WEBVTT - Peanuts (the comic) Part I 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:19.680 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:16.360 And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck. Ben's 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:19.880 here sitting in for Jerry. It's Ben h Week in 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:22.680 the producer's chair, and this is stuff you should Know. 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:26.520 I got a slide whistle in my Christmas stocking. 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:29.560 Do you realize you got me this slide whistle? 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:31.560 I know, but I got my own. Now. 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:33.559 Oh okay, I thought we were talking about me. 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:37.320 No, no, no, I guess you're still enjoying it. You 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.680 brought it out, yes, yeah, I love it. Would you 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:42.879 use it for with peanuts? 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:46.400 I just thought it kind of fit the motif a 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:49.560 little bit comics, you know, so sure, I've been looking 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:52.080 for an opportunity to bust it out, and here we go. 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:55.560 I thought you because not everyone knows this, and this 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:58.960 almost never happens. We started to record. Josh said, hold 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:01.880 on a second and left, and I was pretty convinced 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:04.399 you were going to come back with a trombone and 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:05.000 a plunger. 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:08.000 It was close. That was close, man, that would have 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:10.560 been something. Now I suddenly am ashamed of my slide whistle. 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:12.640 Wah wah, wah, wah wah. 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:14.440 Exactly that was a pretty good one. 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:14.920 NICs. 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:17.360 Hey, while we're on that, Chuck, what you're talking about 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:21.119 is the adults in the Peanuts universe. You never see him. 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:26.280 You saw him once and it was just strange. You 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:29.480 can hear them off camera and they're discussed and talked about. 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:31.759 You just don't see them. But in the specials when 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:35.360 they talk, they talk like that, and it's a muted trombone, 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:39.280 like you said, a plunger and a trombone. And that 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:41.920 was the idea of Vince Giraldi, who was the guy 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:45.200 who created the soundtrack for the Peanuts Christmas. 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:48.040 Special, Dang Straight one of the I think that's a 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.200 number two best selling jazz record of all time, right. 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.160 Yeah, after Miles Davis is kind of blue, of course. Yeah? 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:57.360 Is it Giraldi? I thought it was Giraldi? Is it Giraldi? 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:00.760 I think it's kind of like that whole Gift Jiff argument. 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:04.160 The only person who can say is Vince Giraldi. 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:06.800 That's about to say his families like, it's not like 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:07.280 that at all. 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:12.760 So we're talking today about Peanuts. In case you didn't know, 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:15.320 it's funny. I was researching Peanuts and I came across 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:19.480 at least a couple results that were actually about peanuts 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:21.880 the food. It was a little confusing for a second, 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:24.440 but for the most part, there's a lot of really 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:28.480 interesting stuff out there that people have written about peanuts. 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:32.400 And I think the reason why is because it's really cerebral, 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:40.399 like surprisingly disarmingly cerebral, and people have gotten so much 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.720 out of it over the five decades that it was around, 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:46.600 or more than that by now almost seventy five years 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:50.840 since it started, that everyone just kind of loves it 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:53.040 and has some sort of emotional connection to it. So 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.560 there's been a lot of like good written analysis about it, 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:58.880 essays and odes and stuff like that. 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:02.120 Totally, and you know, one thing that I'm sure you 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:06.160 can verify, speaking for both of us, researching peanuts is 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:07.600 a hard thing to stop doing. 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:08.840 It really is. 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:10.959 You can just it's just one of these topics you 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:13.079 can just keep going and going and going, because it's 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:17.640 all interesting beyond the nostalgic love. It's interesting as an 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:21.480 adult to look back on some of this stuff, Yeah, 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:24.720 because it's really has you know, the way it's framed 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:27.760 in my mind at least, is a lot different now 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:30.920 than it was when I was a kid. Yeah, just 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:35.240 a landmark comic strip in every single way, one of, 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:37.760 if not the biggest and best ever. 