Friday, November 6, 2015
The FIRST Peanuts Movie
Today sees the release of The Peanuts Movie in theaters nationwide. This much-anticipated animated film is the first feature film starring Good Ol' Charlie Brown and his friends in 35 years, the last being Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!) (1980). To celebrate the new Peanuts movie let's look back at the FIRST Peanuts movie, A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969). The publicity material included the comic strip-like series of promotional drawings seen below, an arrangement quite appropriate for an animated film based on a comic strip. Only the top middle drawing is actually drawn by Charles M. Schulz, artist/writer of Peanuts, the world's most popular comic strip; all the rest are adapted from the film's animation. It's interesting to see in the captions words not normally associated with Peanuts, such as "whimsical" and "frolic"—but it's fun how Snoopy is referred to as a 'super-beagle."
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These illustrations serve as a reminder of the career trajectory of one Lucy Van Pelt. From a prominent role in A Boy Named Charlie Brown, to barely appearing at all in Bon Voyage Charlie Brown (ADCB) a scant eleven years later, one can surmise that even "the fussbudget Meryl Streep" is not immune to the machinations of Hollywood gender inequality.
Actually, the female leads were Peppermint Patty and Marcie, so girls are represented rather well in Bon Voyage.
Lucy had her role reduced in animation because she would come off as shrill when you could actually hear her voice. Despite her being downplayed in specials and movies, she had more of a presence on the Saturday morning cartoon, “The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show”, as the storylines were lifted almost verbatim from the newspaper strips.
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