Who Was Charles Schulz?

Charles Schulz was the cartoonist, artist, and illustrator who created the extremely popular Peanuts comic strip. The characters within Peanuts, especially Charlie Brown and Snoopy, became beloved by men, women, and children around the world. For 50 years, Charles Schulz was the standard for cartooning, winning over millions with his wry humor, observations on the human condition, and occasional flights of fancy.

The day after Schulz’s death, the last of his 17,897 strips was published.

Dates:  November 26, 1922 -- February 12, 2000

Also Known As: Charles Monroe Schulz; Sparky (nickname)

Famous Quote: "Good Grief"; "Happiness is a warm puppy"

Early Years and Family

Charles Schulz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 26, 1922, the only child of his German-born father, Carl Schulz, and his Norwegian-American mother, Dena Halverson. It was during his first week of life that Schulz’s uncle gave him the nickname of “Sparky,” after comic-strip character Barney Google’s horse, Spark Plug. It was a name that friends were to call him for the rest of his life.

Schulz’s father was a self-made man, who was a barber in his own barbershop. By working six days a week in his barber shop, Carl was able to support his wife and child through the Great Depression with 25-cent haircuts. Carl was a hard worker but since he disliked travel, the family usually stayed close to home.

Schulz’s mother was a homemaker, who kept the house spotless, was an excellent cook, and took special care with her attire.

However, Dena kept mostly to herself and did not socialize with many people other than her own relatives.

From the age of six, Schulz wanted to become a cartoonist, perhaps because he and his father would spend every Sunday morning enjoying reading the comics together.

Education

In St. Paul, Schulz attended Richard Gordon Elementary School, where he skipped fourth grade. Schulz hid both his intelligence and his growing skill as an artist since both of these qualities were not prized in his family or among his schoolmates. His shyness and small size, exaggerated by his being younger than his classmates, also did not help him make friends, causing Schulz to be a bit of an outsider during his elementary-school years.

Often alone, Schulz enjoyed doodling. He even carried a pencil around with him all day in case he had a chance to draw.¹ Usually working with pencil or pen on paper, Schulz would draw Disney characters or other popular characters such as Popeye on his binders. Other students would be impressed with these drawings and ask him to draw for them too.² Despite this seeming success, Schulz was not confident of his artistic ability.

Living in the very cold winters of Minnesota, there were patches of ice all around, which made great locations for ice skating and ice hockey. Schulz spent a lot of time skating (a theme that often showed up in Peanuts), but during the warmer months, Schulz and his friends developed teams and played baseball and football. Despite his shy demeanor, Schulz was very competitive and wanted to win.

Also, like most boys his age, Schulz enjoyed the friendship of a dog. Schulz was 13 when Spike, as the dog was called, came into his life. This mixed-breed, black-and-white dog was later to become the basis for Snoopy.

When Schulz was 14, his parents took him to an exhibit of original cartoons at the St. Paul Public Library. After studying them, he went home, tore up all his drawings and started over again.

On February 22, 1937, a cartoon Schulz drew of Spike -- eating screws, tacks, and other inedible items -- appeared on a Ripley's Believe it or Not page. It was 14-year-old Schulz’s first published drawing.

Central High School

While attending Central High School, Schulz had an opportunity to try golf and he fell in love with the game. Although Schulz did not join in any other clubs or activities, he did join the golf team, where he earned a letter, and worked as a caddie at a golf club.

In high school, however, Schulz’s grades were slipping and he even failed a number of classes. This is perhaps not surprising since his mom was sick – very sick. As early as 1938, Dena Schulz had not been well. During her son's sophomore and junior years in high school, she had mostly been bedridden. No one had the heart to tell Schulz that she was suffering from incurable cervical cancer.

Despite her illness, Dena proved supportive of Schulz’s artistic talents. In 1940, during Schulz's senior year of high school, his mother showed him an ad for drawing lessons by mail: "Do You Like to Draw?" For $170, Federal School offered just what he wanted – art lessons with an emphasis on cartooning. That was a huge amount of money during the Great Depression and Schulz’s father struggled to pay the bill.

Schulz graduated from high school with his same-age peers in 1940.

Army Service

In the years after high school graduation, Schulz, who did not consider himself college material, lived at home while doing odd jobs.