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:41.200 Yeah, it's it's a very deceptive comic in that all 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:45.920 of the characters are kids, grade school kids. But it's 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:48.920 not a kid's comic. It's a comic for adults. And 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:51.560 I remember being a kid and like the extent that 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:54.560 I appreciated it was, you know, Charlie Brown flying through 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:58.120 the air, Lucy calling somebody a blockhead, or Snoopy doing 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:01.400 his thing. That was it. I didn't get any of 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:06.160 the existentialism associated with it. Nothing like that was totally 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:07.760 lost to me, and I think that's the way it 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:10.920 was meant to be. You know, sometimes people can create 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:13.160 works like The Simpsons are a good idea or a 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:17.360 good example where it can be enjoyed on multiple levels. 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.240 And that's true of Peanuts too. But the proportions are off. 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:25.760 It's not even like the adult enjoyment of Peanuts is 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:29.320 far greater and deeper than the kids appreciation of Peanuts. 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:30.000 You know what I'm saying. 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.680 Yeah, I mean I think it's definitely four kids. Yeah, 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:35.760 I agree. I think it's just the proportions off. 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:37.679 Yeah, that's what I said. 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:39.440 I know, but at the beginning you said it's not 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.359 a comic for kids, it's for adults, and I disagree. 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:45.400 I think it's for kids too, but I think adults 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:46.800 can definitely gain more insight. 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:50.280 You know what, I have to say that what Peanuts? 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.040 All right, So you mentioned that Peanuts ran for almost 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:58.760 fifty years. She said five decades, and I know math 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.239 from October second, nineteen fifty to February thirteen, two thousand. Yeah, 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:10.320 and for almost all of that that five decades, one 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:15.760 Charles Schultz drew seven Peanuts comics a week. I think 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:19.840 the Sunday started in nineteen fifty two for seventeen eight 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:24.440 hundred ninety seven comic strips. And he didn't farm these out, No, 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:28.440 he did them himself. And he found that one thing 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:31.520 that was like he also generally did them in pen 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:35.000 as well, because he was just so sort of decisive 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:35.560 in his work. 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:41.279 Yeah. I saw somebody say, like, the average comic artists couldn't. 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:44.400 We would have trouble keeping up that level of dedication 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:48.280 for a decade, let alone five. Yeah, Like, just the 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:54.080 amount of dedication it takes to do that. Like, apparently 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:56.920 Charles Schultz was completely cut out for that kind of thing. 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:00.320 He wasn't a big fan of holidays because they got 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:02.720 in the way of his work. Like that's what he 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:04.960 was dedicated to. I saw one of his family members, 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:07.440 either a widow, ex wife, or a child, I can't 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:09.920 remember who said like, oh, I think it was one 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:13.240 of his daughters who said, like, his family was not 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.440 his everything, that the Peanuts comic strip was his everything. 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:19.080 That was his life, and he built a life for 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:23.320 himself and for his family outside of that. But I mean, like, 0:06:23.400 --> 0:06:26.159 that's what that guy's purpose on earth was, and he 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:27.640 fulfilled it to the nines. 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:30.200 Yeah. I mean, one thing I can relate to, I 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:33.279 think both of us a little bit, is doing something 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.640 with consistency over a great deal of time. We're in 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:42.360 year sixteen, right, Can you imagine fifty years? No? 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:46.279 I really can't. But we've said stuff like this before, 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:50.320 so it's entirely possible we'll end up in year fifty. 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:53.239 I won't be around my friend. 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:55.719 That's not true. There's going to be all sorts of 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:59.440 great breakthroughs in medicine in the next decade or two. 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:03.480 I'm a ninety something year old podcaster. Than something went horribly. 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:07.200 Wrong, So there's a glitch in the matrix. 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:08.200 Huh, yeah, exactly. 