Half-century later, Charlie Brown turns out to be a ‘Christmas’ winner after all
LOS ANGELES—When they finished making “A Charlie Brown Christmas” 50 years ago, the producers sat back and looked at their work. And they thought: “Good grief.”
“We just thought it was a little slow, and it was certainly not a traditional Christmas show,” said Lee Mendelson, the producer who persuaded “Peanuts” cartoonist Charles M. Schulz to adapt his popular strip about lovable loser Charlie Brown and his childhood friends into an animated holiday offering. “When you’re too close to something, you get a little worried.”
A week before the December 1965 premiere, they screened it in New York for CBS, where two executives watched in stony silence. When the lights came up, one of the bosses told Mendelson, “Well, you gave it a good try.”
That humbly received TV special is now marking an unbroken half-century of annual telecasts, becoming a leading part of pop culture’s holiday canon. ABC, which acquired the rights to “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in 2001, will precede this year’s golden anniversary telecast on Monday with an hourlong special, “It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown,” hosted by Kristen Bell and including original music and guest appearances by Kristin Chenoweth, Matthew Morrison, Sarah McLachlan and others.
How has an animated special that looked as destined for failure as Charlie Brown himself wound up enduring so long?
“It became part of everybody’s Christmas holidays,” Mendelson, now 82, said in a recent phone interview from the Bay Area, where he still operates his production company. “It was just passed on from generation to generation. … We got this huge initial audience and never lost them.”
TV historian and researcher Tim Brooks said the familiarity of the half-hour “Peanuts” special is what has helped it last, as boomer and GenX parents reintroduce the program to their own kids.
“It’s comfort in a difficult world,” Brooks said of “Charlie Brown Christmas.”