Charles Monroe Schulz (26th November 1922 - 12 February 2000), dubbed Sparky , is an American cartoonist famous for his Peanuts comic strip (which features Charlie Brown and Snoopy characters, among others). He is widely regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists of all time, cited as a major influence by many later cartoonists, including Jim Davis, Bill Watterson, and Matt Groening.
Video Charles M. Schulz
Early life and education
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Schulz grew up in Saint Paul. He is the only child of Carl Schulz, born in Germany, and Dena Halverson, who has a Norwegian heritage. Her uncle called her "Sparky" after the Spark Plug horse on the comic strip Billy DeBeck, Barney Google .
Schulz likes to draw and sometimes draws his family dog, Spike, who eats unusual things, like pins and tacks. In 1937, Schulz drew Spike and sent it to Ripley's Believe It or Not! ; his image appeared in Robert Ripley's syndicated panel, entitled, "The hunting dogs that eat pins, tacks, and razors belong to C. F. Schulz, St. Paul, Minn." and "Drawn by 'Sparky'" (C.F. is his father, Carl Fred Schulz).
Schulz attended Richards Gordon Elementary School in Saint Paul, where he spent two and a half grades. She became a shy, shy teenager, probably because she was the youngest in her class at High School. One of the most notable episodes of his high school life is the rejection of his drawings by his high school yearbook, which he mentions in Peanuts years later, when he asks Lucy Brown to sign the picture he's drawing a horse, just to then say it's a joke. The five-foot-tall Snoopy statue was placed in the main office of the school 60 years later.
Maps Charles M. Schulz
Military and post-war services
In February 1943, Schulz's mother, Dena, died after a long illness. At the time of his death, he was recently made aware that he had cancer. Schulz with all accounts is very close to his mother and his death has a huge effect on him.
Around the same time, Schulz was recruited into the United States Army. He served as a staff sergeant with the 20th Armored Division in Europe, as an army leader on a.50 caliber machine gun team. His unit saw the battle only at the end of the war. Schulz said he had one chance to fire his machine gun but forgot to load it. Fortunately, he said, the Germans could have opened fire with willingly surrendered. Years later, Schulz proudly speaks of his war service.
In late 1945, Schulz returned to Minneapolis. He wrote letters to the Roman Catholic comic magazine, Topix Abadi , and then, in July 1946, took a job at Art Instruction, Inc., reviewing and assessing the lessons presented by the students. Schulz had taken a correspondence course from school before he was recruited. He worked in school for several years while developing his career as a comic creator until he made enough money to do it full-time.
Careers
The first group of regular Schulz cartoons, a series of weekly one-week pranks called Li'l Folks , was published from June 1947 to January 1950 at St. Paul Pioneer Press, with Schulz typically performs four images one panel per issue. It was in Li'l Folks that Schulz first used Charlie Brown's name for the characters, although he applied the names in four jokes to three different boys as well as one buried in the sand. The series also has dogs similar to Snoopy. In May 1948, Schulz sold his first panel image to The Saturday Evening Post; in the next two years, a total of 17 unnamed pictures by Schulz are published on Post , along with his work for Pioneer Press . Around the same time, he tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the Association of Newspaper Companies; Schulz will become an independent contractor for the syndicate, which was unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal failed. Li'l Folks was crossed from Pioneer Press in January 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached United Feature Syndicate with a single-panel series of Li'l Folks , and the syndicate became interested. At the time Schulz had also developed comic strips, usually using four panes instead of one, and for Schulz's pleasure, the syndicates chose that version. Peanuts made his first appearance on October 2, 1950, in seven newspapers. Weekly Week page debuted on January 6, 1952. After a slow start, Peanuts finally became one of the most popular comics of all time, as well as one of the most influential. Schulz also has a short-lived sports-oriented strip comic, It's Only a Game (1957-59), but he left it after the success of Peanut . From 1956 to 1965 he donated a strip panel, the "Young Pillar", featuring teenagers, to Youth, a publication related to the Lord's Church.
In 1957 and 1961 he illustrated two volumes of Art Linkletter's Kids Say the Darndest Things , and in 1964 was a collection of letters, Dear President Johnson , by Bill Adler.
Beans
At its peak, Peanuts is published daily in 2,600 papers in 75 countries, in 21 languages. For nearly 50 years, Peanuts was published, Schulz drew nearly 18,000 strips. Strip, plus merchandise and product support, generates revenues of more than $ 1 billion per year, with Schulz earning around $ 30 million to $ 40 million annually. During the strip run, Schulz took just one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997 to celebrate his 75th birthday; strip reruns took place during his vacation, the only time that occurred during Schulz's life.
