with Charlie Brown until the blockhead tells Linus he doesn’t know where the blanket is.
And so, while Charlie Brown remains at the hotel to study for the spelling bee he’s going to lose, Linus and Snoopy head out into the big city. I’d just like to point out here that in the comic strips, the fact that no adults are ever seen and are rarely even mentioned never seemed like a big deal. When these full-length features started being made, the absence of adults is…uh….really, really noticeable. Charlie Brown, who is…oh, let’s say 9 years old at the high end, goes on a bus, is dropped off at the city depot, and takes a cab to the hotel. This is New York City, by the way. It could be “Large City USA” but the scenes with Linus and Snoopy looking for the blanket depict specific NYC landmarks like Rockefeller Center and the New York Public Library. (Linus, again, no adult supervision wandering around New York City at night.)
Linus returns to the hotel, exhausted from a fruitless search. Charlie Brown, meanwhile, is polishing his shoes with Linus’ blanket. And so, with that storyline resolved, we must go to the spelling bee. Oh, the melancholia! It aches!
Charlie Brown, with friends watching at home and Linus and Snoopy cheering him on from the front row, manages to knock out a few opponents. But then he is asked to spell “beagle.” “That!”, he told Alanis Morrisette, “is irony!”
“B-E-A-G-E-L.” Cue the “ARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH”s.
So, I saw this movie on television in the 70s. Like the specials, the Peanuts theatricals were eventually aired on CBS. I can remember watching this one two or three times. And as a kid, the sad ending, with poor Charlie Brown hanging his head on TV, really bummed me out to the point where I didn’t really pay much attention to the few moments afterward. Honestly, the scene where Linus visits Charlie Brown at home the day after they’ve returned from the city, is the moment of this film that resonates with me today.
Wise, helpful Linus. Every day is a challenge. But every day is also a chance to try again.
Random Notes:
-Peanuts was HUGE in the late 1960s. On one incredible night in 1969, the number one movie in America was “A Boy Named Charlie Brown”, playing at Radio City Music Hall. The highest rated television program that evening was CBS’ rebroadcast of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” And the hottest show on Broadway was “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.”
-It is interesting to note that even for a feature-length motion picture, Schulz repurposed comic strips as he had been doing in the specials. The opening scene of “A Boy Named Charlie Brown”, with the kids looking at cloud shapes, was a 1960 Peanuts Sunday strip.
-Producer Lee Mendelson and animation director Bill Melendez elected to use actual child actors for the voices of the Peanuts gang beginning with “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. Thus began a decades long challenge of finding the right young actors for each character as previous actors aged out of the parts. It’s quite remarkable–when I listen to Sally in “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” she sounds for all the world like the Sally in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (“just send tens and twenties!”). But it’s a different young lady.
-Just remembered something about the whole “no adults” thing. In 1988, a mini-series of half hour specials called “This Is America, Charlie Brown” aired on CBS. Because the goal was to depict important moments in American history, for this series only adults were seen and heard. There are several promos for this series on YouTube and I’m just gonna post ’em all, cause I just can’t get enough Mark Elliot promo narration.
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