Time once again for another holiday gone haywire: Thanksgiving! I say "good grief!" to PBS for their "up close and personal" look at Peanuts creator, Charles M. Schulz. Funny thing is, they managed to squeeze this in at a time when his cartoons air between Halloween and Christmas on television. I will now refer to Mr. Schulz as "Sparkey" - a nickname that friends gave him early on when he was still scribbling stick figures on dinner napkins.
Sparkey knew that drawing and particularily comics were in his future. Fast forward a bit and Sparkey gets his break with "Peanuts". As is the case with many cartoonists and voice-over artists, the characters portrayed are loosely based on friends and family...or are they so "loose"? With friends and family to generate enough material to cover nearly fifty years, it's no wonder that Sparkey was married a few times, wasn't there for his kids, and locked himself in his office at home to draw. The irony here is, it was an escape from everyday life however, the strip literally fed off his life! While "Peanuts" fame was rising and being syndicated in newspapers, Charlie shunned everyone around him. It comes as no shock to learn that the man even skipped Thanksgiving to draw. Snoopy making toast, popcorn, and jelly-beans for dinner wasn't that far off the mark for a typical Thanksgiving in Charlie's office. According to his kids, the only time they saw him was for a daily whoopin' with Sparkey's belt.
Up to his neck in deadlines, Sparkey bit off more than he could chew when he agreed to put some of his creativity on television. It started out with the Christmas special, "A Charlie Brown Christmas". It almost didn't make it to air on CBS because of the references to religion. Well, it was a hit and several weeks later CBS ordered up more of these half hour specials. "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" came around the next year and was followed by the Thanksgiving special. This is where Sparkey's true colors came out. In a segment that was quickly cut in editing, Charlie Brown is on the phone with his Grandmother. While Snoopy is dishing out candy, soda pop, and toast, to the whole gang, Grandma gets irate with Chuck on the phone wondering how in the hell she's gonna squeeze six more people in at the dinner table and AT THE LAST MINUTE! Immediately, Grandma warns Charlie not to bring his gay friends over and also, leave the colored kid at home...in between the "wa wa wa's", Grandma reminds Charlie that the only breasts she wants to see are on the turkey and that if Franklin thinks he's getting fried chicken and collard greens, he's out of luck. CBS censors deleted the scene and made sure that Schulz "played nice" with the kids on a holiday. NEXT TIME: PART II
