Peanuts Animator Bill Melendez Dies at 91

I've written before about my love for the Peanuts comic strip as I grew up, and the guy who brought that strip to life on TV has died:

Animator, director and producer Jose Cuautemoc "Bill" Melendez, whose television programs and theatrical films featuring Charles Schulz's "Peanuts" characters earned four Emmy Awards, an Oscar nomination and two Peabody Awards, died Tuesday at St. John's hospital in Santa Monica, according to publicist Amy Goldsmith. He was 91.

Melendez's career extended over nearly seven decades, including stints at Walt Disney Studios, Leon Schlesinger Cartoons (which later was sold to Warner Bros.), United Productions of America and Playhouse Pictures. In 1964, he established Bill Melendez Productions, where he created his best-known works, including the holiday classic "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965). Over the years, his films were honored with two additional prime-time Emmys, three National Cartoonist Society awards, a Clio Award and 150 awards for commercials.

"A Charlie Brown Christmas," which Melendez and his partner Lee Mendelson produced for CBS, established the format of the half-hour animated special -- and began one of the most popular franchises in animation history.

Animating Schulz's simple drawings posed problems. "Charlie Brown has a big head, a little body and little feet," Melendez said in a 2000 interview for The Times. "Normally, a human takes a step every 16 frames -- about two-thirds of a second. But Sparky's [Schulz's] characters would look like they were floating at that pace. After several experiments, I had them take a step every six frames -- one-fourth of a second. . . . It was the only way that worked."

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" won an Emmy and a Peabody; CBS has rebroadcast it every holiday season since. Breaking with tradition, the filmmakers used an upbeat jazz score by Grammy-winning composer Vince Guaraldi and real children for the characters' voices, rather than adult actors imitating children.

Melendez supplied Snoopy's laughs, sobs and howls. Schulz insisted that as a dog, Snoopy couldn't talk. Melendez experimented with making sounds that suggested a voice and speeding them up on tape -- assuming a professional actor would do a final recording. But time ran short, and Melendez ended up serving as Snoopy's voice in 63 subsequent half-hour specials, five one-hour specials, the Saturday morning TV show and four feature films. In his later years, Melendez chuckled over the fact that he received residuals for his vocal performances.

I saw a bio on Charles Schulz in which Melendez was also featured, and in working on "A Charlie Brown Christmas" Melendez was adamant about keeping religion out of the show but was overruled by Schulz. The result was the scene in which Linus recited the Christmas story - very effective. That show was a massive hit, and I watched it when it was broadcast in 1965 and many times since then. The hard copy book of that story is in my collection of Peanuts books.

I visited the Charles M. Schulz museum back in May (it's not far from my daughter's college), and you can see some information about that visit here.