A Charlie Brown Christmas - The Making Of A Tradition

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A Charlie Brown Christmas -
The Making Of A Tradition
by Lee Mendelson with reminiscences by Bill Melendez
ITBooks ISBN: 9780062272140

A Charlie Brown Christmas - The Making Of A Tradition does exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak. First published in 2000, the book is a behind the scenes treasure trove of information, photographs, animation cells and more, telling the story of how the very first Charlie Brown animated TV special came into being. But not, as I learned within its handsome dust covers, the first Charlie Brown animation... I’ll get to that in a minute.

The names Bill Mendelson and Bill Melendez will probably be familiar with anyone who’s seen a Charlie Brown cartoon in the last 55 years. They worked on them all with Mendelson producing and with, as the credits always used to put it, ‘graphic blandishments’ by Melendez. This tells the story of how the two became involved with Charlie Schulz, the man behind the Peanuts newspaper strip (you can read my review of his entire run here).

The first thing I have to say about this book is that it’s really well designed. Lots of blocks of type with very loose leading and the underlying grid of the page layout showing through (beautiful typography), with headlines big, bold and eschewing capital letters. Honestly, this book is almost like something I would design myself if I had projects as cool as this to work on (my day job is as a graphic designer) and, as an added extra touch, there is a little reproduction of running animation cells on the bottom right corner of all the pages, so you can ruffle them like an old school flicker book and see the characters come to life before your eyes.

Mendelson seems to have written the majority of the book but both he an Melendez have a lot to say. The introduction is just heartbreaking, with Mendelson telling how he was on the phone with Sparky one night (everybody close to Schulz knew him as Sparky) and he was due to meet up with him again the next day but, within hours of the phone call, Charles M. Schulz had passed away. I know too well what it’s like to be left without a sense of closure when someone close dies and this really pulled at the tear ducts, to be honest.

He then goes on to explain how ex-Disney animator Melendez, who he didn’t know at the time, had done a few minutes of Peanuts animation for Ford, in a series of quick adverts a couple of years before the TV special. When, for his newly established film production company, Mendelson set out to do a half hour documentary on Schulz (which didn’t initially sell to any network at the time, on completion) they decided they wanted a couple of minutes of animation in it and Sparky put him in touch with Melendez for the job. The rest is history, even more so when Mendelson got the idea of asking hot jazz composer Vince Guaraldi to come up with music for the documentary. The world famous Peanuts inspired jazz standard Linus & Lucy (which you could probably hum, even if you didn’t know you knew it), was written for this documentary.

So, the documentary was rejected but somebody at Coca Cola saw it and responded to the animation. So Coca Cola hired Mendelson to do a half hour slot Christmas special for TV, to an extremely short deadline which, with the help of Melendez and his crew, not to mention the best selling score provided by Guaraldi, he managed to pull off. However, the people at the TV company saw it and pretty much hated it. They agreed to still screen it because, obviously, they didn’t want to waste the money, but they said they wouldn’t repeat the experience. By chance, they showed it to a Time magazine critic a few days before it screened and, of course, he absolutely loved it and gave it a very positive write up. Not as positive as the huge audience figures and huge outpouring of love it drew when it was aired though... not to mention procuring an Emmy. The TV company realised their error and immediately ordered five more specials. Like I said... the rest is, a very long, history.

The book is set out into different sections so this is followed by a miniature biography of Schulz himself and then a Q & A session with Mendelson and Melendez. Things I’d never thought of before came to light and this was certainly an education. For instance, I didn’t realise it but it seems obvious now, that one of the unique things about this special and the subsequent TV specials was that these were pretty much the first time that kids in a cartoon were voiced by actual children. This is followed by a section on Melendez and another thing I’d not thought of is that the Schulz’ drawings of the characters, which they took straight to screen unchanged, were not great for certain aspects of animation. There are no way Charlie Brown’s arms are going to reach up to his head to scratch it for example... so Melendez said he had to cut around things so whenever Charlie Brown scratches his head, it’s done in profile with his arm coming up from behind him etc. I’d never thought about that before but it’s one of the many interesting little facts scattered around the pages here.

Another of the many mini sections of the book is a brief biography of composer Vince Guaraldi and it even reprints some of his sheet music for the show (he would go on to score the first 13 specials before dying unexpectedly at the age of 45... his musical direction would inform all the other productions, of course). And added to all this are loads of photos and reproductions of things which are probably published here for the first time. There’s a look at some of the flat shots from the 1960s Ford Falcon commercials, storyboards, background design sketches, production sheets (which I didn’t totally understand, I have to confess) and even two black and white sequential photographs of Charlie Schulz and Bill Melendez reenacting the long running Lucy/Charlie Brown football gag.

