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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