schulz

I promised a second post on Schulz and more detail about his art and the Peanuts strips.

Having come across my childhood collection of these books, my last post ‘Charlie Who Books?!’ described how they came into my life as a young boy.

After I had done this, I had a look at the man Schulz himself and found some interesting facts too.

Schulz said that his routine every morning consisted of first eating a jelly donut, and then going through the day’s mail with his secretary before sitting down to write and draw the day’s strip at his studio. After coming up with an idea (which he said could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours), he began drawing it, which took about an hour for dailies and three hours for Sunday strips.

Unlike many other successful cartoonists, Schulz never used assistants in producing the strip; he refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that “it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him.”

At its height, Peanuts was published daily in 2,600 papers in 75 countries, in 21 languages. Over the nearly 50 years that Peanuts was published, Schulz drew nearly 18,000 strips. The strips themselves, plus merchandise and product endorsements, produced revenues of more than $1 billion per year, with Schulz earning an estimated $30 million to $40 million annually.

During the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997 to celebrate his 75th birthday; reruns of the strip ran during his vacation, the only time reruns occurred while Schulz was alive.

Undoubtedly, the lasting icon of these strips has to be Snoopy. So I couldn’t possibly leave out a bit of blurb about this loveable beagle!

SNOOPY

FIRST APPEARANCE: October 4, 1950

The wildly imaginative, supremely confident, world-famous beagle is a canine master of disguise. As Joe Cool, he’s aloof, unflappable, above the fray, the hip dog we’d all like to be. As the World War I Flying Ace, he engages in aerial combat with the notorious Red Baron. While pondering life from the top of his doghouse, he writes the great American novel, travels to the moon, and plots revenge on the cat next door!

Fairly recently, I was in the process of having a tidy up in the studio, (which doubles up as my library too… well, all the books help to ‘deaden the sound’ of the room – very important when recording acoustic stuff with a mic!) and during the cleaning process I unearthed a pocket of small books from my childhood.

This tiny Schulz collection took me back to a ‘Cub Scout Summer camp’, ooh… way back! (I’m not even going to attempt a guess at the year!) My friend Matthew had one of these books and I was transfixed. I guess as a young boy in the UK, it was like holding a tiny window of USA culture in my hands for the first time and peering in. I loved Matthew’s little book and I was reluctant to let him have it back towards the end of ‘camp week’. I promised myself that I would buy one of these as soon as Summer Camp was over.

Back home, I raced to my local book shop, which was a news agent, sweet shop, greetings card shop and more, all in one. My little face must have been a picture as I asked the lady behind the counter if she had any ‘Charlie Brown books’, all eager and eyes darting excitedly at the prospect of buying one.

“Charlie who books?!” she said, perplexed. “Do you know the author?”

My face dropped, but I remember thinking hard and after a pause, I said “Erm, Charles?… Charles something… erm, that’s it, Charles M…. something or other?!” That’s all I could remember from Matthew’s book.

“Mmm?” “Not helpful is it?” she said, but seeing me completely crestfallen she suddenly said “Ok, Charlie Brown – Charles M. …something – got it – leave it with me pet.”

(Pet!? I certainly wasn’t her pet! – did I have whiskers and a tail? No!)

Anyway, I remember returning to the shop the following Saturday and bursting through the shop door. The lady rolled her eyes and tutted then glanced down at me… and beamed.

“Here you go young man, how many did you want?”

“How many?” I said in complete shock.

I hadn’t thought that there were ‘many’, I just wanted one – the one that Matthew had. It was my turn to ‘beam’ when she pointed at the shelf which displayed the most exciting array of tiny book spines in the world with that all too familiar ‘Schulz logo’! I only bought one mind you, I think they were 50p or something! but at least the lady had suggested that I could maybe get one a week with my pocket money – which I damn well did!

I must have liked this one – it’s very creased and dog eared!

The strips are great like this one where Lucy gives Snoopy the balloon, yawns and then lets it go! The look on his face and his ears raised in alarm says it all! I think they were all afraid of Lucy – (she’s the one who notoriously takes the football away as Charlie goes to kick it!)

Charlie Brown.

I used to like Marcie. She was the geeky, bookish, appreciator of the arts character who had affection for Charlie. She was funny, as she seemed completely at odds with the others!

Marcie.

I would like to post some info on the books and Schulz here too but I’ve hit well over 500 words plus now – (just want to keep it bite sized!) so I’ll do that in ‘Charlie Who Books?! – part two’ – another day.

Chris Martin of Coldplay wrote ‘Charlie Brown’ in his daughter’s play house and was originally called ‘Cartoon Heart’

enjoy…