Finally, the last section of the book is the full, illustrated screenplay of A Charlie Brown Christmas and I have to say, although I wasn’t particularly expecting much from this part of the book, the script is a joy to read (especially with the animated cells next to them to remind you of the flavour of each scene) and, dare I say it, ultimately quite moving (perhaps more so than actually watching the original animation). And that’s all I’ve got on this one... A Charlie Brown Christmas - The Making Of A Tradition is a fairly quick read but it’s handsomely illustrated, nicely designed and an absolutely wonderful, very informative book on the creative process, production and reception of this great TV classic. I’d recommend this to anyone who loves the world created by Schulz and those wonderful cartoons based on them.

It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

 

The Beagle Has Landed

It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
USA 1966
Directed by Bill Melendez
Watched on YouTube

I rarely watch anything on YouTube, it has to be said. I much prefer owning the stuff I watch rather than streaming or renting from a source which can just turn around and deny me the ability to watch what I want, when I want it any time it likes. However, I thought I’d make an exception this year because Varese Sarabande has just reminded me this gem of a cartoon exists by releasing the first CD issue of the soundtrack. Now, it has to be said, I did try and order a UK DVD or Blu Ray of It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, only to find that this thing seems to be totally out of print over here. Now normally in that situation I would just order the US edition but, alas, I knew that if I’d gone down that route then it was probable I wouldn’t even receive it until after Halloween this year... which kinda defeats the object. This is definitely a seasonal TV special and soundtrack and playing it past 31st October just seems like really bad luck, to me.

I remember that I never saw this one as a kid. Halloween, it has to be said, was not something that children in the UK in the 1970s or before... or even the 1980s for that matter... really participated in or knew much about. Trick or Treating was not a thing over here until maybe the mid to late 1990s and the way it’s mutated into some kind of aggressive tricksterism...as well as a totally cynical exercise in merchandising scary, seasonally appropriate merchandise to the kids and their financially challenged parents... is probably not something I should go on about at length here.

So yes, I was certainly aware of Halloween as a kid from only one source... The Observer magazine that got delivered to my parent’s door every Sunday. This used to run the Peanuts strip in colour near the back and, every October, you’d get the odd Halloween installment published. That was my only exposure to Halloween, not to mention The Great Pumpkin and so the bizarre culture shock I experienced when, in later years, I saw Halloween rise in popularity over here, spreading like a virulent celebration of destructive anarchy, made me wonder if our country had become just another state of the USA. I used to watch and love the odd Charlie Brown specials on TV as a kid (and later) as did everybody but I don’t know if this one even got shown on UK TV, truth be told. According to the IMDB it was only ever broadcast in the US and in Finland for some strange reason so... maybe it really never aired over here.

Anyway, I found myself with a spare half an hour for lunch and I found a few versions of this on YouTube. A couple were questionable in quality but I did quickly find an HD version and away I went.

It’s a little crude in style but most of those early Peanuts cartoons were and they were no worse for it. They’ve always been about the little pearls of wisdom that Charles M. Schulz used to inject into his strip and all of the ones I’ve seen (although I’ve seen nowhere near all of them) are primarily about promoting strong messages of right versus wrong. They are sometimes quite surreal (another reason to like them) and certainly very cynical at times but they always have a lot of heart in them and I suspect that’s why they’re so well loved around the world.

It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown tells the short story of what happens when the Peanuts gang go trick or treating while Linus and Sally (who has a crush on Linus, if you recall), spend all night in the ‘most sincere’ Pumpkin Patch that Linus can find, fruitlessly awaiting the appearance of this peculiar figment of Linus’ imagination. There’s not much to write home about in this one, it has to be said but... it is a slice of pleasant, heart warming Charlie Brown goodness once again and, in terms of the animated specials, it also has a couple of firsts.

For example, this is the first time an animation had been done of Charlie Brown attempting to kick a football and landing on his back after Lucy pulls it away from him. Even in this first animated manifestation, though, it’s already being treated by the characters as a running joke.

