Charles M. Schulz

Charles M. Schulz, 1956

Charles M. Schulz (right), around 1983

The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa

Charles Monroe Schulz (born November 26, 1922 in Minneapolis , Minnesota , † February 12, 2000 in Santa Rosa , California ) was an American comic artist and the inventor of the comic series The Peanuts . Schulz drew over 17,800 comic strips and wrote the scripts for the TV and cinema appearances of the Peanuts . For his life's work, he was inducted into the Cartoonist Hall of Fame and received the highest civilian award of the US Congress, the Congressional Gold Medal .

Life

Childhood and youth

Schulz grew up in Saint Paul in the American Midwest as the only child of Carl Fred Schulz from Stendal in the Altmark and his Norwegian wife Dena Bertina (née Halverson). On the paternal side, the family had its roots in the Altmark, in Eichstedt and Baben . His father was - like the father of the cartoon character Charlie Brown later  - a hairdresser and owned his own salon. As a child, Schulz enjoyed reading the comics in newspapers, favorites including " Krazy Kat " by George Herriman , " Popeye " by Elzie Crisler Segar , Milton Caniff , Roy Crane and JR Williams . Schulz already performed well in the first grade, so that the principal of the elementary school in St. Paul let him skip the fourth grade. In 1934, the twelve-year-old was given a dog - a mixture of black and white promenade - that was named Spike and later became the template for Snoopy . In 1937 Schulz had his first publication in the comic supplement Ripley's Believe It or Not!  - the subject was an episode in Spike's life. He had swallowed a small ball and choked it out again the evening after he had eaten a portion of spaghetti. Ripley's Believe It or Not! printed Schulz's drawing of the dog and a short text.

In addition to the high school graduated Schulz a correspondence course in "comic drawing" at the in Minneapolis resident Art Instruction Schools, Inc .

First years of employment

In 1943 he was drafted into the army . His mother died of cancer in February 1943 during basic training. Schulz was sent to France , Germany and Austria with the 20th US Armored Division and took part in the liberation of Dachau .

Back from the war, he took a job at a Catholic publishing house in St. Paul. He wrote the texts in the speech bubbles for the Christian comic book Timeless Topix . Shortly after Schulz took up this position, the correspondence school offered him a job. He then worked during the day for Art Instruction Schools, Inc. , where he corrected the work of the beginner's courses, and in the evening he did the lettering for Timeless Topix .

Between 1948 and 1950, Schulz began sending his comics to the Saturday Evening Post and was able to sell 15 copies. Meanwhile Schulz not only filled the speech bubbles of the English Timeless Topix , but also received the French and Spanish editions for lettering. Roman Baltes, the art director of Timeless Topix , bought Schulz a short time later a small series of comic strips that - under the title “Just keep laughing” - were about a small group of children.

Frank Wing, a colleague of Schulz 'at the art school, whom Schulz referred to as a friend and mentor, advised him to draw more of the comics with the young children. He gave the drawings the title Li'l Folks and was able to sell his cartoons - still signed with his nickname "Sparky" - as a weekly series to the St. Paul Pioneers Press soon after .

In 1950 Schulz sent a selection of his work to the United Feature Syndicate in New York and in the same year signed a contract with United Media .

On October 2, 1950, the first episode of The Peanuts was released , a name that Schulz was always very unhappy about. He would have preferred "Charlie Brown" or "Good old Charlie Brown". The United Feature Syndicate decided over Schulz's head that the strip should be called The Peanuts, and Schulz, after ignoring his concerns, finally agreed. The comic strip was published in seven newspapers, and the agency paid Schulz $ 90 for it in the first month.

The first years of success

In 1951 Schulz married Joyce Halverson, and the marriage resulted in five children. The following year the Peanuts published their first Sunday strip , which at that time was being printed in over 40 newspapers in the USA. In addition, the first anthology was published in 1952. In 1958, the family moved to Sebastopol , California , and Schulz received Yale University's Cartoonist of the Year award. In the 1960s Schulz turned more and more often to current events in his stories. Among other things, its protagonists dealt with Rachel Carson , the Vietnam War , the use of tear gas in student riots, school prayers and the rights of unborn children. Schulz only raised questions, but never took a clear position on the issues addressed and left the interpretation to the reader.

