Charles M. Schulz


Charles Monroe "Sparky" Schulz was an American cartoonist who created the comic strip Peanuts, featuring the characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
Schulz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and developed an interest in drawing while growing up in Saint Paul. He was conscripted in 1943 and served in the United States Army during the final years of World War II. After returning to Minnesota, Schulz began his comic strip career with Li'l Folks in 1947.
In 1950, Schulz redeveloped Li'l Folks as a four-panel comic strip and submitted it to United Features Syndicate, who renamed it Peanuts and began publishing that October. Schulz relocated to Northern California with his family in 1958. Beginning with A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965, he helped write several animated television specials and four animated films based on his characters. He continued drawing Peanuts until his death in 2000.
Schulz is regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists in history, influencing other cartoonists including Jim Davis, Murray Ball, Bill Watterson, Matt Groening and Dav Pilkey. He was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996, and was posthumously inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2007.

Early life and education

Charles Monroe Schulz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 26, 1922, and grew up in nearby Saint Paul. He was the only child of the barber Carl Fredrich August Schulz and Dena Bertina, and was of German and Norwegian descent. His uncle called him "Sparky" after the horse Spark Plug in Billy DeBeck's comic strip Barney Google, which Schulz enjoyed reading. Schulz attended Saint Paul Central High School.
Schulz loved drawing and sometimes drew his family dog, Spike, who ate unusual things, such as pins and tacks. In 1937, Schulz drew a picture of Spike and sent it to Ripley's Believe It or Not!. His drawing appeared in Robert Ripley's syndicated panel, captioned, "A hunting dog that eats pins, tacks, and razor blades is owned by C. F. Schulz, St. Paul, Minn." and "Drawn by 'Sparky'". Schulz's drawings were rejected by his high school yearbook. A five-foot-tall statue of Snoopy was placed in the school's office 60 years later. After graduating, Schulz took a correspondence course from Art Instruction Schools.

Military service and post-war positions

In November 1942, Schulz was drafted into the United States Army. He served as a staff sergeant with the 20th Armored Division in Europe during World War II as a squad leader on a.50 caliber machine gun team. His unit saw combat at the very end of the war. Schulz said he had only one opportunity to fire his machine gun but forgot to load it, and that the German soldier he could have fired at surrendered. Years later, Schulz proudly spoke of his wartime service. For being under fire he received the Combat Infantryman Badge, of which he was proud.
In February 1943, Schulz's mother died after a long battle with cervical cancer. Schulz was with her as she died at home and later described his sadness that she never saw his work published. In late 1945, Schulz returned to Minnesota, where he did lettering for a Roman Catholic comic magazine, Timeless Topix. In July 1946, Schulz took a job at Art Instruction, where he reviewed and graded students' work. He worked there for several years as he developed his career as a comic creator. At the school, he proposed marriage to a redhaired woman, Donna Johnson, who turned him down. Johnson inspired the Little Red-Haired Girl, Charlie Brown's unrequited love, in Peanuts.

Career

The anti-Communist propaganda comic book Is This Tomorrow featured some of Schulz's early work. Schulz's first group of regular cartoons, a weekly series of one-panel jokes called Li'l Folks, was published from June 1947 to January 1950 in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, with Schulz usually doing four one-panel drawings per issue. It was in Li'l Folks that Schulz first used the name Charlie Brown for a character, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys as well as one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In May 1948, Schulz sold his first one-panel drawing to The Saturday Evening Post; within the next two years, a total of 17 untitled drawings by Schulz were published in the Post, simultaneously with his work for the Pioneer Press. Around the same time, he tried having Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association; Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but negotiations broke down. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached United Feature Syndicate with Li'l Folks, and the syndicate became interested. By that time, Schulz had also developed a comic strip, usually using four panels rather than one; to Schulz's delight, the syndicate preferred the longer version. However, to his consternation, the syndicate had to change the title for Schulz's strip for legal reasons. Schulz selected the name Peanuts.
Peanuts first appeared on October 2, 1950, in seven newspapers. The weekly Sunday page debuted on January 6, 1952. After a slow start, Peanuts eventually became one of the most popular comic strips in history, as well as one of the most influential. Schulz also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip, It's Only a Game ; however, he abandoned it after the success of Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a gag cartoon, Young Pillars, featuring teenagers, to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
In 1957 and 1961, Schulz illustrated two volumes of Art Linkletter's Kids Say the Darndest Things. In 1964, he illustrated a collection of letters, Dear President Johnson, by Bill Adler.