The other famous first here is that this is the first time we get to see the animated Snoopy playing around as the World War One flying ace, in pursuit of the Red Baron. Most of the classic elements of those flights of canine fancy are in place here already such as, even when he’s doing a loop the loop, you never see anything other than the top of his dog kennel standing in for his Sopwith Camel and both the flying sequence and his progress returning home behind enemy lines is done with a deft touch which carefully rides the line between Snoopy’s imagination and what’s happening in the real world. The only thing which seems a little false here is that instead of Snoopy’s inner voice narrating his adventures... you never get to hear Snoopy’s thoughts in the cartoons... we instead have the surrogate voice of Charlie Brown narrating on the soundtrack. This almost but, doesn’t quite, work and it seems a bit false. I think this was something they dropped in later shows but I’d need to watch more of them to find out how quickly this element was ditched from the franchise.

The whole show is, of course, scored by the late, great Vince Guaraldi and this is always one of the best reasons to watch the early, classic Peanuts shows. This one has some nice variations on his famous Linus And Lucy theme going through it too which, frankly, I'm really looking forward to hearing when I can get around to giving the new CD a spin. It's good jazz scoring from a truly remarkable composer.

And that’s me more or less done with It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown which, frankly, any fan of the Peanuts gang will surely love. I say more or less because there’s a little epilogue to my review here. When the end credits were rolling I noticed that the cartoon was released in 1966, which rang a little alarm bell in my head. I remembered that a couple of years ago I bought a DVD called The Peanuts 1960s Collection, which is also now sadly out of print and which I haven't had a chance to watch yet. When I looked at the box when I got home I realised that It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was on this all along. So I really needn’t have spent so much time and energy trying to get hold of this one and neither did I need to resort to YouTube to watch it. Sometimes the things you want are right on the end of your nose so, the moral to take away from this story, I think, is this. Whatever you do, don’t get as old as me... it’s no fun.

Greatest Christmas Music

Christmas Needle Drop

So it’s that time of the year again when seasonal shoppers trample peace and good will into their fellow consumers, as they hastily clamber over their fallen bodies to snatch up the best bargains they can in the name of completing that long list of Christmas shopping requirements. Thankfully, it’s also the time of year when a fair few people get an extended holiday away from work and so the anticipation of this annual absence from the drudgery of the real world (for the most part) suffuses most of our hearts with a feeling of peace, well being and joy... blocking out thoughts of the gazillions of people who die in Christmas shopping traffic or those expiring from hypothermia as the winter bites down hard.

One of the things I always look forward to each year is the start of December because that’s when I feel I can legitimately start playing all my Christmas themed music without getting too many funny looks. So this year, I thought I’d do something new, for my blog, which is pull out and highlight my all time favourite Christmas sonorities for you all to consider listening to at this most festive time of the year. To make things more easier and less agonizing in deciding what’s what, I’ve put my eleven favourite Christmas albums, in reverse order of course, first and then made a second list for absolutely unmissable, stand alone Christmas themed tracks which aren’t on any of those albums listed. Before I start though, a few caveats...

You won’t find Johnny Williams’ two, almost certainly excellent, Home Alone scores on here. Why not? Well simply because I’ve never heard the scores or even seen the movies (and I still have no desire to see Macauly Caulkin do an impression of a work by Edvard Munch, thanks very much). I’m sure these are very good, Christmassy albums but, honestly, I can’t personally recommend them without having heard them.

Also, you won’t find Danny Elfman’s score to Edward Scissorhands on here. Yes, I know it’s been used in a gazillion seasonal adverts and has become almost synonymous with the yuletide season (and dodgy perfume) over the years and... it is a great score... there just wasn’t enough of a Christmas link for me to be able to justify extending my list to twelve, as far as I’m concerned. Elfman’s score for The Nightmare Before Christmas is similarly missing in action but for a simpler reason... I think it’s a bit rubbish and you can hear another, much more interesting musical's influences coming through from the temp track... at least I think I can. Either way, it’s just not for me. However, Elfman fans can relax because one of his Christmas scores did make it in here, so make like a snowflake and chill when it comes to that particular composer.

Okay so first up we have...



The Top Ten Coolest Christmas Albums

11. Everly by Bear McCreary
If you love the music of composer Bear McCreary as much as me, especially his amazing stuff for the last incarnation of the Battlestar Galactica TV show, then you’ll no doubt love the score to this Christmas set shoot ‘em up featuring a machine gun toting Salma Hayek. The icing on the cake is a bunch of Christmas songs with vocals performed by Brendan McCreary and Bear’s wife Raya Yarborough (seriously, her version of Silent Night is well worth the price of the CD). This album is quite new to me but it’s going to be spinning every year in December for me from now on.