The merchandising successfully launched in 1960 with the production of the first greeting cards with Peanuts motifs by the American company Hallmark . Merchandising sales were over $ 50 million in 1969 and grew to $ 150 million in 1971.

In 1962 Schulz received the National Cartoonists Society's “Best Humor Strip of the Year” award , and three years later the Peanuts made the front cover of the prestigious Time magazine when the first animated film was produced for television. The popularity of Charlie Brown and his friends grew incessantly during these years. Soldiers in Vietnam painted Snoopy on their helmets, the Apollo 10 astronauts called their command module Charlie Brown and their lunar module Snoopy . The band Sopwith Camel was founded in San Francisco in 1966 , named after Snoopy's plane, with which he hunted the Red Baron in many stories . Schulz's father, Carl, died in the same year.

In 1967 the musical You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown premiered on Off-Broadway , and two years later the broadcast of the Christmas special A Charlie Brown Christmas achieved an audience rating of almost 50 percent.

The career at its peak

Schulz divorced Joyce Halverson in 1972 and married Jean Forsyth Clyde the following year. He received an Emmy Award for the TV special A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving . In 1975, on the 25th anniversary of the Peanuts , Schulz had more than 90 million readers in over 1,600 newspapers and received another Emmy for You're A Good Sport, Charlie Brown . In 1978 the International Pavilion of Humor in Montreal named Schulz “Cartoonist of the Year”.

In the 1980s Schulz had to tell his stories in a more compact way: in order to save production costs, the newspaper cartoonists were now forced to put their stories into three instead of four pictures. Schulz saw this as a challenge to develop a real story in the limited space.

In the early 1980s, Schulz's health was poor and he eventually had to undergo a difficult bypass operation . Fully recovered, Schulz and Bill Melendez brought the award-winning cartoon “ What did we learn, Charlie Brown? “( What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? ) Out. In this film, the children's group is in France and explains the events in June 1944, including the Omaha Beach invasion, in a child-friendly way. The half-hour television film was subtitled "A tribute" and was an unprecedented way of conveying historical knowledge to young viewers in American television history. The film was a huge hit and won the Peabody Award . A year later, The Peanuts were included in the Guinness Book of Records after appearing in 2,000 newspapers worldwide. In 1986 Schulz was inducted into the "Cartoonist Hall of Fame" of the Museum of Cartoon Art .

In 1989 the biography of Retha Grimsley Johnson, authorized by Schulz, was published: Good Grief: The Story Of Charles M. Schulz .

A year later, the Louvre in Paris dedicated the exhibition Snoopy in Fashion to the Peanuts . The French government appointed Schulz as Commandeur des Arts et Lettres . In 1992 Schulz was awarded the Order of Merit by the Italian government . The Montreal Museum of Fine Art opened the exhibition Snoopy, The Masterpiece . In 1993 Schulz drew a wordless series of images for June 6th, in which the last picture shows Snoopy swimming in the water in front of the Omaha Beach section . The strip was published on the occasion of D-Day , which was celebrated by the Americans , and received an overwhelming, positive response. Then Schulz drew a special strip for June 6th every year. In 1998 he painted Snoopy in combat suit in a photo of Dwight D. Eisenhower and a group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division . There was no story, again just a wordless picture.

On the 45th birthday of the “Peanuts”, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston ( Texas ) opened the exhibition Around the Moon and Home Again: A Tribute to the Art of Charles M. Schulz in 1995 . Two years later, on October 16, 1997, the piece of music Peanuts Gallery , composed by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich , was premiered in Carnegie Hall .

On September 14, 1999 Schulz announced the end of his activity. Only a few months later, on February 12, 2000, Schulz died of colon cancer at the age of 77. A day later, the last of his comic strips was published. Schulz decreed in his will that his work may not be continued by any other draftsman. The exception is the painter Tom Everhart , who has been bringing large-format and very colorful individual images of the peanuts onto canvas since 1990 .

A little more than two years after his death, the Charles M. Schulz Museum opened in Santa Rosa on August 17, 2002. In the permanent exhibition, you can visit Schulz's studio and a dog house packed by Christo and Jeanne-Claude .

