Bill Melendez
José Cuauhtémoc Melendez, who worked as Bill, was a Mexican-American animator who had already put in years at Walt Disney Productions, Warner Bros. Cartoons and UPA before the job that made him permanent arrived. From 1965 he directed and produced the Peanuts specials, and he also supplied the sounds for Snoopy and Woodstock, neither of whom speaks in words. That is an unusual double: the man running the production is also the noise the dog makes.
The animation itself is why the specials still work. The Peanuts films move at a strange, unhurried pace, hold on empty backgrounds, and let a joke sit in silence for longer than television normally allows. A Charlie Brown Christmas set the template in 1965, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown followed in 1966, and the run kept going through A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, and It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown in 1992. The features stretched it further, from A Boy Named Charlie Brown to Snoopy, Come Home and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown.
He worked outside that world too, directing an animated version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1979 and carrying a book credit on the 1967 print edition of A Charlie Brown Christmas. He lived from 1916 to 2008, and his voice outlasted him in an unusually literal way: The Peanuts Movie in 2015 used archive recordings of his Snoopy and Woodstock rather than recasting them.
Movies (17)
- The Peanuts Movie (2015)
- A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
- A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
- It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
- It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
- Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!) (1980)
- Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!) (1980)
- Snoopy, Come Home (1972)
- Snoopy, Come Home (1972)
- It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (1992)
- It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (1992)
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1979)
- A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)
- A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973)
- Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (1975)
- A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969)
- A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969)
TV (1)
Books (1)
Where to start with Bill Melendez
Begin with A Charlie Brown Christmas. It is the one that set every rule the rest follow, and the reason it still lands is craft rather than nostalgia: real children's voices, a jazz trio where you expect carols, and long quiet stretches nobody would greenlight now.
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is the next stop and the funniest of the specials, with Snoopy given the most physical comedy Melendez ever animated for him. For the features, A Boy Named Charlie Brown is the ambitious one and Snoopy, Come Home the most affecting, while A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving shows how much he could get from a folding chair and a piece of toast. Step outside Peanuts for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, his 1979 animated Narnia. Then try The Peanuts Movie, where his archived Snoopy and Woodstock are still doing the work decades on.