Peanuts animator passes

Jerry Beck reports on the passage of Bill Littlejohn, who worked as an animator on a number of Peanuts specials dating all the way back to A Charlie Brown Christmas, as well as quite a respectable list of other projects.

It’s been 45 years since that first Peanuts special. As the release of Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown – the first full special without any of the original team – approaches, we have to realize that the future of Peanuts animation will not be filled with those who know how it was done from the inside, but from those who study the results. Will that work out? I suspect so; the legacy that people like Littlejohn, Melendez, Guaraldi,  Schulz, and the still-with-us Lee Mendelson have built is powerful.

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Schulz/Peanuts news
Peanuts ownership changes

For those who like to keep track on big picture Peanuts business, there’s been a shift in ownership of Peanuts Holdings LLC, the owners of the key Peanuts intellectual property. Since 2018, the ownership has been split between the Schulz family, who owned 20%; WildBrain, who owned 41%, and Sony …

Animated Peanuts
A couple pops shy of a fun book; and shalom noel

Last year, in my too-completist quest for Peanuts books, I got the Snoopy Candy Fun Book, a box with a few puzzles under a flap, plus stickers and ten lollipops. Today, I was ina. store that had these, and ao I pulled up my old post to make sure that …

Animated Peanuts
A Summer Musical: The Dolores Report

The animated special Peanuts: A Summer Musical is coming out on Friday, as discussed before. And yet here I am on Thursday, covering it. What sort of secret inside access did I have that let’s me do this? Easy, I live on the West Coast. It’s already Friday on the East …