I feel an almost irresistible urge to watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, especially tonight, when it is being broadcast on ABC (I actually looked for it on CBS first), because it is the 50th anniversary of the show's first airing.
The year was 1966. I was eight years old, the perfect age to grow up with Halloween and the Peanuts Gang being synonymous. For the first few years, it was the perfect time to come inside, put on my jammies, eat as much candy as my mom would let me get away with, and watch TV.
As I got older, I would plan my trick-or-treat route with the same strategy a general might bring to bear on a decisive battle, so as to collect the most candy in the most expeditious manner possible. But I always arranged to be back home by 7:00. I would wolf down some dinner, watch what happens when you jump into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker, and head back out for a couple more hours of trick-or-treating.
The Great Pumpkin was a cultural event to be shared annually with other children all across America. The anticipation was heightened by the fact that if for some reason (say for example you were abducted by martians or eaten by an alligator), you, like Linus trying to find a pumpkin patch that's really sincere, had to wait till next year.
But what of the show itself? I love the minimalist animation style, the evocative pastel backgrounds, the primary colors of the characters, the free-form opening credits, the improvisational jazz score, the WWI piano music.
My wife has it set in her mind that I am Linus and she is Sally. Whenever she sees me, she claps her hands together, and little pink hearts pop up all around her head. However, when Sally says, "Oh, I'd never laugh at you Linus," is not what a humorist wants to hear.
That being said, I wanted to quickly share a few of my favorite moments from the show.
The first scene opens to the classic Vince Guaraldi tune, "Linus and Lucy," as Lucy picks out the largest pumpkin in the patch, and leaves it to her little brother to get it home. Lucy calmly spreads newspaper on the floor, sets the pumpkin on the papers, plunges a kitchen knife into the helpless vegetable, and proceeds to remove its guts, to which Linus exclaims, "Oh, you didn't tell me you were going to kill it."
Coming from a family of lawyers, and even a few judges, my wife and I delight in the line from the iconic scene where Lucy holds the football so Charlie Brown can kick it. Charlie Brown says, "I guess if you have a signed document in your possession, you can't go wrong." Of course, we know how that ends. (ABC saw fit to cut this entire scene for commercial space. Very bad form, but what can you expect from Disney?)
Two lines I often quote are spoken by Linus as he writes a letter to the Great Pumpkin. After a deeply philosophical and contentious debate with Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown says, "We're obviously separated by denominational differences." Alone with his thoughts again, Linus comments, "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin."
The show contains many special moments for me, as when Linus walks into the living room on his way to mail his letter to the Great Pumpkin, and Lucy is reading a copy of TV Guide - with her on the cover.
Toward the beginning of the show, the gang gathers at Charlie Brown's house. Charlie Brown has a little trouble with the scissors, but several of the kids are wearing ghost costumes made out of bed sheets, even Pigpen who arrives amid his customary billows of dirt. I always wind up thinking, there couldn't have been too many happy moms out there.
I also love the great WWI homage as Snoopy makes his way across the occupied French countryside, only to slip into the Halloween party through an upstairs window, just in time for Lucy to bob for apples. "Blech, my lips touched dog lips. Blech. Ech. Poison dog lips. Blech. Ech." As someone who routinely lets their cat eat off his plate, the humor is not lost.
I also like the fact that Peanuts creator Charles Schulz allows Lucy to show her more mature side. Again referring to the early scene at Charlie Brown's house, Sally struggles to get her costume on (another bed sheet ghost), and Lucy reaches out to help her.
One of the most touching segments in all of the Peanuts specials occurs when Lucy wakes up at the stroke of 4:00, peeks in her little brother's bedroom, gets dressed, gathers up Linus who's shivering from cold in the pumpkin patch, guides him home with her arm around his shoulder, gets him in bed, removes his shoes and socks, and tucks him in.
One character who is decidedly not happy at the end of the evening is Sally, who's been cheated out of trick-or-treats. "Halloween is over and I missed it.... I could have had candy, apples, and gum, and cookies, and money, and all sorts of things."
But Linus is undeterred, and as the rest of the kids head home, Linus says if the Great Pumpkin comes he'll still put in a good word for them, but then he realizes his mistake - he should have said when, not if. "One little slip like that can cause the great pumpkin to pass you by."
As we know, Charlie Brown winds up with a bag full of rocks, Sally missed the entire evening, and all that came to Linus' pumpkin patch was a beagle. The next morning, Charlie Brown and Linus lean dejectedly on a brick wall, and when Charlie Brown says, "Well, another Halloween has come and gone," I understand how he feels.