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.320 So one of the things about peanuts is that it's 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:17.360 universally loved because it was basically available throughout the universe. Yeah, 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:20.040 twenty six hundred newspapers. Is that it's peak, and it 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:24.680 was at a peak pretty much from the seventies onward, 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:29.120 twenty six hundred newspapers in seventy five countries and twenty 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.840 one different languages, and its readership was about three hundred 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:36.920 and fifty million people around the world. And I think 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:41.480 one of the reasons why it was so so widespread 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.840 is because the thing about peanuts, from all the research 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:47.360 I did and just kind of coming to understand what 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:50.400 the whole thing was about, is that it's about the 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:54.400 universal human condition. It's not just about Americans and what 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:58.560 Americans go through. It's not just about Canadians even and 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:02.000 what Canadians go through. That's about what every human alive 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:06.040 goes through. Its very basic human condition stuff. Is what 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:08.320 they're actually talking about and what are behind a lot 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:12.200 of the gags, And so that to me is pretty 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:15.280 much the explanation right there for why it's so universally loved. 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:20.080 Yeah, and the human condition thing generally with Peanuts, wasn't 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:24.000 the thrill of victory but the agony of defeat. Yeah, 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:29.280 time and time again. These characters suffer setbacks and failures 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.280 over and over and over, and even when they're not 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:36.640 doing that, there are very few grand victories at all. 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:39.720 And it's amazing to look at it now that it was. 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:41.640 I mean, I guess people do connect with that, but 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:44.240 it's amazing to look at a comic strip in the 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:48.960 funny papers about these kids with such pathos and with 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:53.760 such failure and such, you know, sometimes clearly depression. It's 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:59.200 just it's really a remarkable cultural staple I think. 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:03.319 Yeah, and it's much easier to think of now because 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:07.000 it's so widespread among comics. But at the time in 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:11.160 nineteen fifty, yeah, this was There was nothing like it. 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:13.320 I mean, there have been some stuff about little kids 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:16.640 and kid groups that like comics that had focused on that, 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:20.480 some of which inspired Charles Schultz, but it was just 0:09:20.520 --> 0:09:22.200 groundbreaking in every single way. 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:25.720 Yeah, totally. So should we go to the man himself? Yeah, 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:28.880 let's all right. So Charles M. Schultz was born in 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.760 November twenty six, nineteen twenty two, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:35.760 He got the nickname Sparky when he was a kid, 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:38.400 well when he was a baby in fact, because his 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:43.480 uncle saw him and thought that he looked like this 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:48.440 character from another cartoon called Barney Google named Sparky, so 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:52.400 he nicknamed him Sparkplug. That became Sparky, and apparently everyone 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:54.000 who knew him and was close to him in his 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:56.319 life called him Sparky for his whole life. 0:09:56.480 --> 0:10:00.680 Yeah, and apparently he always wanted to draw comics, even 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:03.400 from a young age. It was his aspiration that he 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:08.079 got to fulfill and then some. But his dad, Carl, 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:12.200 was a barber and he was I think a German immigrant. 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:16.280 His mother, Dina, was a Norwegian immigrant, so Charles was 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:20.040 a full first generation American kid. And he and his 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:23.840 dad loved to read the funny papers together, so that 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:26.360 was just kind of like his training came from just 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:29.160 enjoying it with his father, which is pretty neat. And 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:31.600 then his mother also, and this is fairly rare among 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:38.120 Western European or Northern European immigrant families. His mother encouraged 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:41.200 his drawing too. It wasn't looked at as just some dumb, 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.439 idle thing that was a waste of time. Like he 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:49.439 he was encouraged to follow his destiny. 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:53.160 I guess yeah. I thought I was hanging there. I 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:57.040 was wondering what was going to be dream destiny is perfect, 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:04.240 you know, slide with. So he was drawing, like you 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:06.600 said he was. He wanted to be a cartoonist from 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:08.880 a very young age, so he was drawing from a 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.679 very young age. He got published for the first time 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:15.600 when he was fourteen, which is remarkable in a newspaper 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.800 comic and a Ripley's Believe it or not comic. And 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:22.880 it was an image of Spike, the family dog, not 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:25.000 that Spike. We're going to get to Spike later. One 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:27.200 of my favorite characters in the Peanuts Cannon. 