From Deseret News archives:
It's the Christmas TV list, Charlie Brown
Charles Schulz's beloved holiday classic is marking its 40th anniversary
It all began with a connection between the world's greatest baseball player (or at least one of them) — Willie Mays — and the world's worst baseball player (or at least the unluckiest) — Charlie Brown.
Lee Mendelson had produced a documentary on Mays and was reading the comics and saw a strip about Charlie Brown's baseball team. "The idea of following my special on the best with a program about the worst popped into my head," Mendelson said during a telephone interview from this California home.
He contacted Charles Schulz, who had seen the Mays special and was amenable to the idea of a documentary on Charlie Brown's world, and they set to work. They wanted to include a brief bit of animation in the documentary, so Schulz recommended animator Bill Melendez, who created two minutes of animation — "all I could afford," said Mendelson.
For music, Mendelson remembered a song by jazz composer Vince Guaraldi that he liked, so he contacted the composer. The result was a jazz composition titled "Linus and Lucy." "It was perfect for the Peanuts characters."
The Charlie Brown documentary was finished, and Mendelson began shopping it around to networks and advertisers. "In true Charlie Brown fashion, no one was interested."
A year and a half later, Mendelson got a call from an advertising agency asking if he and Schulz had ever considered doing an animated Christmas special. Of course, said Mendelson, who would have said pretty much anything at that point. Coca-Cola wanted to sponsor a Christmas special. It was Wednesday; they needed the outline by Monday. Could they do it? Of course, said Mendelson.
He hung up and called Sparky — as Schulz was known to his friends. Could they do it? "Without missing a beat, Sparky told me to come on up. Ideas flowed, and by the end of the day we had an outline." It remained essentially unchanged.
They turned it in, waited three weeks for an answer, and learned that Coca-Cola not only liked it but wanted it for early December — giving them just six months to complete the work. "Of course," said Mendelson, with no clue if that was even possible.
They contacted Melendez; they decided to use actual kids as the voices (up until then, all animation voices were performed by adults), so they auditioned dozens of kids. They contacted Guaraldi, who agreed to do the music, incorporating his earlier "Lucy and Linus." And the race was on.