According to a list by Forbes magazine , Schulz's heirs earned a total of around 35 million US dollars in the period from October 2006 to October 2007. Only two other people who had already died, John Lennon and Elvis Presley , were even more "successful".

The peanuts

→ Main article : The peanuts

The drawing style

Schulz drew his comic simple and concise, with a few clear lines. He concentrated entirely on the characters, the backgrounds were - with a few exceptions - very simple and mostly sketchy. The pictures are not designed in perspective, you cannot see the figures from all sides. Only the accessories that were indispensable for the plot found their way into the sequence of images. With a few exceptions, Schulz leaves adults out. Only in the early 1950s did he let the mother of Lucy and Linus speak into the picture in some of the stories. In a series of Sunday trips in which Lucy and Charlie take part in a golf tournament, adults can also be seen once, from a children's perspective, only up to the waist or from a great distance. In later years Schulz was very dissatisfied with this incursion into the adult world and regretted this decision.

Charles M. Schulz had a particular preference for the notes that Schroeder plays on his children's piano. Schulz liked the patterns created by the notes on the pages. He always tried to work as precisely as possible on the scores , since he was sure that there were readers who wanted to play Schroeder's notes.

Until the last picture, Schulz worked alone on his work. Each of the more than 17,000 strips was drawn and lettered by him .

The evolution of the peanuts

In the first few months, the protagonists of the series were Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Shermy and Patty (not to be confused with the character Peppermint Patty). Shermy and Patty gradually became less important and eventually disappeared from the cartoon entirely. In 1951 Schroeder was introduced to the group, a year later Lucy and her little brother Linus. In 1954, the children made the acquaintance of Pigpen , the forever dirty boy. In 1959, Charlie Brown had a baby sister named Sally. In 1960, the Beagle Snoopy became increasingly human and began to walk and think on its hind legs. Since then, Snoopy's doghouse can only be seen in the famous side view.

In 1966, Charlie Brown met Peppermint Patty , who suffered from narcolepsy . In 1968 Schulz introduced the African-American boy Franklin in his cartoon, and two years later the bird Woodstock . In 1971 the children's group was expanded to include the serious Marcie , and a year later Lucy and Linus had another addition to the family, their brother Rerun . In 1975, Snoopy's brother Spike appeared and has since been a regular "guest star" in the stories.

At first, Charlie Brown was allowed to be mean too. Over the years, however, Charlie Brown became more of a target for the ridicule of others, a fate he calmly endured. He is always somehow involved in the misfortunes of his friends, he suffers and suffers because Charlie Brown is a caricature of the average person.

Recurring themes

In 1952, Lucy first pulled the ball away from Charlie Brown's feet when Charlie Brown tried to shoot it away. For the next 46 years, Schulz drew an annual comic strip on this subject.

The first conversation between his protagonists, in which the interlocutors stand by a wall and look at something that remains hidden from the reader, was recorded by Schulz in 1954. The conversations (mostly between Charlie and Linus) were often of a philosophical nature and often sentimental.

In 1958, Schulz brought his unsuccessful attempts to fly a kite into the cartoon: For the first time a tree ate Charlie Brown's kite.

With the psychotherapy that Lucy opened in 1959, Schulz parodied the lemonade stands that were often run by children at the time. At first Lucy offered her psychotherapeutic advice for five cents, later the price increased to ten cents. In the same year Linus waited for the first time for the "Great Pumpkin", because he confused Halloween and Christmas .

In November 1961, Charlie fell in love with the little, red-haired girl and from then on raved about his unattainable love (which the reader of the strip never gets to see). Lucy and Sally were also unhappily in love, Lucy with Schröder and Sally with Linus, whom she affectionately called "my bamboo bear".

Snoopy received his typewriter in July 1965 and has tried his hand at writing ever since. In October of the same year he hunted the Red Baron for the first time, sitting on the roof of the dog house in aviator goggles and scarf . Other topics related to Snoopy included the boy scouts, Snoopy as a lawyer and as a Foreign Legionnaire Sgt. Lejaune , who leads Woodstock and his friends over the sand track of the golf course. The Beagle also fought for decades with the cat next door, whom he feared more than anything.