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:29.880 Oh yeah, you like that, does Stash? 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:34.200 I love Spike. He was a desert hippie, you know. 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:35.800 Yeah, he totally wasn't he. 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:40.280 Was the best, But Spike was their family dog. It 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:43.640 was signed drawn by Sparky, so that was like his 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:47.680 first little cartoon signature was Sparky and Spike was a Pointer, 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:50.959 not a beagle. This wasn't Snoopy yet, but it was 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:53.840 the inspiration for Snoopy. I believe Spike was black and 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:55.160 white but was a pointer. 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:59.000 Yeah, so we've got like, this is a really good 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.280 example of what Charles did. He drew from his life, 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:07.440 sometimes drew people's names for the characters that he introduced. 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:10.719 Sometimes he would base characters and like their looks or 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.680 their demeanor on people he knew. And so Spike or 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:17.400 Snoopy being based on Spike is like pretty much par 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:21.240 for the course for what he did. And so fourteen 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:24.040 he gets his first cartoon published and Ripley's Believe It 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:27.160 or not, Believe it or not like you said. And 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:29.679 then as a senior in high school, he took a 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:33.959 correspondence drawing class from what was originally called the Federal 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:37.479 School of Applied Cartooning, a division of the Bureau of Engraving, 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.080 which happened to be located in Minneapolis, where he lived, essentially, 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:45.000 and that later went on to become Art Instruction Schools, Inc. 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:47.960 And for those of them, great name wise. 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:50.840 No, but I know for a fact that you're familiar 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:52.960 with this because you were a kid growing up in 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:54.360 the late seventies and eighties. 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:56.840 Oh, I know what's coming in those TV ads? 0:12:56.840 --> 0:12:57.440 Do you remember? 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:02.920 Oh? I remember ads in magazines and comic books. 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:06.880 You're slightly older, so my age group had the TV ads. 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:08.319 We didn't have the picture box. 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:14.280 This was what you're talking about, were like magazine ads 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:18.000 that had Tippy the turtle, Tiny the mouse, or pirate 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:21.000 and you could choose which one to draw, and you 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:22.920 send it in and maybe you want a prize. But 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:27.080 really what you were doing was inadvertently sending your information 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:29.280 to art instruction schools who would try to recruit you 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:33.160 for their art correspondence course. And this is in the eighties, 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:37.160 I think they were still going into like the twenty tens. 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:38.880 Essentially, wow, really. 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:42.560 But that's where Charles Schultz received his initial training and 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:45.400 the cost for that was about thirty eight hundred dollars 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:49.840 in today's money. And don't forget like his dad's a barber. 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.840 Like barber's have never been particularly rich, so it was 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:56.439 like a big deal that his parents were helping him 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:00.760 out with this, this this correspondence course so that he 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.319 could go get formal training as a cartoonist. 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:07.959 Totally. He graduated from there, saw it all the way through, 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:11.240 went to work doing some various jobs here and there. 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:14.920 He was, you know, drawing cartoons, drawing comics, submitting them 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:19.440 ever he could. As you know, many stories like this goes. 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:24.200 He was rejected by everybody. Basically, the night before he 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:28.520 ships off for World War Two, his mother, Dina passes 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:32.560 away from cervical cancer. And this was a real sort 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:36.120 of lifelong scar for him. And you know, some people 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:38.320 say that, you know, sort of the pathos and the 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:43.960 deep loneliness that all the Peanuts gang felt was sort 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:46.760 of him getting this out. And as we'll see, you know, 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:49.800 everybody from his wife to people that have studied him 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.280 have confirmed and even Charles Schultz himself that like, each 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:55.720 of these characters is a little piece of him in 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:56.400 some way. 0:14:56.760 --> 0:15:00.320 Right, So, yeah, he was he had to grab with 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:04.520 like basically a one two punch of trauma because after 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:07.840 his mom's death, like and he shipped out, he saw combat. 