The first collection of Beans strips was published in July 1952 by Rinehart & amp; Company. The many books that followed, contributed greatly to the increasing popularity of the strip. In 2004, Fantagraphics started the series Complete Peanuts . Peanuts also proved popular in other media; The first special animated TV, A Charlie Brown Christmas , aired in December 1965 and won an Emmy award. Many TV shows followed, the most recent being Happiness is the Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown in 2011. Until his death, Schulz wrote or wrote with TV specials and carefully supervised their production.
Charlie Brown, the main character of Peanuts, was named after a co-worker at Art Instruction Inc. Schulz draws a lot from his own life, some examples:
- Like Charlie Brown's parents, Schulz's father is a barber and his mother is a housewife.
- Like Charlie Brown, Schulz often feels shy and withdraws. In an interview with Charlie Rose in May 1997, Schulz observed, "I think there is a melancholy feeling in many cartoonists, because cartoons, like all other humor, come from bad things that happen."
- Schulz is reported to have a smart dog when he was a child. Although this dog is a pointer, not a hunting dog like Snoopy, family photographs assert a certain physical resemblance.
- References to Snoopy's brother Spike who lived outside Needles, California, were influenced by several years (1928-30) of the Schulz family living there; they moved to Needles to join another family member who moved from Minnesota to take care of a sick cousin.
- Schulz's inspiration for Charlie Brown's unrequited love for Red-Haired Little Girl is Donna Mae Johnson, an accountant for Art Instruction Inc. with whom he fell in love. When Schulz finally proposed to him in June 1950, not long after he made his first contract with his syndicate, he turned him down and married another man.
- Linus and Shermy are named for his best friends Linus Maurer and Sherman Plepler, respectively.
- Peppermint Patty was inspired by Patricia Swanson, one of her cousins ​​on her mother's side. Schulz finds the character's name when he sees the peppermint candy in his home.
Influences
The Charles M. Schulz Museum counts Milton Caniff ( Terry and Pirates ) and Bill Mauldin as a major influence on Schulz's work. In his own work, Schulz regularly describes the annual Snoopy Veteran's annual visit with Mauldin, including the mention of the World War II Mauldin cartoons. Schulz (and critic) also praised George Herriman ( Krazy Kat ), Roy Crane ( Wash Tubbs ), Elzie C. Fresh ( Thimble Theater ) and Percy Crosby ( Skippy ) as a result. In a 1994 speech to fellow cartoonists, Schulz discussed some of them. But according to his biographer Rheta Grimsley Johnson:
It is impossible to narrow down three or two or even one direct influence on the [Schulz] personal drawing style. The uniqueness of "Peanuts" has distinguished it over the years... The one-of-a-kind quality penetrates every aspect of the strip and very clearly extends to the image. It is purely hers without a clear pioneer and no subsequent pretensions.
According to Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, Schulz watched the movie Citizen Kane 40 times. The character Lucy van Pelt also expressed his fondness for the film, and in one strip he cruelly damaged the end of his story for his younger brother.
Personal life
In April 1951, Schulz married Joyce Halverson (unrelated to Schulz's mother, Dena Halverson Schulz). Later in the same year, they moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado. Their first child, a son named Monte, was born in February 1952, and three more children were born later, in Minnesota.
Schulz and his family returned to Minneapolis and stayed until 1958. They then moved to Sebastopol, California, where Schulz built his first studio. (Until then, he works at home or in a small rented office space.) It was there that Schulz was interviewed for an unmarried television documentary A Boy Named Charlie Brown . Some of the tapes were eventually used in the next documentary, Charlie Brown and Charles Schulz . Schulz's father died while visiting him in 1966, the same year when Schulz's Sebastopol studio burned down. In 1969, Schulz moved to Santa Rosa, California, where he lived and worked until his death. While briefly living in Colorado Springs, Schulz painted a mural on the bedroom wall of his adopted son Meredith Hodges, featuring Patty with balloons, Charlie Brown jumping over candlesticks, and Snoopy playing crawl. The wall was removed in 2001, donated and transferred to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa.
By the end of Thanksgiving 1970, it was clear that Schulz's marriage was in trouble. He had an affair with a 25-year-old woman named Tracey Claudius. Schulzes divorced in 1972, and in September 1973 he married Jean Forsyth Clyde, whom he met first when he took his daughter to the hockey arena. They were married for 27 years, until Schulz's death in 2000.
