This Day in History: Oct 2, 1950: Peanuts premiered in nine newspapers

 

Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 14, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward.

 

 

The strip is the most popular and influential in the history of the comic strip, with 17,897 strips published in all,^[1] making it "arguably the longest story ever told by one human being", according to Robert Thompson of Syracuse University. At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages.^[2] It helped to cement the four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United States,^[3] and together with its merchandise earned Schulz more than $1 billion.^[1] Reprints of the strip are still syndicated and run in almost every U.S. newspaper.

 

 
Peanuts achieved considerable success with its television specials, several of which, including A Charlie Brown Christmas^[4] and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,^[5] won or were nominated for Emmy Awards. The holiday specials remain popular and are currently broadcast on ABC in the United States during the corresponding seasons. The Peanuts franchise met acclaim in theatre, with the stage musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown being a successful and often-performed production.

 

Peanuts has been described as "the most shining example of the American success story in the comic strip field"; this is ironic, given its theme is "the great American unsuccess story." The main character, Charlie Brown, is meek, nervous and lacks self-confidence. He is unable to fly a kite, win a baseball game or kick a football.^[6]

In 2013, TV Guide ranked Peanuts the fourth Greatest TV Cartoon of All Time.^[7]

History

1940s

 

Peanuts had its origin in Li'l Folks, a weekly panel comic that appeared in Schulz's hometown paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from 1947 to 1950. He first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like the early 1950s version of Snoopy.^[8] In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post which published 17 single-panel cartoons by Schulz. The first of these was of a boy sitting with his feet on an ottoman.

 

In 1948, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through.^{[citation needed]} Li'l Folks was dropped in early 1950. Later that year, Schulz approached the United Feature Syndicate with his best work from Li'l Folks. When his work was picked up by United Feature Syndicate, they decided to run the new comic strip he had been working on. This strip was similar in spirit to the panel comic, but it had a set cast of characters, rather than different nameless little folk for each page. The name Li'l Folks was too close to the names of two other comics of the time: Al Capp's Li'l Abner and a strip titled Little Folks. To avoid confusion, the syndicate settled on the name Peanuts, after the peanut gallery featured in the Howdy Doody TV show.^[9] Peanuts was a title Schulz always disliked. In a 1987 interview, Schulz said of the title Peanuts: "It's totally ridiculous, has no meaning, is simply confusing, and has no dignity—and I think my humor has dignity."^[10] The periodic collections of the strips in paperback book form typically had either "Charlie Brown" or "Snoopy" in the title, not "Peanuts", because of Schulz's distaste for his strip's title. From November 28, 1966 to January 4, 1987, the opening Sunday panels typically read Peanuts, featuring Good Ol ' Charlie Brown.

1950s

Peanuts premiered on October 2, 1950, in nine newspapers: The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Minneapolis Tribune, The Allentown Call-Chronicle, The Bethlehem Globe-Times, The Denver Post, The Seattle Times, The New York World-Telegram & Sun, and The Boston Globe. It began as a daily strip. The first strip was four panels long and showed Charlie Brown walking by two other young children, Shermy and Patty. Shermy lauds Charlie Brown as he walks by, but then tells Patty how he hates him in the final panel. This was groundbreaking. Until then, rarely had children expressed hatred for others in comic strips. Snoopy was also an early character in the strip, first appearing in the third strip, which ran on October 4. Its first Sunday strip appeared January 6, 1952, in the half-page format, which was the only complete format for the entire life of the Sunday strip. Most of the other characters that eventually became the main characters of Peanuts did not appear until later: Violet (February 1951), Schroeder (May 1951), Lucy (March 1952), Linus (September 1952), Pig Pen (July 1954), Sally (August 1959), Frieda (March 1961), "Peppermint" Patty (August 1966), Woodstock (introduced April 1967; given a name in June 1970), Franklin (July 1968), Marcie (July 1971), and Rerun (March 1973).