Schulz did finish his drawing lessons in December 1941, the same month that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and America entered into World War II. Schulz sent out some cartoons every week to magazines like The Saturday Evening Post andCollier's but to no avail.

In November 1942, Schulz got a draft notice. He was going to be leaving home, leaving his sick mother.  In all his life, Schulz had only spent a couple of nights away from his mother. And now she was dying and he had to leave her. This was going to be difficult, really difficult.

Only a few months later, in February 1943, Schulz was home for the weekend from Fort Snelling in Minnesota to visit his ill mother. During his visit, on the evening of February 28, 1943, Schulz was saying goodbye when she responded that they’d probably not see each other again. She died the next day. Schulz was devastated. He would forever regret that she never got to see him published.³

Schulz was to spend three years in the Army. It was a time of great loneliness. However, he did the job he was supposed to do, even maturing into a well-liked leader as he was promoted to squad leader and the rank of staff sergeant. Schulz was to stay in the United States as an instructor for new recruits and then, with the 20th Armored Division, he was sent to Germany, where he participated in the liberation of Dachau. He was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge (CIB) for his service, an award he treasured.

Schulz did not have a lot of time to draw during his Army days, but he did draw cartoons on the letters he and army buddies sent home. When he could, he sent off comic strips and stories of his army experience to magazines, but nothing came of it.

Li’l Folks

After his return to civilian life, Charles Schulz moved back in with his father in an apartment over the barber shop. Wanting to find a job, any job, that had to do with cartooning, Schulz found a position lettering comic strips for Timeless Topix, a St. Paul company that produced Roman Catholic teaching aids.

At about the same time, the Federal School (now named Art Instruction Schools), the same company that had taught him drawing lessons in 1940 and 1941, hired him to critique and advise other students. Schulz thus worked both jobs, while still continuing to develop his own ideas.

Schulz greatly enjoyed working at the Art Institute and became lifelong friends with some of the other instructors. He liked some of them so much that their names became characters within Peanuts -- Charlie Brown, of course being the most famous.⁴

While still working at Art Instruction, Schulz began focusing on drawing a group of little kids that he eventually developed into a four-panel strip called Li'l Folks, where he first used the name “Charlie Brown” and a dog that would eventually morph into Snoopy.  Beginning in 1947, Li'l Folks was published weekly in the St. Paul Pioneer Press for two years with "Sparky" as the byline. (See an example of Li'l Folks.)

Despite the success of Li’l Folks, Schulz continued to submit cartoons to other magazines as well. On July 8, 1950, TheSaturday Evening Post published one of Schulz’s many submissions to them and for the first time his real name appeared with his drawing. Of almost 50 submissions to them, they published 15 in these early years.

Schulz sent samples of his cartoons to several syndicates. In 1950, United Features Syndicate (UFS) invited him to bring his work to New York City. They liked his work so much that they offered him a five-year contract to market Li'l Folks, giving Schulz 50% commission. Charles Schulz readily agreed.

Love and Marriage

With the United Features contract signed, Schulz bought a new car and returned to Minnesota to red-haired Donna Mae Johnson, the girl he had been dating, with a proposal of marriage. She turned him down for another suitor, a young man she had known for years. Donna was the inspiration for the “Little Red-Haired Girl,” who is never drawn into the strip but is the character that Charlie Brown has a crush on in Peanuts.

Not long afterward, Schulz met a co-worker’s sister, the fiery Joyce Halverson, who was a divorced mother with a one-year-old daughter, Meredith. They were married on April 18, 1951, but for many years they gave an earlier wedding date to protect Meredith from being scorned. Joyce and Charles had four more children together: Monte, Craig, Jill, and Amy. The marriage lasted for 23 years. Joyce became Schulz’s inspiration for Lucy.

Peanuts Is Born

Just as Schulz’s Li’l Folks was about to be released, another strip came out with the same name. Thus, Schulz was forced to change the name of his comic strip. Schulz suggested either Charlie Brown or Good ol’ Charlie Brown, but the executives at UFS had another idea – Peanuts. The name “Peanuts” referred to the rowdy kids who sit in a peanut gallery, the section of a theater that has the cheapest seats. Schulz forever hated the new name for his strip, but it stuck.⁵

There was another important name decision at nearly the same time. The nameless dog from Li’l Folks was about to be named “Sniffy,” when Schulz saw that very name attributed to a dog in another comic book. Thinking back, Schulz remembered that him mom had once said that if they were to ever get another dog, she’d like to name it “Snoopy.” Thus was the beginning of Snoopy’s fame.