But what of the show itself? I love the minimalist animation style, the evocative pastel backgrounds, the primary colors of the characters, the free-form opening credits, the improvisational jazz score, the WWI piano music.
My wife has it set in her mind that I am Linus and she is Sally. Whenever she sees me, she claps her hands together, and little pink hearts pop up all around her head. However, when Sally says, "Oh, I'd never laugh at you Linus," is not what a humorist wants to hear.
That being said, I wanted to quickly share a few of my favorite moments from the show.
The first scene opens to the classic Vince Guaraldi tune, "Linus and Lucy," as Lucy picks out the largest pumpkin in the patch, and leaves it to her little brother to get it home. Lucy calmly spreads newspaper on the floor, sets the pumpkin on the papers, plunges a kitchen knife into the helpless vegetable, and proceeds to remove its guts, to which Linus exclaims, "Oh, you didn't tell me you were going to kill it."
Coming from a family of lawyers, and even a few judges, my wife and I delight in the line from the iconic scene where Lucy holds the football so Charlie Brown can kick it. Charlie Brown says, "I guess if you have a signed document in your possession, you can't go wrong." Of course, we know how that ends. (ABC saw fit to cut this entire scene for commercial space. Very bad form, but what can you expect from Disney?)
Two lines I often quote are spoken by Linus as he writes a letter to the Great Pumpkin. After a deeply philosophical and contentious debate with Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown says, "We're obviously separated by denominational differences." Alone with his thoughts again, Linus comments, "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin."
The show contains many special moments for me, as when Linus walks into the living room on his way to mail his letter to the Great Pumpkin, and Lucy is reading a copy of TV Guide - with her on the cover.
Toward the beginning of the show, the gang gathers at Charlie Brown's house. Charlie Brown has a little trouble with the scissors, but several of the kids are wearing ghost costumes made out of bed sheets, even Pigpen who arrives amid his customary billows of dirt. I always wind up thinking, there couldn't have been too many happy moms out there.
I also love the great WWI homage as Snoopy makes his way across the occupied French countryside, only to slip into the Halloween party through an upstairs window, just in time for Lucy to bob for apples. "Blech, my lips touched dog lips. Blech. Ech. Poison dog lips. Blech. Ech." As someone who routinely lets their cat eat off his plate, the humor is not lost.
I also like the fact that Peanuts creator Charles Schulz allows Lucy to show her more mature side. Again referring to the early scene at Charlie Brown's house, Sally struggles to get her costume on (another bed sheet ghost), and Lucy reaches out to help her.
One of the most touching segments in all of the Peanuts specials occurs when Lucy wakes up at the stroke of 4:00, peeks in her little brother's bedroom, gets dressed, gathers up Linus who's shivering from cold in the pumpkin patch, guides him home with her arm around his shoulder, gets him in bed, removes his shoes and socks, and tucks him in.
One character who is decidedly not happy at the end of the evening is Sally, who's been cheated out of trick-or-treats. "Halloween is over and I missed it.... I could have had candy, apples, and gum, and cookies, and money, and all sorts of things."
But Linus is undeterred, and as the rest of the kids head home, Linus says if the Great Pumpkin comes he'll still put in a good word for them, but then he realizes his mistake - he should have said when, not if. "One little slip like that can cause the great pumpkin to pass you by."
As we know, Charlie Brown winds up with a bag full of rocks, Sally missed the entire evening, and all that came to Linus' pumpkin patch was a beagle. The next morning, Charlie Brown and Linus lean dejectedly on a brick wall, and when Charlie Brown says, "Well, another Halloween has come and gone," I understand how he feels.
But what is it that draws me so strongly to still plan my evening viewing around a fifty year old cartoon? We've had it on VHS since our children were small, and now on Blu-ray. To tell the truth, we've already watched it once this season. So why do I feel like if I don't watch it this evening I'll have missed something irretrievable?
There's nostalgia, of course. I even like the candy and other Halloween themed commercials. But it's not just the show, it's the sense of the lost connection that held middle-class America together through war, assassinations, civil unrest, cultural upheaval, and a very chilling Cold War.
But enough of that. There are much more serious questions to address, such as - in the original airing of the show, how many times did Charlie Brown get a rock? Whenever I ask that question, I invariably get answers ranging from one to seven. The correct answer is three.
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