 

Schulz decided to produce all aspects of the strip himself from the script to the finished art and lettering. (Schulz did, however, hire help to produce the comic book adaptations of Peanuts.^[11]) Thus, the strip was able to be presented with a unified tone, and Schulz was able to employ a minimalistic style. Backgrounds were generally not used, and when they were, Schulz's frazzled lines imbued them with a fraught, psychological appearance. This style has been described by art critic John Carlin as forcing "its readers to focus on subtle nuances rather than broad actions or sharp transitions."^[12] Schulz held this belief all his life, reaffirming in 1994 the importance of crafting the strip himself: "This is not a crazy business about slinging ink. This is a deadly serious business."^[13]

While the strip in its early years resembles its later form, there are significant differences. The art was cleaner, sleeker, and simpler, with thicker lines and short, squat characters. For example, in these early strips, Charlie Brown's famous round head is closer to the shape of an American football or rugby football. Most of the kids were initially fairly round-headed. As another example, all the characters (except Charlie Brown) had their mouths longer and had smaller eyes when they looked sideways.

 

1960s–1970s

 

The 1960s is known as the "golden age" for the comic strip. During this period some of the most well known themes and characters appeared, including: Peppermint Patty, Snoopy as the "World War One Flying Ace", Frieda and her "naturally curly hair", and Franklin. Peanuts is remarkable for its deft social commentary, especially compared with other strips appearing in the 1950s and early 1960s. Schulz did not explicitly address racial and gender equality issues so much as he assumed them to be self-evident in the first place. Peppermint Patty's athletic skill and self-confidence is simply taken for granted, for example, as is Franklin's presence in a racially integrated school and neighborhood. (Franklin came about at least in part as a result of Schulz's correspondence in 1968 with a socially progressive fan.^[14]) The fact that Charlie Brown's baseball team had three girls was also at least ten years ahead of its time (and in fact, the TV special Charlie Brown's All-Stars dealt with Charlie Brown refusing sponsorship of the team because the sponsor said the league does not allow girls or dogs to play).

 

Schulz would throw satirical barbs at any number of topics when he chose. Over the years he tackled everything from the Vietnam War to school dress codes to the "new math." One strip on May 20, 1962 even had an icon that stated "Defend Freedom, Buy US Savings Bonds." In 1963 he added a little boy named "5" to the cast, whose sisters were named "3" and "4," and whose father had changed their family name to their ZIP Code, giving in to the way numbers were taking over people's identities. In 1958, a strip in which Snoopy tossed Linus into the air and boasted that he was the first dog ever to launch a human, parodied the hype associated with Sputnik 2's launch of "Laika" the dog into space earlier that year. Another sequence lampooned Little Leagues and "organized" play, when all the neighborhood kids join snowman-building leagues and criticize Charlie Brown when he insists on building his own snowmen without leagues or coaches.

Peanuts did not shy away from cartoon violence. The most obvious example might be Charlie Brown's annual, futile effort to kick the football while Lucy holds it. At the last moment, she would pull the ball away just as he was kicking. The off-balance Charlie Brown would sail into the air and land on his back with a loud thud. There was also the ever-present (and often executed) threat by Lucy to "slug" someone, especially her brother Linus. Though violence would happen from time to time, only once or twice was a boy ever depicted hitting a girl (Charlie Brown, who accidentally hit Lucy; when Lucy complained about it, Charlie Brown went down to her psychiatric booth where she returned the slug much harder) August 8, 1965. Schulz once said, "There is nothing funny about a little boy being mean to a little girl. That is simply not funny! But there is something funny about a little girl being able to be mean to a little boy."^[15]

 

Peanuts touched on religious themes on many occasions, most notably the classic television special A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965, which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible (Luke 2:8–14) to explain to Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about (in personal interviews, Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side). Because of the explicit religious material in A Charlie Brown Christmas, many have interpreted Schulz's work as having a distinct Christian theme, though the popular perspective has been to view the franchise through a secular lens.^[16]

1980s–1990s

Though Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes rivaled Peanuts in popularity in the 1980s and the 1990s respectively, the strip still remained the most popular comic of all time.^[17]

The daily Peanuts strips were formatted in a four-panel "space saving" format beginning in the 1950s, with a few very rare eight-panel strips, that still fit into the four-panel mold. In 1975, the panel format was shortened slightly horizontally, and shortly after the lettering became larger to accommodate the shrinking format. Beginning on Leap Day in 1988, Schulz abandoned the four-panel format in favor of three-panel dailies and occasionally used the entire length of the strip as one panel, partly for experimentation, but also to combat the dwindling size of the comics page.^{[citation needed]}

 

Schulz continued the strip until he had to retire because of health reasons; he died the day before the final Sunday strip was published.