10. Die Hard by Michael Kamen
This much loved Christmas action movie has a sequel which also takes place at Christmas. However, Kamen’s music for this first film is much more seasonal as, asides from quoting musical source material like Beethoven’s Ninth and Singin’ In The Rain, he also weaves in some festive tunes which mesh perfectly with the underscore and are manipulated in a similar way to how Kamen manipulates the audience’s emotions. There’s a wonderfully sinister interpolation of phrases from Winter Wonderland in here which will change the way you receive the spirit of the music.

9. Scrooged by Danny Elfman
Danny Elfman’s take on the classic Bill Murray update on Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol uses a lot of Christmas melodies and is a perfect summation of Elfman’s ‘Yuletide stylings’. My one complaint would be that the four note melody from Ronald Stein’s score to Roger Corman's ‘Lovecraft masquerading as Poe’ movie The Haunted Palace, so famously (and allegedly) stolen by Toto for the score to Dune, also seems to play a prominent role in this score. Still, a great listen and a fun album.

8. A Christmas Carol and A Child is Born by Bernard Herrmann
Double header from Kritzerland of two phenomenal Christmas scores, including songs, written by my all time favourite composer Bernard Herrmann. It’s a limited edition and probably out of print now but well worth grabbing if you can get hold of one.

7. Gremlins by Jerry Goldsmith
The late great Jerry Goldsmith’s famous score to Joe Dante’s ‘almost horror’ movie is a bit of a masterpiece. Again, the sequel to this was also set during Christmas but that score can’t hold a candle to this one. Asides from the Gremlins and Gizmo themes, of course, there’s some great seasonal tunes encoded into the DNA of this thing and it’s always going to be on my stereo throughout the season. The FSM expanded version of this score is a must-have.

6. Krampus by Douglas Pipes
What an incredible score to a newish Christmas movie. There’s some great, traditional tunes from the Xmas genre which are used to counterpoint and metamorphosise a horror film, and score, which is like a much grimmer version of Gremlins in tone. It’s kind of lazy to say that Pipes score is reminiscent of Elfman at his most Christmassy but he is and I honestly think he out Elfman’s Elfman in some passages. A grim and unsettling but ultimately fun and addictive listen.

5. It’s A Wonderful Life by Dimitri Tiomkin
Kritzerland finally gave us a limited edition of the music from this much loved, and rightly so, Christmas movie... blowing away all the pseudo compilation imitations on the market. It’s a great job they do on this score, considering the age of the master tapes... just put it on and find yourself transported back in time to a black and white Bedford Falls. How cool is it that we finally have this music released?

4. Doctor Who: The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe by Murray Gold
This Christmas special set in the 1940s is easily the most moving and emotional episode of Doctor Who ever and Gold’s music, presented by Silva Screen as a double header with music from the Christmas special The Snowmen, is absolutely heart rending. It doesn’t take many minutes of listening to this music before I’m a blubbery mess, crying into a handkerchief.

3. Star Wars Christmas Album - Christmas In The Stars
How can you not love an album of very strange songs sung by See Threepio, R2D2 and their alien friends to celebrate Christmas in a galaxy far, far away. It even has a young Bon Jovi on at least one track. Despite its absolutely infuriating lack of continuity with the rest of the Star Wars canon, something which my mind can’t even conceive, especially since the Christian faith surely wouldn’t exist in a universe with Jedi in it, it’s hard not to repeatedly play an album which has such cool songs as “What do you get a Wookie for Christmas when he already has a comb?” on it. I’m so glad this album is back in print and on CD.

2. A Charlie Brown Christmas by Vince Guaraldi
Jazz legend Vince Guaraldi’s amazing Christmassy score to the very first Charlie Brown animated special is absolutely spellbinding and something I will always come back to every Christmas. His slightly downbeat version of O Tannenbaum is the most powerful performance of that particular seasonal standard and this is also the first Charlie Brown score to feature the less Christmassy but much loved and popular Linus And Lucy theme. This is an album everybody should have on in the background on the approach to Christmas.

