Charlie Browns Most Heartbreaking Cartoon Owes Everything to an Unsung Hero

Charlie Brown’s Most Heartbreaking Cartoon Owes Everything to an Unsung Hero

In the latest TV Legends Revealed, discover the unsung hero nurse behind the creation of an acclaimed Peanuts special about a very serious topic.

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Charlie Browns Most Heartbreaking Cartoon Owes Everything to an Unsung Hero

TV URBAN LEGEND: A nurse convinced Charles Schulz to do a Peanuts special about childhood cancer.

Over the years, there have been a number of strange origins behind Peanuts TV specials. In fact, the very first Peanuts special owed its origin to a Ford TV campaign. As I wrote about in an old TV Legends Revealed, I wrote: [I]n 1959. The Ford Motor Company was debuting a new car, the Ford Falcon, and they wanted to use Schulz’s Peanuts characters in a wide variety of ads, both print and on television as well in the form of animated commercials. This would be a huge commitment on the part of Schulz and many wondered if he would actually go for it. The animator who would be doing the commercials, Bill Melendez, recalled the situation to Michael Mallory a while back, ‘They said, ‘You have to go meet Schulz because he doesn’t like people from Hollywood.’ When they asked the syndicate about it, they said, ‘Oh, he’ll never do it, he hates commercialism.’ But these guys were insistent and they went to see Schulz, and it turned out that the only car he’d ever driven was a Ford [Schulz’s father also drove a Ford when Schulz was a boy]! He said, ‘Oh, of course I don’t mind saying some nice things about Ford.’ So we met and I told him what I did, and he’d seen some of them on TV. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to take away his property and misuse it or change it, but I was not going to be creative with somebody else’s drawing. He finally realized our intentions were good and let us do it.'” Those ads then did so well that when Coca-Cola wanted to do a Peanuts TV special, Schulz insisted on working with Melendez and so A Charlie Brown Christmas was born (and so, too, did a series of Charlie Brown specials for decades to follow).

In an old Comic Book Legends Revealed, I wrote about how a schoolteacher helped convince Charles Schulz to add a Black kid to Charlie Brown’s group of friends. From that piece, “On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. His tragic death inspired a Los Angeles schoolteacher named Harriet Glickman to write Charles Schulz a letter asking him to add an African-American character to the strip. Perhaps surprisingly enough, Schulz not only wrote back, but he was very candid in his reasons for not having a black character in the strip. He felt that adding an African-American character would seem like tokenism to African-American readers. Glickman, undeterred, used Schulz’s response to offer a way that she could allay his fears by contacting African-Americans who could tell Schulz that they would not have a problem with it. Schulz took her up on her offer. As you might imagine, Glickman then collected a series of letters from African-American parents and they uniformly told Schulz that they would very much like him to add a black character to the strip. Finally, Schulz dropped Glickman a note in early July, telling her to keep an eye out on the strips in the last week of the month, as ‘I have drawn an episode which I think will please you'” and that was when Franklin debuted.

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That was almost exactly what happened with the origins of Why, Charlie Brown, Why?

Charlie Browns Most Heartbreaking Cartoon Owes Everything to an Unsung Hero

Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Eileen Ogintz explained how the project came about:

One December day in 1985, a dedicated young nurse named Sylvia Cook sat down at her home in Sunnyvale, Calif., and wrote Peanuts creator Charles Schulz a letter. She had gotten his address from the local library.

Day after day at Children`s Hospital at Stanford University, Cook watched her young patients endure arduous cancer treatment, not fully understanding what was happening to them or why. These children, some still in diapers, were scared and confused. ‘I wanted to make it easier for them,’ Cook said. A cartoon about a child with cancer would really help, Cook was convinced. And the Peanuts’ gang, near universally beloved by kids, could do the job better than anybody, she decided. ‘Charles Schulz called me the day he got my letter,” Cook said. ‘I was amazed.’ Indeed, Schulz gets 100 or more letters a day. ‘If someone writes and tells you they want to do something for children with cancer, how can you ignore it?’ Schulz said in a telephone interview from his California office.

Schulz told Cook that though he`d never taken the Peanuts’ gang into such territory, he wanted to do the project and volunteer his services. He also didn`t know anything about childhood cancer, and he told Cook it would take a lot of money to make even a short animated program. Cook wasn`t deterred. She started raising money, eventually enlisting the help of the American Cancer Society. In many meetings, along with a pediatric cancer specialist and cancer society staff, she taught Schulz about childhood cancer: what children fear, what they must endure. He consulted her on the storyline.

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Along the way, the project grew a lot bigger than Cook ever imagined. Instead of a privately funded cartoon to be shown in hospitals, it evolved into a network TV show that will be viewed by millions. ‘I thought, why go to all the trouble of raising the money when it could be a television show and the sponsors could pay for it,’ Schulz said.

The special was about a young girl named Janice who took the bus to school with Charlie Brown, Sally and Linus…

Charlie Browns Most Heartbreaking Cartoon Owes Everything to an Unsung Hero

One day, she gets a bad bruise on the bus and she notes that she has been getting a lot of bruises. Eventually, after a number of tests, her parents discover that Janice has leukemia. She undergoes treatment and receives chemotherapy…

Charlie Browns Most Heartbreaking Cartoon Owes Everything to an Unsung Hero

Janice loses her hair due to her chemotherapy. She wears a pink cap to cover it. A kid makes fun of her and Linus explodes on the kid, leading to the kid apologizing.

Luckily, by the end of the special, Janice’s treatments have worked and her cancer went into remission. The special was a hit and was nominated for an Emmy Award (there was a book that accompanied the special, as well).

The legend is…

STATUS: True

Thanks to Eileen Ogintz for the information!

Be sure to check out my archive of TV Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of TV.

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is [email protected].

Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/charlie-brown-peanuts-cancer-cartoon-unsung-nurse-charles-schulz/

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