It’s hard to believe it’s already been three years since the controversial biography Schulz and Peanuts, by David Michaelis. You have until next Tuesday to listen to a BBC Radio 4 feature on Charles M. Schulz.
I’m a bit surprised to hear Jeannie say, “David did a marvelous job…” Russell T. Davies, who brought Doctor Who back from hiatus, chimes in with the factoid that long before the Tardis, Snoopy’s doghouse was much bigger inside than it appeared outside.
Less than a month before the 60th anniversary of the introduction of Peanuts by United Feature Syndicate, there is the announcement that the strip will leave United Media for Universal Press Syndicate, now called UClick.
The Daily Cartoonist reports that ABC-TV has signed a five-year contract to continue airing the Peanuts holiday specials. Which is good, because ten years after moving from CBS, I still need more time to get used to them being on ABC!
The 2010 San Diego Comic-Con is coming up soon. Over on Comic-Convention Memories, there are batches of photos taken at the San Diego con in 1974.
Here’s a pic of MAD cartoonist Sergio Aragonés. No! Wait! That’s not Sergio, it’s Peanuts animator Bill Melendez.
And here’s his de facto boss, Sparky Schulz, when he was — yikes! — a couple of years younger than I am now!
With special guest star, director Frank Capra! Frank Capra?? He attended a comic-book convention in 1974??? That was several years after his autobiography, The Name Above the Title, and ten years before She’s a Wonderful Wife — er, I mean It’s a Wonderful Life — was rescued from public domain abuse and rightly hailed as one of the all-time great movies.
In 1968, Snoopy attempted to enter the World Wrist Wrestling Championship in Petaluma, CA, only to be disqualified for not having a thumb. This week in Petaluma, Jon Provost of “Timmy and Lassie” voted on the world’s ugliest dog, with a boxer named Pabst being awarded the distinction.
Jon’s super-duper tell-all autobiography, written with his wife Laurie Jacobson, Timmy’s In the Well is a great read, with many Hollywood stories, concentrating on the staid Fifties into the Swinging Sixties. Timmy never did fall in a well on the TV show, but as I pointed out a couple of years ago, a cartoon version of Timmy did fall in a well, in a Kenner Give-a-Show slide, and today that slide was given the Give-A-Show Projector Blog treatment.