Abduction attempt
On Sunday, May 8, 1988, two gunmen in the ski mask entered Schulzes's house through an unlocked door, planning to kidnap Jean, but the attempt failed when their daughter Jill went home, prompting the kidnappers to escape.. Jill calls the police from a neighbor's house. Sonoma County Sheriff, Dick Michaelsen, said: "It's obviously a ransom-kidnapping trial, it's a targeted criminal act, they know exactly who the victims are." Neither Schulz nor his wife had been injured during the incident.
Sports
Schulz has a long relationship with ice sports, and both skating and ice hockey stand out in his cartoons. In Santa Rosa, he has the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, which opened in 1969 and features a snack bar called "The Warm Puppy". Princess Schulz, Amy, acts as a model for figure skating on special television. She is a Good Skate, Charlie Brown (1980). Schulz is also very active in senior ice-hockey tournaments; in 1975, he formed the Snoopy Senior World Hockey Tournament at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, and in 1981, he was awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy for outstanding service for hockey sports in the United States. Schulz also enjoyed golf and became a member of Santa Rosa Golf and Country Club from 1959 to 2000.
In 1998, Schulz hosted the Hockey Tournament Over 75 Early. In 2000, the Ramsey County Council chose to rename the Highland Park Ice Arena Charles M. Schulz-Highland Arena in his honor.
Art
In addition to comics, Schulz is interested in art in general; his favorite artist in his final years is Andrew Wyeth. As a young adult, Schulz also developed a passion for classical music. Although Schroeder's character in Peanuts worships Beethoven, Schulz's personal favorite composer is reported to be Brahms.
Reduced health and retirement
In July 1981, Schulz underwent heart bypass surgery. During his stay in the hospital, President Ronald Reagan called to make a quick recovery.
In the 1980s, Schulz complained that "sometimes my hands move too much, I have to hold my wrist to draw." This caused the wrong impression that Schulz suffered from Parkinson's disease. According to a letter from his doctor, placed in the Archives of the Charles M. Schulz Museum by his widow, Schulz has an important tremor, a condition that is alleviated by beta blockers. Schulz still insists on writing and drawing the strip itself, which produces shakier lines from time to time.
In November 1999, Schulz suffered from several small strokes and blocked aorta, and he was later found to be suffering from colon cancer that has spread. Because of chemotherapy and the fact that he could not see clearly, he announced his resignation on December 14, 1999. It was difficult for Schulz, who told Al Roker about The Today Show, "I never dreamed that this is what will happen to me.I always feel that I might stick with the strip until I am in my early eighties.But suddenly it's gone.This has been taken from me.I do not take this away from me. "
Schulz was asked whether, in his last strip of Peanuts, Charlie Brown could finally kick the ball after decades (one of the many recurring themes in Peanuts) was Charlie Brown trying to kick the ball when Lucy holds it, just so that Lucy pulls her back at the last moment, causing her to fall on her back.He said, "Oh, no, obviously not.I can not get Charlie Brown to kick the ball, it will hurt him after almost half a century." in an interview in December 1999, holding back tears, Schulz recounts the moment when he signed his last strip, saying, "Suddenly I thought, 'You know, that poor, poor kid, he never even kicked the ball What a dirty trick - he never had a chance to kick the ball. ""
Death
Schulz died in his sleep at home on February 12, 2000, at about 21:45, due to colon cancer. The original Peanuts original strip was published the next day, Sunday, February 13th. Schulz had predicted that the strip would last longer because the strips were usually taken weeks before their publication. Schulz is buried at Pleasant Hills Cemetery in Sebastopol, California.
As part of his contract with the syndicate, Schulz requested that no other artist be allowed to draw Peanuts . United Features has legal ownership of the strip, but respects its wish, rather than re-syndicated to the newspaper. New television specials have also been produced since Schulz's death, with stories based on previous strips; Schulz always said that TV shows are entirely separate from the strip.
Schulz was honored on May 27, 2000, by a cartoonist over 100 strip comics, who paid tribute to him and Peanuts by incorporating his character into their strip of the day.
Appreciation
Schulz received the Humor Comic Strip Award from the National Cartoonists Society in 1962 for Peanuts, the Elzie Segar Award from the Society in 1980, and also the first two-time winner of their Reuben Award for 1955 and 1964, and their Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999. He is also an avid hockey fan; in 1981, Schulz was awarded Lester Patrick Trophy for his outstanding contribution to hockey sport in the United States, and he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame of the United States in 1993. On June 28, 1996, Schulz was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, nearby with Walt Disney. This star replica appeared outside his former studio in Santa Rosa. Schulz is the recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award awarded by the Boy Scouts of America, for his services to American youth.