The very first Peanuts comic strip appeared in seven newspapers on October 2, 1950. The popularity of Peanuts increased exponentially. By 1952, it appeared in 40 U.S. newspapers and in 1958, it was published in 355 U.S. newspapers as well as 40 international ones.  The strip’s popularity would eventually grow to 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries.

How Did He Do It?

For 50 years, Charles Schulz worked alone on his strip, churning out comic strip after comic strip. He insisted on doing it alone, personally coming up with the ideas as well as drawing the art and lettering himself.

Schulz did not like to receive suggestions for the strip and insisted that, with one exception, all the ideas were his alone. Yes, he named some of his characters after friends and family, such as Linus from his Art Instruction friend, Linus Maurer, and Peppermint Patty from his cousin, Patricia Swanson. And yes, a few ideas came from his five children, such as Linus’ security blanket and Lucy being a “fussbudget.” But Schulz insisted that the main qualities and situations of each of his characters came from within himself, not from others.

To get ideas, Schulz would begin by doodling. Then he would pencil out his strip, making sure everything was exactly right before inking it with his favorite pen, an Esterbrook Radio 914, that required nibs that he dipped into India ink. For the lettering, Schulz preferred a Speedball C-5 pen. He always tried to work ahead, even six to eight weeks before the strips were due.

As Charlie Brown emerged as the central, most popular character of Peanuts, the public wanted to know more about Charlie Brown and who he was really based upon. Schulz hid behind a personae of being a shy, regular guy from the Midwest, who had his own share of loneliness and troubles. In other words, he let the public believe that he and Charlie Brown were one and the same. However, Charles Schulz was anything but regular.

Expanding the Reach of Peanuts

It is truly amazing how quickly and how thoroughly Peanuts became a phenomenon. Charles Schulz began the strip in 1950 and was paid $90 for his first month of strips. By 1956, he was earning $4,000 a month.⁶ In 1971, he would earn approximately $12.5 million per month.

Accolades started coming his way. For example, in 1956, Schulz was honored by being named Humorist of the Year by Yale students. That same year, he also received the National Cartoonist Society award, the Reuben, presented to him by Rube Goldberg, the comic inventor, himself.

In 1958, the Peanuts characters jumped off of the comic strip page and onto Hallmark cards. Also that year, the first set of Peanuts figurines were sold by the Hungerford Plastics Corporation. This was to be just the beginning of the huge Peanuts memorabilia franchise, with Charlie Brown and friends appearing in many reprints, books, games, stickers, stuffed animals, lunch boxes, T-shirts, and much more.

In 1958, the Schulz family moved to Sebastopol, California, and Joyce designed and had built an elaborate house on 28-acres that they called Coffee Grounds. The house was a split level, with bedrooms for the children painted by their father. Over the years, Joyce added a pool, a playground, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, stables for horses and cows, a miniature golf course, a private maze, and a four-story tree house.

A year later, Ford Motor Company enlisted the Peanuts gang to advertise their Ford Falcon. Unfortunately, because of this and other endorsements, Schulz was sometimes criticized as being greedy.

In April 1960, Connie Boucher of Determined Productions approached Schulz, proposing putting together a small book of cartoons and pithy sayings to be sold in card shops and bookstores. The first one, Happiness Is a Warm Puppy, was a gamble. When others were added (such as Security Is a Thumb and a Blanket and I Need All the Friends I Can Get) the Peanuts books had themselves become a phenomenon, bringing in in over a million pretax dollars over the next four years.

TV Specials

Reluctant to have anyone else work with his characters, Schulz did not relish the idea of putting his Peanuts on TV. He agreed only if he could have final say and if the voice actors were actual children not grownups pretending to be children.

Schulz wrote a script with Lee Mendelson in one weekend. Accompanied by Vince Guaraldi's jazz piano, animated by Bill Melendez, and unassisted by any laugh track, A Charlie Brown Christmas was first aired on December 9, 1965. It won both an Emmy and a Peabody award. Repeated annually, it became TV's longest running cartoon special.  