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:09.920 He was in combat, so he's dealing with combat. Well 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:12.880 he's also you know, dealing with the grief from the 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:16.080 loss of his mom. Yeah, so that's I mean, that's 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:18.240 gonna have a pretty big impact on anybody, you know. 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:21.280 Yeah, for sure. He makes it through the war, though 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:25.800 obviously goes back to Minneapolis, goes back to the art 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:29.120 school that he graduated from and got a job there. 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:32.440 So he was an instructor there and for about five 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:37.400 years he was still drawing still, I guess, looking at 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:42.240 pictures of pirates and turtles and things, and he was, 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:44.880 you know, he was getting his own style together. He 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:47.880 was learning about comics and how it all worked and 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:51.000 the business side of things. Right, and you said he 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:53.760 often named people after people in his reel life. Three 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:58.960 of his colleagues. There was one Charles Brown, a Linus Marr, 0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:00.600 and Freda Rich. 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:05.080 Yeah, Freda was a minor character with curly red hair, 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.440 but she wasn't the red haired girl that Charlie Brown 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:13.320 had an endless crush on. That was based on another person, 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:17.400 a woman named Donna Johnson, whom Charles Schultz dated when 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:20.960 they both worked at the Art Instruction school, and she 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.440 turned him down, and he forever, I guess, kind of 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:27.560 pined or kept a flame or something for her. At 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:30.520 the very least, she became the red haired girl that 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:31.760 Charlie Brown could never have. 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:35.480 Can you imagine being the inspiration for one of these characters. 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:37.120 I know, it's pretty cool. The guy was like the 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:38.440 Taylor Swift of his era. 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:41.480 Hey, she's got heiress. 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:44.480 And then also a little known fact that was a 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:48.200 good one, by the way, Donna Johnson who turned down 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.840 Charles Schultz and inspired the red haired girl went on 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:56.720 to marry instead a firefighter named al Wald, and al 0:16:56.840 --> 0:17:00.119 Wald turned out to be the basis of the character 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:02.960 Gargamel in Peyo's Smurf's cartoon. 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:10.240 Amazing. So in nineteen forty seven he got his first 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:14.480 big sort of career break when he had his cartoon 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:19.040 litl Folks l i Apostrophel, which is weekly comic. He 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:21.040 got it in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, and then 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:24.560 when he was twenty seven, in nineteen fifty, he got 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:29.399 a syndication deal for Little Folks and seven newspapers, not 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:33.480 one hundred. Yeah, and they had to change the name. 0:17:33.520 --> 0:17:36.160 There was already a Little Folks and there was also 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:39.160 Lil Abner, and so they said, you know, we can't 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:41.800 really do this. We got to change it. So they 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:47.000 changed the name to Peanuts, reference to Howdie Duties Peanut Gallery. 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:50.400 And Schultz evidently never liked that name, even though it's 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:52.280 hard to imagine anything different now. 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.600 Oh no way. Plus also he's like, Peanuts is too 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:59.520 schmaltzy and sachrein give me Little Folks any day, right, 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:03.320 But yeah, he carried that around the whole career. He 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:06.640 hated the name Peanuts. He never came to like it, 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:10.880 which is bizarre. And then I guess with that syndication deal, 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:14.280 one of the really big things that happened was he 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:19.800 moved from this space filler section on like the women's 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:22.720 page in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press to the comics 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:25.680 page in addition to getting like a huge bump and pay. 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:28.280 So now he'd made it as a comic, his comic 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:31.080 was now on the comics page, which was a huge 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:32.240 deal to him. 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:34.760 Yeah, huge bump and pay. So he went to like 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:35.840 thirty dollars a week. 