A manned space flight supporter, Schulz was honored with the naming of the Apollo 10 Charlie Brown command module, and the Snoopy lunar module was launched on May 18, 1969. The Silver Snoopy award is a special award given to NASA employees and contractors for outstanding achievements related to aviation safety or success human mission. The award certificate states that it is "In Appreciation" "For professionalism, dedication and exceptional support that greatly enhances flight safety and mission success."
On January 1, 1974, Schulz served as Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California.
Schulz is a sharp bridge player, and Peanuts sometimes includes bridge references. In 1997, according to Alan Truscott, the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), awarded Snoopy and Woodstock, Life Master, and Schulz was pleased. According to ACBL, only Snoopy received the award.
On February 10, 2000, two days before Schulz's death, Congressman Mike Thompson introduced Hr. 3642, a draft to give Schulz the Gold Medal of Congress, the highest civilian award given by the US legislature. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives (with only Ron Paul voting no and 24 not voting) on ​​February 15, and the bill was sent to the Senate where he passed unanimously on May 2. The Senate also considers the associated bill, S.2060 (introduced by Dianne Feinstein). President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law on June 20, 2000. On June 7, 2001, widow Schulz Jean received the award on behalf of her late husband in a public ceremony.
Schulz was inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2007.
Schulz was the first recipient of The Harvey Kurtzman Hall of Fame Award, received by Karen Johnson, Museum Director Charles M. Schulz, at the 2014 Harvey Awards held at the Baltimore Comic Convention in Baltimore, Maryland.
Biography
Some biographies have been written about Schulz, including Rheta Grimsley Johnson Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz (1989), endorsed by Schulz.
The longest biography, Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography (2007) by David Michaelis, has been heavily criticized by the Schulz family; Son Schulz, Monte states, he has "a number of factual errors all over... [including] factual misinterpretations" and extensively documenting these errors in a number of essays. However, Michaelis maintains that there are "no questions" of his work accurately. Although cartoonist Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes) feels the biography does justice to Schulz's legacy, while giving insight into the emotional impulses of the creation of strips, cartoonists and critics R.C. Harvey considers the book a failure to describe Schulz as a cartoonist and in fulfilling Michaelis's purpose of "understanding how Charles Schulz knew the world"; Harvey felt the biography bending facts to the thesis rather than evoking the thesis of the facts. Dan Shanahan's review, in the American Book Review (volume 29, No. 6), of the biography of Michaelis misinterpreted the biography not for factual errors, but for the "tendency" to find problems in Schulz's life to explain his art, regardless of how little material is suitable for Michaelis's interpretation. Shanahan cites, in particular, such things as the rough interpretation of Michaelis from the family of Schulz's mother, and the "almost voyeuristic quality" of hundreds of pages devoted to the breakup of Schulz's first marriage.
In the light of Michaelis's biography and the controversy surrounding his interpretation of the personality of Charles Schulz, the response of the Schulz family revealed some deep knowledge of Schulz's personality beyond that of a mere artist.
Legacy
On July 1, 1983, Camp Snoopy opened at Knott's Berry Farm, a wooded theme park area featuring Peanuts characters. It has rides designed for young children and is one of the most popular areas of theme parks.
When the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota opened in 1992, the amusement park in the mall center themed around Schulz's Peanuts character, until the mall lost the right to use the brand in 2006.
The Jean and Charles Schulz Information Center at Sonoma State University opened in 2000 and now stands as one of the largest buildings in the CSU system and the State of California, with a general collection of 400,000 volumes and with a capacity of 750,000 volumes. The $ 41.5 million building was named after Schulz and his wife donated the $ 5 million needed to build and complete the structure.
In 2000, the Sonoma County Supervisory Board changed the name of the county airport as Charles M. Schulz - Sonoma County Airport in a cartoonist honor. The airport logo features Snoopy with glasses and a scarf, bringing to the sky above his red dog house.
Peanuts on Parade is St. Paul, the Minnesota award for his favorite native cartoonist. It started in 2000 by placing Snoopy statues as tall as 1.5 meters across the city of St. Louis. Paul. Every summer for the next four years, different statues of the Peanuts character are placed on the sidewalk of St. Paul. In 2001, there was Charlie Brown Around Town , 2002 carrying Finding Lucy , in 2003 along came Linus Blankets St. Paul , ended in 2004 with Snoopy lying in his dog house. The statues are auctioned at the end of each summer, so some remain around town, but others have been relocated. The auction results are used for artist scholarships and for bronze statues of the Peanuts character. These bronze statues are located at Landmark Plaza and Rice Park in downtown St. Louis. Paul.
The Museum and Research Center of Charles M. Schulz in Santa Rosa opened on August 17, 2002, two blocks from his former studio, celebrating his life and cartoon art. The bronze statue of Charlie Brown and Snoopy stands in Depot Park in downtown Santa Rosa.
