By Michaela Gordoni
A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS’s producer, Lee Mendelson, was sure the special would be a disaster after sharing it with CBS execs, but they were far from correct.
“It was a Thursday, and they (a Coca-Cola executive) asked if I could send the outline to them by Monday,” Mendelson recalled. “Well, I phoned (Peanuts creator Charles Schulz) and told him that I had just sold A Charlie Brown Christmas show. He asked which show and I told him, ‘The one we’re going to make an outline for tomorrow.’ And we literally did the outline on that day.”
Mendelson hired Bill Melendez to illustrate and Vince Guaraldi to compose.
“The Guaraldi music was crucial to its success because that was the first time a cartoon had used jazz,” Mendelson said.
Schulz insisted that Linus read a Bible verse.
Related: 5 of the Greatest Moments in A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS
“Bill [Melendez] and I looked at each other as cartoon makers, wondering, ‘Well, nobody’s ever done an animation from the Bible,” Mendelson said. “And we said, ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ And he said, ‘Well, if we don’t, who will?”
When they showed the movie to CBS, one of the top executives “hated it.”
“They said it’s too slow, and it’s very religious — in those days, that was a big deal,” the producer explained. “The head guy there said, ‘Well, we’re going to have to run it, it’s scheduled. But unfortunately, you know, there probably aren’t going to be any more.’”
“The general reaction was one of disappointment,” said former CBS executive Fred Silverman in THE MAKING OF A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS documentary. “There were specific negative comments about the music, the piano music, some of the voicing, which sounded kind of amateurish.”
But most people loved it.
“It goes on the air and gets like a 45 share, and in those days, there were only three networks, so I think we had half the United States tune in who had television,” Mendelson said. “And that Monday, the CBS fellow called up, and he said, ‘Well, we’re going to buy four more Charlie Brown shows, but I wanted you to know that my aunt in New Jersey didn’t like it either.”
A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS is loved by many and an inspiration to people like Trisha Yearwood, who channels that in her new album, Christmastime.
“Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” Charlie Brown says in the special. His friend, Linus, shows him that it’s about Jesus. The meaningful, simply told message of the cartoon reached people’s hearts all across America.
“In the 1960s when it first aired, there were lots of letters sent to Schulz and the sponsor, Coca-Cola, telling them that the viewers were so gratified to see a substantive reference to religion on TV,” said Dr. Stephen Lind, author of A Charlie Brown Religion: Exploring the Spiritual Life and Work of Charles M. Schulz. “Some of those letters from the 1960s sound like they could have been written today.”
It’s been 60 years since the cartoon came out, but it’s just as loved today—if not more—than it was loved in 1965.
Apple TV+ has A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS available year-round for subscribers but will have a free viewing window for everyone on Dec. 13 and 14.
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