Before the steady stream of Emmy Awards and Grammy nominations and Oscar consideration came The Idea -- the one that producer-director Lee Mendelson, nearly a half-century later, calls with a certain zest "the best idea I've had in my entire life."
"I'd just made a documentary about the best baseball player in the world," Mendelson tells Comic Riffs, referring to his award-winning NBC work about Willie Mays. "So I decided to make a documentary about the worst baseball player in the world."
That, naturally, would be Charlie Brown. Mendelson read a "Peanuts" strip about the perennially losing hurler and thought: Why not make a documentary about the cartoon's creator?
It turned out to be the best pitch Mendelson ever made.
Mendelson called fellow Northern California resident Charles Schulz -- "his phone number was listed right in the book," the producer recalls -- and proposed the documentary. Fortunately, Mendelson says, Schulz had seen "A Man Named Mays" and liked it. "Sure, come on up," Schulz replied, so Mendelson motored up from San Francisco to Sebastopol and right there in the heart of wine country, the inspired ideas began to ferment and a 38-year friendship and creative partnership took root.
By 1965, the two men -- working with animator Bill Melendez -- collaborated on their first work, the holiday special "A Charlie Brown Christmas," a TV show that took chances and defied certain conventions and, ultimately, remained utterly authentic to the trio's collective vision.
The debut of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" would capture not only the Emmy and Peabody awards, but also roughly half the people watching television across America. And its place in the nation's holiday hearth has remained fixed ever since. As the special celebrates its 45th anniversary this week -- and the strip enjoys its 60th year -- ABC airs the "Peanuts" special tonight for the first time of the season.
As viewers tune in to see a sparse and wilting "Charlie Brown Christmas tree" -- a conifer embodiment of "Chuck's" hard-luck seasonal mood that soon entered our national vernacular -- a question about this beguilingly humble cartoon perseveres: Why, precisely, does "A Charlie Brown Christmas" endure?
Read More:Tonight's 'A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS': Show's Emmy-winning producer reflects on its enduring appeal