1. Christmas With The Chipmunks by David Seville
There is simply never going to be a better Christmas album than this outstanding volume of Christmas with The Chipmunks (now known, on Amazon, as Christmas With The Chipmunks Volume 2, for some reason). I’ve been listening to this every Christmas since I was born in 1968, originally on the first pressing vinyl and then, from about the mid 1990s, on a CD my friend in America sent me one year. It’s absolutely unbeatable and make sure it’s this version of the album you get because it has the most moving, “there’s something in my eye” rendition by Seville of Silver Bells that you’re ever likely to hear.



Bonus Beats - more unmissable single tracks

9. The Christmas Wine by John Barrry from The Lion In Winter
A very traditional arrangement which is almost hymn like in its rendition but it’s a beautiful side of John Barry from his prime which a lot of listeners may not be familar with. I’ve never seen the film but this is a cool album and this is a great track.

8. A Christmas Song by John Barry from The Last Valley
Another lovely score from a Barry scored movie I’ve never seen... this one sung in a language I don’t even understand (perhaps Latin?). This is another, peaceful hymn and is a good companion piece for my previous pick.

7. December Will Be Magic Again by Kate Bush
The ultimate queen of modern popular music brought this song out very early in her career... which is cool because it’s become a Christmas standard and transports me straight back to the 1970s... even if I did only discover her music from the mid 1980s. This is classic, early Bush and should be played at least once at every Christmas party to make said party more bearable.

6. Birth Of A Penguin by Danny Elfman
Absolutely astonishing, jingly, snowy, Christmassy track which serves as a prologue (and pre-credits sequence) to Tim Burton’s Christmas set, second Batman movie. This fun track tells of two parents throwing away their newborn where he floats into the sewers in a basket before being raised by penguins. This leads into a dynamic version of the Batman theme and it’s a great album to get because it also features the gem of a musical piece that is used to accompany the ‘transformation’ of Selina Kyle into The Catwoman. The expanded La La Land edition is definitely the way to go here because the original release of the score was always sounding muddy and muted... the two La La Land editions don’t.

5. Dragnet Parts 1 and 2 by Stan Freberg
This double header of a Christmas sketch parody of the original Dragnet TV show by Stan Freberg trumps some of his other Christmas themed stuff and also features Miklos Rozsa’s four note theme from The Killers (Rozsa successfully sued the makers of the original Dragnet for nicking this part of his score). It’s a bit of a masterpiece and what more can one say about the inimitable Freberg other than... most people call them Green Onions but really they’re called scallions.

4. 7 O'clock News/ Silent Night by Simon and Garfunkel
The most chilling and depressing version of Silent Night you’re ever likely to find, from Simon and Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album. This cross-fades some horrendously chilling news stories such as a serial killer strangling and stabing student nurses and President Nixon’s response to the anti-Vietnam war protests against the classic hymn, with the grimness of the news broadcast getting louder and louder until the carol is almost fighting to be heard underneath. Jaw dropping stuff and a timely reminder that not everyone is having a great Christmas.

3. Troika from Lieutenant Kijé by Prokofiev
I first became aware of Prokofiev’s Troika as a pre-teen when it was used as the opening title music from Woody Allen’s masterpiece Love And Death. Since then, of course, I've noticed it’s also one of those “Christmas tunes to go to” when it comes to sampling a bit of the main melody and sticking it into your Christmas song. The original composition and orchestration is, however, a beautiful piece which will always conjure up the sound of sleigh bells in my mind.

2. Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown? by John Barry from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
I’ve never understood why more people don’t realise this but the John Barry song Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown? from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service isn’t just one of the greatest Christmas songs ever recorded, it’s also, without doubt, the greatest James Bond song ever released. Sure, Goldfinger, From Russia With Love and You Only Live Twice are great songs... but they pale in comparison with this masterpiece, sung here by Nina of Nina and Frederick fame (they did a cool version of Little Boxes too). On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is easily the greatest Bond movie by a country mile and, though it also has a more famous song sung by Louis Armstrong (of which I’m not a big fan), it also has the coolest Bond song ever... this one.

1. I Wanna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek by The Go Gos.
Oh wow. you can’t go wrong with this wonderful piece by the GoGo’s. You will hear all the love for a Dalek that you can get in this song, and even hear one join in on occasion, asking for Mince Pies and stuff. It’s a silly song but most Christmas songs are and this is one of the silliest... therefore the greatest and most entertaining Christmas song ever recorded. Why there aren’t a gazillion cover versions of this I’ll never know but, this one is just perfect so you can just play it on repeat for about 15 times before moving onto Christmas With The Chipmunks... a powerful combination, for sure.