Charles Schulz: Writer and Illustrator (1922-2000)
Charles Schulz is the creator and cartoonist behind Peanuts©, a globally popular comic strip that persisted into television, books, and other popular merchandise.
Schulz was born on November 26, 1922, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Schulz’s father, Carl, was of German heritage and his mother, Dena, came from a large Norwegian family. The family made their home in St. Paul, where Carl found work as a barber. Both father and son shared Sunday mornings with a ritual of reading comic strips found in the newspapers. Schulz found particular interest in strips like Skippy, Mickey Mouse, and Popeye.
Through reading comic strips, Schulz found his passion and desired nothing more than to become a cartoonist. In 1937, a drawing of his family dog, Spike, was published. This proud moment sparked his motivation to take his artistic study to a new level. With the support of his mother, he completed a correspondence cartoon course with the Federal School of Applied Cartooning as a senior in high school.
In 1943, Schulz’s mother Dena died from cervical cancer. Due to the grief, Schulz joined the army. He returned from the war in the fall of 1945, settling with his father in a small apartment over a barber shop. There, Schulz was determined to regain his passion of becoming a professional cartoonist. While working as an art instructor, Schulz created his first comic strip, Li’l Folks, which was published in a local newspaper. He then sold the comic strip to United Feature Syndicate in 1950 where the company retitled his work to Peanuts.
The first Peanuts strip appeared on October 2, 1950, in seven newspapers nationwide. Schulz derived inspiration for the comic strip from his own life. For example, Charlie Brown was based on himself, and the inspiration for Snoopy came from memories of his childhood pet.
Schulz never expected the global impact and longevity his seemingly- simple four-panel creation would have on the world. As his audience formed a connections to Peanuts, they were able to watch the character’s personalities grow and unfold. Readers would intimately understand Linus’ attachment to his security blanket, Charlie Brown’s heartache over the Little Red- Haired Girl, or even Peppermint Patty’s interest in sports but failure in the classroom. It was Schulz’s humor—sarcastic, bittersweet, silly, sentimental, and gloomy—that he infused in his comics that kept his well- known and comfortable characters fresh enough to constantly attract new readers while keeping his faithful followers coming back for more.
When Schulz announced his retirement in December 1999, the Peanuts comic strip was featured in newspapers worldwide, with book collections translated in over 25 languages. He has been awarded with the highest honors from his fellow cartoonist and colleges, received Emmy Awards for his animated specials, been recognized by the U.S and foreign governments, and had NASA space crafts named after his Peanut characters. Most of all, Schulz’s creations continue to touch the lives of children and adults alike.
“I think anybody who is writing finds he puts a little bit of himself in all of the characters, at least in this kind of a strip. It’s the only way that you can survive when you have to do something every day. You have to put yourself, all of your thoughts, all of your observations and everything you know into the strip.”
Charles M. Schulz
Fiction Mirrors Reality
Charlie Brown and his experiences in the Peanuts comics were inspired by Charles Schulz’s own experiences. The different problems and themes that the characters deal with are built out of Schulz’s life and experience. Charlie Brown is an anxious character, often full of self-deprecation and doubt. These personality traits are modeled of off Schulz as well. Schulz was a shy, anxious man, and is quoted as saying “If you read the strip, you would know me. Everything I am goes into the strip—all of my fears, my anxieties, and my joys.”
Charlie Brown’s interest in the Little Red-Haired Girl is based upon Schulz’s own heartbreak. Their relationship is loosely modeled on Schulz’s own relationship with a woman named Donna Johnson, who was his first love. Schulz proposed to and was rejected by her, and created the frustrated and unrequited love of Charlie Brown out of this experience.
Schulz’s own dog, Spike, inspired the character of Snoopy. Spike was a black and white dog that was, according to Schulz, a little bit crazy. Charlie Brown’s father worked as a barber, just as Charles Schulz’s did.
Many of the other Peanuts characters are modeled off of Schulz’s real life friends. Both Linus and Shermy are named after people Schulz knew in his own life. (His friends were named Linus Maurer and Sherman Plepler.)
Schulz was known to have subtly introduced characters that dealt with political and social issues of the time. In 1968, the character of Franklin was introduced. Franklin was the first African-American character in the Peanuts comic strip. This was significant because racial tension in the 1960’s was very high. Martin Luther King, Jr., Civil Rights leader and activist, was assassinated in 1968. This prompted Schulz to add Franklin to the cast of characters in an attempt to demonstrate racial equality in the comic strip.
Timeline of Charlie Brown
1947– First appearance of Charlie Brown character in a comic strip calledLi’l Folks
1950– First Peanuts comic strip printed
1959– First animated appearance by Peanuts characters in a Ford Motor commercial and for The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show by animator Bill Meléndez
1960’s– “Golden Age” of the Peanuts comic strip. The strip became popular in numerous countries and reached a peak of 355 million viewers
1965– A Charlie Brown Christmas airs on CBS
1966– After the success of A Charlie Brown Christmas,more animated specials were created, including Charlie Brown’s All-Stars and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
1967- The musical comedy You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown is created by Clark Gesner. It premiered off- Broadway at Theatre 80 in New York City.
1969-The lunar module and command module of the Apollo 10 space mission are named after Charlie Brown and Snoopy
1971– You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown premieres on Broadway and runs for 32 shows
1980’s-Fourteen more television specials are created during this decade, including an animated version of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.
1990’s-Six television specials are produced.
2000’s– The final Peanuts strip is published on February 13th, one day after the death of creator Charles Schulz. A few more television specials are produced, including He’s a Bully, Charlie Brown and Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown.
The Making of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
“When Charlie Brown went into rehearsal on February 10, 1967, there was no script. There were ten songs, a few long scenes, two producers, one small theatre, six medium-sized actors, one each of director, assistant director, writer, musical supervisor, lighting designer and scenic designer, ten years’ worth of Charles Schulz’s drawings, and one purpose. The purpose was to put “Peanuts” onstage.
When the show opened on March 7, 1967, there still was no script but “Peanuts” was onstage, so nobody much cared. This published edition is, in effect, a description, written after the fact; of what finally wound up on that stage after everyone had done the best he could in his particular department to accomplish that single purpose. If the play has managed to succeed, it stands as one more tribute to Charles Schulz’s immensely human view of the world and his special ability to say it for all of us.”
-Clark Gesner
Clark Gesner did not set out to create a musical based on Charles Schulz’s popular comic strip, Peanuts. In the early 1960s, he was working on a concept album, using the characters as inspiration. But, lacking permission from United Features Syndicate, he could not actually use the characters in the songs. Eventually Gesner sent Schulz a tape of some of the songs and Gesner soon had permission to record them, which he did in 1966. It was due to Arthur Whitelaw, who would later go on to write another musical based on Peanuts, that Gesner was encouraged to turn his concept album into a full production.
From Page to Stage 