A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969)

 

MeTV aired this movie this past Sunday night.  It was to honor Charles Schulz' 100th birthday.  That is November 26th, 1922.  It is a little early, but next week they will show Snoopy, Come Home next week, which will also be fun.  The main plot is Charlie Brown enters his class (he is in second grade, so that places the oldest Peanuts about 7-8 years old, Sally and Linus would be younger).  He unexpectedly wins.  He also wins the school wide contest.  This leads him to the National Spelling Bee in New York City, which Lucy expects him to win.  Well, Chuck being Chuck, he does exceedingly well, but misspells the final word and ends up in second place.  In the whole nation.  That is still pretty impressive, but Chuck is despondent.  Good thing both Linus and Lucy, of all people, help him see the light.

I first saw this movie in the theater.  It was either a reissue, or during a kiddie matinee.  It was probably right before Snoopy, Come Home was released in 1972.  I have seen this movie many times, enough to know a lot of the lines  I watched it with Agent F, who had never seen it before.  She quite enjoyed it, since she is familiar with all the characters.  We did wonder why these young children took bus rides to NYC and back by themselves, or how Snoopy held things.  These are things kids just accept, and really don't take away from the movie, but older eyes see them anyway.

Agent F was also surprised that the movie was a full on musical.  The songs are all memorable and fun.  I'm no big fan of jazz, but I do like the score as well.  The actors are all the originals from the mid 60s, though this would be the last time many of them would voice the characters.  The movie made $12,000,000 against a one million dollar budget.  The success of the movie was well deserved.