End of Peanuts

The final daily original Peanuts comic strip was published on January 3, 2000. At that point, five more original Sunday Peanuts strips had yet to be published.

On February 13, 2000, the day following Schulz's passing, the last ever Peanuts strip ran in papers. The strip began with Charlie Brown answering the phone with someone on the end presumably asking for Snoopy. Charlie Brown responded with "No, I think he's writing." The bottom panel consisted of the final daily strip in its entirety, reprinted in color, and included various Peanuts characters surrounding it. The very last strip consisted simply of Snoopy sitting at his typewriter in thought with a note from Schulz that read as follows:

Dear Friends,

I have been fortunate to draw Charlie Brown and his friends for almost fifty years. It has been the fulfillment of my childhood ambition.

Unfortunately, I am no longer able to maintain the schedule demanded by a daily comic strip. My family does not wish "Peanuts" to be continued by anyone else, therefore I am announcing my retirement.

I have been grateful over the years for the loyalty of our editors and the wonderful support and love expressed to me by fans of the comic strip.

Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy...how can I ever forget them...

— Charles M. Schulz

 

Fittingly, Charlie Brown was the only character to appear in both the first strip in 1950 and the last in 2000.
Many other cartoonists paid tribute to Peanuts and Schulz by homages in their own strips, appearing on February 13, 2000 or in the week beforehand.^{[citation needed]} The comic was reprinted the day after that, but only had the farewell letter.

After Peanuts came to an end, United Feature Syndicate began offering the newspapers that ran it a package of reprinted strips under the title Classic Peanuts. The syndicate limited the choices to either strips from the 1960s or from the 1990s, although a newspaper was also given the option to carry both reprint packages if it desired. All Sunday strips in the package, however, come from the 1960s.

 

Taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanuts [02.10.2013]

References

1. ^ Jump up to: ^{a b} "The man who recalled everything," Macleans, October 22, 2007.
2. Jump up ^ "Saying Goodbye: Friends and family eulogize cartoonist Charles Schulz" February 22, 2000 Pamela J. Podger San Francisco Chronicle
3. ^ Jump up to: ^{a b} The comics: since 1945 Brian Walker 2002 Harry N. Abrams, Inc (New York)
4. Jump up ^ "Past Winners Database: 1965–1966 18th Emmy Awards" The Envelope LA Times
5. Jump up ^ "Past Winners Database: 1966–1967 19th Emmy Awards" The Envelope LA Times
6. Jump up ^ The World Encyclopedia of Comics, edited by Maurice Horn, published in 1977 by Avon Books
7. Jump up ^ TV Guide Magazine's 60 Greatest Cartoons of All Time
8. Jump up ^ Li'l Folks – Charles M. Schulz: Li'l Beginnings Derrick Bang – With Foreword by Jean Schulz 2003 Charles M. Schulz Museum ISBN 0-9745709-1-5
9. Jump up ^ Morris, Tim (January 5, 2008). "Schulz and Peanuts". Retrieved 2008-11-17.
10. Jump up ^ McKinnon, Heather (February 15, 2004). "Seattle's Fantagraphics Books will release 'The Complete Peanuts'". The Seattle Times.
11. Jump up ^ "Dale Hale and the “Peanuts” Comic Book: The Interview"
12. ^ Jump up to: ^{a b} Masters of American Comics John Carlin Yale University Press 2005
13. Jump up ^ Charles M. Schulz on Cartooning
14. Jump up ^ Crossing the Color Line (in Black and White), Hogan's Alley #18, 2011
15. Jump up ^ Charles M. Schulz: Conversations (Conversations with Comic Artists) pg. 45
16. Jump up ^ Lind, Stephen J., Reading Peanuts: The Secular and the Sacred, ImageTexT, retrieved 2010-08-31
17. Jump up ^ "Most Syndicated Comic Strip, Peanuts, Charles Schulz, USA". Retrieved 2007-06-09.