Category: Charles M. Schulz

The word “depressed” is in three out of four panels in today’s Peanuts strip reprint. That’s it! Schulz was happy one quarter of the time.

Here is a clip from the upcoming American Masters program about Charles Schulz. As hoped, Schulz’s great lost love, Donna Wold, makes an appearance.
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My best buddy, and fellow Schulz fan, D.F. Rogers has these interesting comments to make on the subject of Schulz the man…

That lovable cartoonist, Good Ol’ “Sparky” Schulz…warm and witty. Let’s see what he has to say to Mike Barrier. [Link to interview] The portrait of the man as a REAL person, prickly with strong opinions, but stated in a very normal speaking tone with that distinctive Minnesota accent. I was so fascinated by the prickly things he said, that I just had to cut them out to highlight them, OUT OF CONTEXT. It’s like taking all of the scenes of the mad, drunk, crazy George Bailey [in It’s A Wonderful Life] and putting them together. These are things that he really said, so I wonder what the new Bio says that can be anymore prickly than this — other than sensational things?

No; it’s not the time, it’s the anxiety and the guilt feelings that they give to you. Time is no problem with me. I actually don’t even work very long hours. I start here at 9, and usually I go home at 4 o’clock. That’s not bad. Five days a week; I don’t work at night, or on the weekends. So it’s not a matter of time, it’s just a matter of the energy, I guess, plus the fact that it’s not a job which depends strictly on the amount of hours you put in. It depends on what you can think of. The never-ending burden of having to do something day after day after day, and it never lets up.

No, I’m never swamped by that kind of distraction. The only kind of distractions that bother me are the continual requests for special drawings for my grandfather who’s retiring, or the priest in our church who is retiring and who uses your cartoon, or so-and-so’s birthday’s coming up, or so-and-so is sick in hospital, and auctions—we get auction requests every day. Some are fine, and some are not; if they write “Dear Celebrity,” and it’s a form letter, we throw it away. I cannot understand anybody wanting a favor from somebody and not only not even—most of the time not spelling your name right, but not even using your name at all. But we try to do the best we can with all of these things. Those are the things that bother me the most.
Continue reading Happiness Isn’t…

The Schulz family is concerned that Sparky is portrayed in the new biography as having been chronically depressed? This is today’s reprint strip.

The New York Times says the family of the late Charles Schulz is unhappy with a new biography of the cartoonist. It apparently characterizes Sparky as having been a depressed woman chaser. It also delves into his unhappy first marriage. Looking at the Peanuts strip that was reprinted just this past Sunday (click to enlarge), one can easily see how Schulz may have expressed his marital unhappiness as sibling unhappiness. It will be interesting to see how Schulz is portrayed in The American Masters program about him at the end of the month.

PBS may not have made a documentary about Steve Ditko, but there’s one about Charles Schulz coming out next month. It will be on American Masters, Monday, October 29, from 9 – 10:30 PM ET. Here’s a brief write-up about the program.

This is a quintessentially Midwestern story of an unassuming, self-doubting man who, through expressing his unique view of the world, redefined the comic art form with “Peanuts.” His genius lay in depicting the daily collisions of insiders and outsiders, of mundane cruelties and transcendent hopes – seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. The “Peanuts” cast of characters is as familiar as our own siblings; their trials and tribulations speak of our families and evoke our childhood desperations. They are portrayed with whimsy and poignancy – and always with love and tolerance, each representing different facets of Schulz’ personality and his perspectives on 20th-century America.

I’m hoping they interviewed Donna Wold, Schulz’s real-life Little Red-Haired Girl. As everybody knows, Donna married somebody else. He was a fireman named Al. This is Schulz and Donna in April, 1950.

Cartoonist Jimmy Johnson’s ex-wife, Rheta Grimsley Johnson, in her book Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz, wrote about an encounter Schulz later had with Donna. By coincidence, Donna’s maiden name is Johnson. Her husband passed away some years ago. IMPORTANT CORRECTION — Al Wold is alive and well. See the comment by Mr. David Van Taylor the director of the documentary:

By 1956, when Charles Schulz was signing autographs at a downtown Minneapolis bookstore, he was married, a father, and beginning to ascend to that pinnacle of fame few ever reach. Donna, pregnant with her second child, waited in a long line to ask for his autograph. “That lady in front of me was saying, ‘I’m his biggest fan.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, no, you’re not!'”

Sparky signed Donna’s book with a rather generic inscription that bothers her slightly, even today: “For Donna, with sincere best wishes….” Later he gave her a ride to her parked car.

“I saw pictures of his wife in the newspaper; she looked very pretty,” says Donna. She read the news magazine accounts of his California digs and marveled that her unassuming Sparky had a four-hole golf course and an artificial waterfall. Years later, on a trip through California with Al, she stopped at the ice arena on the chance Sparky would be there. He wasn’t. “Al was good about it. He sat in the car in case I got a chance to talk to him.”

Today’s Peanuts reprint is one I remember laughing at in a paperback book many years ago. It was this sort of whimsy that makes Schulz’s work special, yet his bland personality made him seem incapable of his trademark flights of fancy! Click the thumbnail picture to enlarge.