Saturday, November 26, 2022

Snoopy and the gang

 In honor of the birth anniversary Nov. 26, 1922, of a man who made many people laugh, and touched the hearts of many adults while also speaking to children in his enjoyable comic strips...

"...cartoonist Charles Schulz , born in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1922). His parents left school after third grade, and his father was a barber who supported the family on 35 cent haircuts. Every Sunday, Schulz and his father read the "funny pages" together, and the boy hoped to become a cartoonist someday. But he had a tough time in school — he felt picked on by teachers and other students. He was smart enough to skip ahead a couple of grades, but that only made it worse. He wished someone would recognize his artistic talent, but his cartoons weren't even accepted by the high school yearbook.

After high school, he was drafted into the Army; his mother died of cancer a couple of days before he left. When he came home, he moved in with his father in the apartment above the barbershop. He got a job teaching at Art Instruction, a correspondence course for cartooning that he had taken as a high schooler. There he fell in love with a red-haired woman named Donna Mae Johnson, who worked in the accounting department. They dated for a while, but when he asked her to marry him, she turned him down and soon after married someone else. Schulz was devastated, and remained bitter about it for the rest of his life. He said: "I can think of no more emotionally damaging loss than to be turned down by someone whom you love very much. A person who not only turns you down, but almost immediately will marry the victor. What a bitter blow that is."



Schulz started publishing a cartoon strip called L'il Folks in the local paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, but they dropped it after a couple of years. Schulz sent some of his favorite L'il Folks cartoons to the United Features Syndicate, and in 1950, the first Peanuts strip appeared in national newspapers. The first strip introduced Charlie Brown, and Snoopy made an appearance two days later. The rest of the Peanuts characters were added slowly over the years: Linus, Lucy, Schroeder, Pig Pen, Peppermint Patty, and many more. Throughout the years, the object of Charlie Brown's unrequited love is known simply as The Little Red-Haired Girl.

Peanuts was eventually syndicated in more than 2,500 newspapers worldwide, and there were more than 300 million Peanuts books sold, as well as 40 TV specials, four movies, and a Broadway play.

Charles Schulz said: "My whole life has been one of rejection. Women. Dogs. Comic strips."

And he wrote: "Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love."Shultz 


SOURCE: Writer's Almanac Newsletter

9 comments:

  1. ...Charles Schulz struck gold with these characters!

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  2. And the UK equivalent of the Perishers....following his great example. Lucy and Maisie have quite a few similarities! And don't we all know a Lucy!!

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    1. Yes indeed, glad to know the UK has a family of cartoons like Peanuts!

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  3. Yet he was a huge success. A sensitive person and it shows.

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  4. He could never have imagined the influence his characters would have on the world, and will endure forever, I think. I am wonder how many people, at this time of the year, have pondered a Charlie Brown Christmas tree?

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  5. Hi Barbara,

    We both love Charlie Brown. Charles Schulz's personal history sure adds up when you review his comics and characters. I can sympathize with him...sort of. When I was college age and younger, I totally lacked confidence when it came to the ladies. I ended up being friends with quite a few of them...without them really knowing my true feelings. Hated rejection so I didn't take very many chances.
    We were on a family trip so I'm trying to catch up on some of my blog reading and responses. I don't carry a computer with me on our trips...

    Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

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  6. I always enjoyed Snoopy and the Charlie Brown characters! Take care, enjoy your day!

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  7. Thanks, Barbara, for this brief background on charlie Brown and friends creator, Charles Schulz, and recently the USPS issues stamps with his characters. I made sure to buy a couple of sheets and they make me smile whenever put on an envelope. Schulz might have been rejected by the red haired woman in his early life, but he turned that incident into a positive later.

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