''Peanuts''

At its height, Peanuts was published daily in 2,600 papers in 75 countries, in 21 languages. Over nearly 50 years, Schulz drew 17,897 published Peanuts strips. The strips, plus merchandise and product endorsements, produced revenues of more than $1 billion per year, with Schulz earning an estimated $30–40 million annually. During the strip's run, 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 that occurred during Schulz's life.
Rinehart & Company published the first collection of Peanuts strips in July 1952. Many more books followed, greatly contributing to the strip's increasing popularity. In 2004, Fantagraphics began their Complete Peanuts series. Peanuts also proved popular in other media; the first animated TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, aired in December 1965 and won an Emmy award. Numerous TV specials followed, the latest being Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin in 2024. Until his death, Schulz wrote or co-wrote the TV specials, as well as the films A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Snoopy Come Home, Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown , and oversaw their production.
File:CharlesMShultzJun96.jpg|thumb|right|Schulz receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at Knott's Berry Farm in June 1996
Charlie Brown, the principal character of Peanuts, was named after a co-worker at Art Instruction Inc. Schulz drew much from his own life. Some examples include:
  • Like Charlie Brown's parents, Schulz's father was a barber and his mother a housewife.
  • Like Charlie Brown, Schulz had often felt shy and withdrawn. In an interview with Charlie Rose in May 1997, Schulz observed, "I suppose there's a melancholy feeling in a lot of cartoonists, because cartooning, like all other humor, comes from bad things happening."
  • Schulz reportedly had an intelligent dog when he was a boy. Although this dog was a pointer, not a beagle like Snoopy, family photos confirm a certain physical resemblance.
  • References to Snoopy's brother Spike living outside of Needles, California, were influenced by the few years the Schulz family lived there; they moved to Needles to join other family members who had relocated from Minnesota to tend to an ill cousin.
  • Schulz's inspiration for Charlie Brown's unrequited love for the Little Red-Haired Girl was Donna Mae Johnson, an Art Instruction Inc. accountant with whom he fell in love. When Schulz finally proposed to her in June 1950, shortly after he had made his first contract with his syndicate, she turned him down and married another man.
  • Linus and Shermy were named for his good friends Linus Maurer and Sherman Plepler, respectively.
  • Peppermint Patty was inspired by Patricia Swanson, one of his cousins on his mother's side. Schulz devised the character's name when he saw peppermint candies in his house.
  • Sally calls Linus her "Sweet Babboo." The term of endearment was inspired by a phrase Jean Schulz used for her husband, "I called him, 'Sweet Babboo' and instead of saying, 'O, that's clever, I think I'll use that,' it just showed up six weeks later in the comic strip!"

    Influences

The Charles M. Schulz Museum cites Milton Caniff and Bill Mauldin as key influences on Schulz's work. In his own strip, Schulz regularly described Snoopy's annual Veterans Day visits with Mauldin, including mention of Mauldin's World War II cartoons. Schulz also credited George Herriman, Roy Crane, Elzie C. Segar and Percy Crosby as influences. In a 1994 address to fellow cartoonists, Schulz discussed several of them. But according to his biographer Rheta Grimsley Johnson:
According to the museum, Schulz watched the 1941 film Citizen Kane 40 times. The character Lucy van Pelt also expresses a fondness for the film; in one strip, she cruelly spoils the ending for her younger brother.
Biographer David Michaelis wrote that Schulz considered Jim Davis, the author of Garfield, his greatest rival. Schulz disliked Davis's low, broad-appeal approach and was jealous when Garfield eclipsed Peanuts in popularity. However, Schulz frequently provided advice to the younger Davis, particularly in the realms of merchandising and franchising, by using the strategy he had developed for Snoopy and allowing Davis to develop it further for Garfield. Davis considered Schulz a valuable mentor. Davis credits Schulz with redesigning Garfield in his modern form; while Schulz and Davis were working on their Peanuts and Garfield television specials in adjacent rooms, Davis was struggling to work Garfield's obese, quadrupedal physique into physical gags and asked Schulz for ideas. Schulz sketched out a redesign—bipedal and pot-bellied but slimmer—that Davis has used in its basic form since.
Schulz had a mutual respect for Robb Armstrong, the author of Jump Start; for the 1994 special You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown, Schulz gave Franklin the last name "Armstrong" in homage. Armstrong would later collaborate with Schulz's sons on the streaming special "Welcome Home, Franklin," part of the Apple TV+ series Snoopy Presents.