The baseball team around the pitcher Charlie Brown, who stood alone on his throwing hill, was a recurring topic. The team in the children's group lost every game against teams that weren't even seen. As a team manager, Charlie Brown once led his team to victory - which was revoked again.

With the Peanuts, Schulz created many scenes and expressions that are fixed terms today. So went to the example of the invented Schulz term "security blanket" (Eng. "Security blanket" in German translations security blanket ) in the American parlance one.

Cinema, television and stage

movie theater

In 1969, the Peanuts made it to the big screen in the movie Charlie Brown and Friends (A Boy Named Charlie Brown). Charlie Brown won his school's spelling competition and, accompanied by Linus and Snoopy, was allowed to go to the national competitions in New York. He fought bravely and made it to the finals - where the word "Beagle" was his undoing. The script for the 70-minute film was written by Charles M. Schulz and directed by Bill Melendez . In 1971 the film was nominated for an Oscar in the category "Music (Original Song Score)".

Three years later, in the film Snoopy (Snoopy Come Home) , Snoopy received a letter from his former owner, whom he then visited in the hospital. Again directed by Bill Melendez, who also lent his voice to Snoopy and Woodstock, Schulz provided the script.

1977 came with Lauf um Dein Leben, Charlie Brown (Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown) the third adventure of the children's troupe in the cinema. The 76-minute film was about the camp adventures that Charlie and friends experienced. Directed by Bill Melendez and Phil Roman , the script was written by Schulz.

Gute Reise, Charlie Brown (Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (And Don't Come Back!)) Was the name of the Peanuts' last cinema adventure in 1980 . Charlie, Linus, Peppermint Patty and Marcie, accompanied by Snoopy and Woodstock, went to France as exchange students. A mysterious letter causes a stir there. Directed by Bill Melendez and Phil Roman, in charge of the script was Charles M. Schulz.

Television (selection)

Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

The famous film music for numerous TV episodes was composed by the American jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi and recorded with his trio. For the synchronization mainly children were engaged, adults were represented by the speech melody of a trumpet .

• 1965: The Peanuts - Merry Christmas (A Charlie Brown Christmas)
• 1966: The Great Pumpkin (It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown)
• 1969: The summer was very short (It Was A Short Summer, Charlie Brown)
• 1973: Thanksgiving Day (A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving)
• 1974: It's the Easter Beagle (It's The Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown)
• 1975: You're a great sportsman (You're A Good Sport, Charlie Brown)
• 1977: Your very first kiss (It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown)
• 1978: Snoopy's Nightmare (What A Nightmare, Charlie Brown)
• 1980: She is a sports fan (She's A Good Skate, Charlie Brown)

stage

On March 7, 1967, the musical You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown premiered on New York's Off-Broadway . The production ran for five years and was very successful. On February 4, 1999, a slightly modified and amended version was performed in the Longacre Theater on Broadway . Other subsequent stage pieces are the musical Snoopy! and the adaptation of the TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas , which faithfully reproduces the dialogues and music from this cult show.

Charles M. Schulz as an ice hockey official

A great passion of Schulz, which stems from his childhood days in Minnesota, was various ice sports, especially ice hockey and figure skating . After the ice rink in Santa Rosa was closed, in 1969 he made a decisive contribution to the construction of the Redwood Empire Ice Arena near his studio. The hall, which was owned by the comic artist until his death, still remembers its builder with Snoopy statues and figures as well as a Peanuts shop and is also still known as Snoopy's Home Ice .

Schulz has been organizing a senior tournament at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena since the early 1970s, which over the years has grown into the largest tournament of its kind in the United States. Even today, 64 teams from all over the world, mainly from the USA, Canada, Europe and Japan, in various age groups from 40 to 75 years old, take part in the so-called Snoopy's Senior World Hockey Tournament . Schulz himself was an active player in "his" tournament on the ice until his death in 2000. Over the years the competition became so popular that even former NHL players such as Gordon Berenson , Ernie Hicke , Terry Harper and Mel Bridgman took part as players. In 1998 Schulz also hosted the world's first over-75 ice hockey tournament in this form.