Later TV specials celebrated Halloween, Easter, Valentine's Day, and Thanksgiving, as well as on topics such as football, baseball, the kite-eating tree, and going to camp. A total of 45 television specials were made over the years.

Snoopy Has a Message for the Sixties

Schulz was not a social activist, but he managed to make people aware of how life "just happens" to people of varying political persuasions. With the controversy of the Vietnam War splitting the country, the Peanuts characters appealed equally to both patriotic and antiwar types. Snoopy especially helped with this message.

Initially just a regular pooch that mooched snacks and defied any attempts to teach him tricks, Snoopy soon began to have thinking bubbles over his head, danced with two feet, and slept atop his doghouse. With Snoopy, Schulz was able to carry the strips into exotic realms through Snoopy’s impersonations, such as a WWI flying ace, Joe Cool, ice-skating coach, writer, astronaut, and more.

Beginning in 1968, Macy's Thanksgiving Parade featured a Snoopy balloon. College kids adopted him. Military units and protesters adopted him. Time Magazine declared him a hippie favorite in a 1967 cover story.

It could be argued that Snoopy had become just as popular as Charlie Brown.

Snoopy and Charlie Brown came together to help in the space race when they were named mascots for the Apollo 10 crew circling the moon in 1969. When the lunar landing module (Snoopy) reconnected with the command module (Charlie Brown), the crew told the ground observers, "Snoopy and Charlie Brown are hugging each other."

Peanuts had become part of the American psyche.

Changes for Schulz

Joyce had continually insisted that Schulz should be more involved with the house and children, but he was glad to have her take charge, while he devoted himself to the studio and his work. She would become angry and he would become depressed. As their paths diverged, their interests and goals became quite different.

In 1969, Joyce expanded their holdings by building the Redwood Empire Ice Arena (commonly known as Snoopy’s Home Ice) at cost of $2 million. This indoor ice arena hosts ice shows, hockey teams, and skating lessons. It also includes the Warm Puppy Coffee Shop.

Although Schulz loved ice skating, the ice arena was not enough to save his marriage. In 1970, Schulz met Tracey Claudius, who was 23-years his junior. Soon, he was having an affair with her and sending her love notes. When Joyce found out, she filed for a divorce on December 11, 1972.

The divorce was final on August 7, 1973, and Joyce immediately remarried. Schulz asked Claudius to marry him, but she refused.

Then Schulz met Elizabeth Jean Forsyth Clyde (“Jeannie”) at the Warm Puppy Coffee Shop when she was taking her daughter for skating lessons. Jeannie was married, a mother with two daughters, and active in civic affairs and philanthropy. After her divorce, 50-year-old Schulz and 34-year-old Jeannie married on September 22, 1973. They lived together 27 years, until his death at the end of the century.

In 1977, Schulz renegotiated his arrangements with United Features, by this time named United Media. They agreed that he alone had the rights to the characters in Peanuts. Should Schulz choose in the future to stop drawing, there would be no more new strips.

Illness and Death

In July of 1981, Charles Schulz had a heart attack and then had quadruple bypass surgery on September 2. He recovered and returned to drawing his strip. Amazingly, since he was far enough ahead in his strips, the public did not see any break.

In 1997, Schulz took a break from 47 years of drawing his strip. United Media agreed to a five-week hiatus, while the 2,600 newspapers that subscribed to Peanuts reran strips from earlier years. Only three weeks into his vacation, he was itching to get back to the drawing board.

On Friday, December 31, 1999, Schulz felt ill and was rushed to Memorial Hospital in Santa Rosa with a blocked abdominal aorta. During surgery, the doctors found that he had colon cancer.

Just two months later, on February 12, 2000, 77-year-old Charles Schulz died in his sleep at home. The very next day, Schulz’s final Peanuts comic strip appeared in newspapers around the world.

Notes

1. David Michaelis, Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography (New York: Harper Collins, 2007) 66.
2. Charles M. Schulz, My Life With Charlie Brown (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010) 6.
3. Schulz, My Life, 8.
4. Schulz, My Life, 15.
5. Michaelis, Schulz and Peanuts, 221.
6. Michaelis, Schulz, 266.