The all-time greatest comic strip
If you’re anywhere near Santa Rosa, California on Saturday, The Charles M. Schulz Museum will be presenting The Nursery Wall Uncovered at 1 pm.
The wall was painted by Schulz in daughter Meredith’s room during the time the family lived in Colorado, after leaving Minnesota and before moving onto California. It’s not The Last Judgment wall from the Sistine Chapel, but it’s certainly a unique piece of work by Sparky, done in a medium that he rarely if ever worked in again.
© UFS, Inc.
Here is today’s Peanuts comic strip reprint. Look at the self-satisfied expressions on the faces of Violet and Patty! Lucy was self-centered, and she tormented Charlie Brown, but these girls are out-and-out cruel.
Charles Schulz with the real-life Charlie Brown
It’s no secret that Charles Schulz and his first wife, Joyce Halverson, had a rocky 20-year marriage. They divorced in 1972, and a year later Schulz married Jeannie Clyde. The characters Violet and Patty disappeared, and they were more-or-less replaced by Peppermint Patty and Marcie, who both liked Charlie Brown.
One of the few times Schulz ever publicly spoke of his first wife can be read in this interview. Schulz mentions a then-new biography about himself, written by Rheta Grimsley Johnson who was, at that time, the wife of cartoonist Jimmy Johnson.
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The comment was made for my previous post about “A Charlie Brown Christmas” that there are some pink walls. Well, yes, that does indeed appear to be the case. The video clip has the entire show run in 30 seconds, but it’s backwards, with a corporate logo superimposed over the image.
It’s backwards because the Laserdisc scanning was smoother that way, and I didn’t feel like spending the money to enable the reverse playback feature in Pinnacle Studio. Even if I had paid, the logo would still be there because I didn’t want to pay to license the audio dub feature!
Tonight is the annual showing of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on network TV. The show was quite a breakthrough when it first aired in 1965, which is something I couldn’t fully appreciate until I became an adult.
Schulz makes an unabashed plug for his Christian faith and The New Testament, and I would be disingenuous if I claimed it never had an influence on me. He also offers another message, which is IT’S OK TO BE DEPRESSED DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON.
Click here here to go to the gallery to see an adaptation of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” published by Family Circle magazine in 1977. Be sure to click “full” to enlarge the images.
Vince Guaraldi’s music for “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is the subject of a feature on NPR that can be heard by clicking here.
Just what is “graphic blandishment,” anyway?
First click here to watch a video I posted of Charles Schulz from 1963…
…then come back here and watch an interview from 1985, to see an older Schulz with his daughter Jill. Note how in ’63 Schulz insisted he was Charlie Brown, and in ’85 he denies it!
I was a bit surprised by today’s reprint of Peanuts. It’s from November 5, 1959.
Doesn’t it seem out of character for Charlie Brown to be making fun of somebody else, especially Linus?