For his passion and his commitment, he received the Lester Patrick Trophy in 1981 , an award that has been awarded since 1966 by the NHL and USA Hockey , the US ice hockey association, for special services to the sport of ice hockey. In 1993 Schulz was also honored to be inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame without ever having been a professional player. In 2001, the city named Saint Paul the Highland Park Ice Arena in his honor Charles Schulz Arena to.

Awards

Charles M. Schulz and his works have received several awards. The honors included both his work as a cartoonist and author as well as the cinema and television films.

• 1955: Schulz received the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award .
• 1962: The Peanuts were named Best Humor Strip of the Year by the National Cartoonists Society .
• 1964: Schulz became the first cartoonist to receive the second Reuben Award .
• 1965: A Charlie Brown Christmas won both Emmy and Peabody Awards .
• 1971: The movie A Boy named Charlie Brown was nominated for an Oscar in the category "Music (Original Song Score)" .
• 1975: You're A Good Sport, Charlie Brown won an Emmy.
• 1978: The Montreal International Pavilion of Humor named Schulz Cartoonist of the Year .
• 1980: Life Is A Circus, Charlie Brown won an Emmy.
• 1980: Schulz won the E. C. Segar Award of the National Cartoonists Society
• 1981: Schulz received the Lester Patrick Trophy for his special contribution to ice hockey.
• 1983: What have we learned, Charlie Brown? won the Peabody Award.
• 1986: Schulz was inducted into the Cartoonist Hall of Fame .
• 1996: Schulz received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame .
• 1997: Schulz was inducted into the Eisner Award Hall of Fame.
• 2000: Posthumously Schulz was awarded the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cartoonists Society .
• 2000: Schulz was also posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal , the highest civil honor given by the United States Congress .

literature

• Charles M. Schulz: 50 Years of Peanuts. The big anniversary book . Edited by David Larkin. Tree house, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-8339-4001-8
• Rheta Grimsley Johnson: Good Grief: The Story Of Charles M. Schulz . Pharos Books, 1989.
• M. Thomas Inge (Ed.): Charles M. Schulz. Conversations . University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
• Chip Kidd: Charles M. Schulz . Pantheon Books, 2001.
• Derrick Bang: 50 years of happiness. A tribute to Charles M. Schulz . Peanuts Collector Club, 1999.
• Derrick Bang: Charles M. Schulz: Li'l beginnings . Charles M. Schulz Museum, 2004.
• David Michaelis: Schulz and Peanuts - A Biography . HarperCollins, New York 2007

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Die Peanuts Werkausgabe , Vol. 1: Charles M. Schulz: His life and work , an afterword by David Michaelis, p. 295.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Curriculum vitae on the Schulz Museum homepage (accessed on April 23-25, 2007).
3. ↑ 50 Years of Peanuts , p. 7.
4. ↑ 50 Years of Peanuts , p. 9.
5. ↑ 50 Years of Peanuts , p. 26.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Andreas Knigge: Everything about comics . Europa Verlag, Hamburg 2004, page 251.
7. ^ Cover picture of Time magazine from April 9, 1965 on time.com , accessed on April 2, 2009.
8. ↑ Die Peanuts Werkausgabe , Vol. 1: Charles M. Schulz: His life and work , an afterword by David Michaelis, p. 299.
9. ↑ 50 Years of Peanuts , p. 159.
10. ↑ 50 Years of Peanuts , p. 195.
11. ↑ Die Peanuts Werkausgabe , Vol. 3, p. 13.
12. ↑ Die Peanuts Werkausgabe , Vol. 2, p. 12.
13. ↑ 50 Years of Peanuts , p. 49.
14. ↑ Information on the senior ice hockey tournament on the official homepage of the Redwood Empire Ice Arena ( Memento from March 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
15. ↑ list of recipients on clerk.house.gov , accessed on June 14 of 2009.
16. ↑ "Sad big pumpkin" Review of Michaelis' biography on Spiegel Online , October 28, 2007.

Web links

Commons : Charles M. Schulz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Charles M. Schulz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Charles M. Schulz in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Official website of the Peanuts
• Genealogy of Schulz at rootsweb.com
• Patrick Bahners: Children's theater of cruelty: Peanuts on the pages of the FAZ
• Article in the taz

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on August 6, 2007 in this version .