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:38.520 Yeah, he had been making ten. And the editor of 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:41.000 the Saint Paul Pioneer Press was like, I'm not giving 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:42.440 you a dime more than that. 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:48.080 So the first Peanuts comic strip came on October second, 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:51.200 nineteen fifty and I think that is a pretty good 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:52.920 place for our first break, eh. 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:53.280 I think. 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:54.960 So, all right, we'll be right. 0:18:54.880 --> 0:19:16.840 Back, softy jaw soff. 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:24.919 All right, So the first Peanuts is October second, nineteen fifty. 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:30.120 Snoopy the Dog appeared just two days later on October fourth, 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:34.760 nineteen fifties, for Snoopy's first appearance. Snoopy on four legs. 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:37.520 I don't think if you're not, you know, a big 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:40.960 Peanuts officionado, you might not know that Snoopy started out 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:44.320 much more dog like, and Charlie Brown would teach Snoopy 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:47.960 to walk on two legs, and Snoopy's character really more 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:53.240 than any other character in Peanuts changed over those fifty years. Yeah, 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:56.360 for sure, even though a lot of them changed quite 0:19:56.359 --> 0:20:00.320 a bit. Because you know, like with anything with any 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:04.359 even television sitcom, like the characters really grow, like you 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:09.040 cast your cast, whether it's TV or it's a cartoon 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.200 or a graphic novel, and then as you write, they've 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:14.760 become real and they change, it evolved just like real people. 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:16.679 And that's certainly what happened to Peanuts. 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:20.080 Yah, that's pretty awesome. One of the other things about 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:25.600 that's widely recognizes about Peanuts is the style of the drawing, 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:28.720 of the writing, of the lettering, all that stuff. It's 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:35.000 just immediately recognizable as Peanuts. And Schultz's style was described 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:41.880 as a formal minimalism, and he had the four panel format. 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:44.160 I guess foisted it on him at first. Wow, there's 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:48.280 a lot of F's alliteration and he had to work 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.040 within it. And a lot of times just being constrained 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:54.239 by rules can actually produce the best art. You know, 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:57.000 sometimes when you don't have any rules, it's tough to 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:00.359 find your way or your direction where you're starting in 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:02.320 a structure can help a lot, and he really thrived 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:05.240 in that, even though he apparently didn't like having that 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:11.200 foisted on him. But this minimal style and the proportions 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:17.199 between the lettering, the like the the speech bubbles and 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:21.480 the kids and the panels, there is a study that 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:25.000 called it Schultze and symmetry, which makes a lot of sense, 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:28.160 and that what Charles Schultz did first was draw the panels, 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:31.400 then he wrote the dialogue, then he drew the characters. 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:34.760 And there's a writer named Ivan Brutelli who wrote in 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:38.560 the Parish Review that pointed out, like if you if 0:21:38.560 --> 0:21:41.160 you look at a Peanuts cartoon, you're on like eye 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:43.600 level with them. You're not looking up, you're not looking down. 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.239 You are on their level. And in that way, it 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:50.640 draws you into the cartoon and you can imagine yourself 0:21:50.680 --> 0:21:53.560 like in there with them. It makes it that much 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:56.159 more like it makes you part of that world and 0:21:56.280 --> 0:21:57.320 vice versa. 0:21:57.720 --> 0:21:59.520 Yeah, that's the one thing I didn't get because that's 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:00.919 in that comic in the world. 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:07.720 Uh so before him, yes, now, before him, that was 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:08.680 not the style. 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:10.800 Did they draw like they were looking down on top 0:22:10.840 --> 0:22:11.720 of someone's head. 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:15.120 They did whatever they wanted, and each one was giant 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:17.800 and took up huge amounts of the newspaper, and they 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:23.880 were masterpieces, like they were works of art, oftentimes really surreal. 0:22:23.960 --> 0:22:26.800 They were all over the place, all sorts of different perspectives. 0:22:27.200 --> 0:22:29.479 This was new, and it was part of that formal 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:32.679 minimalism that it was this one that you looked at 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:34.920 it the one way from the side, at the in 0:22:35.080 --> 0:22:38.800 these these specific proportions. It was it was something new 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:39.600 that he introduced. 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:43.000 Uh a little while ago, when you were saying that 0:22:43.040 --> 0:22:46.560 those constraints can really lead to great things, I thought 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:49.200 you were going to say, unless it's family circus. 0:22:49.600 --> 0:22:51.680