Santa Rosa, California, celebrated the 60th anniversary of the strip in 2005 by continuing the Peanuts on Parade tradition beginning with It's Your Town Charlie Brown (2005), Summer of Woodstock (2006), Snoopy's Joe Cool Summer (2007), and Look Out For Lucy (2008).
In 2006, Forbes put Schulz as the deceased celebrity with the third highest earning, having earned $ 35 million in the previous year. In 2009, he was ranked sixth. According to Tod Benoit, in his book Where Are They Buried? How Did They Die? , Charles M. Schulz earned over $ 1.1 billion in life.
Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson wrote in 2007: " Peanuts pretty much defines modern comic strips, so even now it's hard to see it with fresh eyes. , sarcastic humor, unflagging emotional honesty, inner thought from domestic pets, serious treatment of children, wild fantasies, large-scale merchandising - in countless ways, Schulz opens the widest path that most every cartoonist because of have tried to follow. "
Among the property damage from forest fires in October 2017 in California was Santa Rosa's home in Schulz.
Religion
According to the "spiritual biography" of 2015, Schulz's faith is very complex and personal. He often touched religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), featuring the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible Luke 2: 8 -14 to explain "what does Christmas mean." In the interview, Schulz says that Linus represents his spiritual side, and his spiritual biography shows a much broader religious reference.
Raised in a nominal Lutheran family, Schulz has been active in Lord's Church (Anderson, Indiana) as a young adult and then taught Sunday school at the United Methodist Church. In the 1960s, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations in his lectures on the Gospel, as described in his book of the Gospels According to Peanut, the first of several he wrote about religion, Peanut , and other popular cultures.
From the late 1980s, Schulz said in interviews that some people described him as a "secular humanist" even though he did not know one way or another:
I do not go to church again... I guess you might say I have come to secular humanism, a duty that I believe all humans have to others and the world in which we live.
In 2013, Schulz's widow said:
I think he is a very wise and spiritual man. Sparky is not the type who will say "oh it's God's will" or "God will take care of it." I think he's an easy statement, and he thinks God is much more complicated.
When he returned from the army he was very lonely. Her mother had died and she was invited to church by a minister who had prepared her mother's ministry from the Lord's Church. Sparky's father worried about him and talked with the pastor and therefore the priest invited Sparky to come to church. So Sparky went to church, joined a youth group and for 4-5 years he studied the Bible and went to church 3 times a week (2 Bible lessons, 1 ministry). He said he had read the Bible three times and taught the Sunday school. He is always looking for what is meant by REALLY SECTIONS. Some discussions with pastors and pastors are very interesting because he wants to know what these people think (which he thinks is more educated than he is).
When she teaches Sunday school, she will never tell people what to believe. God is very important to him, but in a very profound way, in a very mysterious way.
Note
References
Primary source
- Schulz, Charles M. (1980) Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Me. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & amp; ISBN Company 0-385-15805-X
- My life with Charlie Brown by Charles M. Schulz , edited by M. Thomas Inge (University Press Mississippi; 2010) 193 pages
- Around the World in 45 Years . Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel/United Features Syndicate, 1994.
- Go Fly a Kite, Charlie Brown. 1959. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston
- Peanut: Golden Celebration: The Art and Story of the World's Best Comic Strip Ed. David Larkin. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.
- Inge, M. Thomas (ed.) (2000). Charles M. Schulz: Conversation . Jackson, MS: Univ. Press Mississippi ISBN 1-57806-305-1
Secondary studies
- Bang, Derrick. 50 Years of Happiness: Tribute to Charles M. Schulz . (1999) Santa Rosa, California: Charles M. Schulz Museum. ISBN: 0-9685574-0-6
- Bang, Derrick (ed.) (2003) Charles M. Schulz: Li'l Beginnings . Santa Rosa, Charles M. Schulz Museum. ISBNÃ, 0-9745709-1-5
- Caron, James E. "Everyone Elses a Security Blanket," Study in American Humor, 2008, Issue 17, pp 145-155
- DeLuca, Geraldine. "'I Feel Funeral in My Brain': Brittle Comedy Charles Schulz," Lion and Unicorn v.25 # 2 (2001) 300-309
- Johnson, Rheta Grimsley (1989). Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz . New York: Pharos Books. ISBN 0-88687-553-6. Ã,
- Kidd, Chip (ed.) (2001) Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz . New York: Pantheon Books. ISBNÃ, 0-375-42097-5
- Michaelis, David (2007). Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography . New York: Harper. ISBN: 0-06-621393-2.
- Short, Robert L. Gospel According to Peanuts Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1964.
External links
- Schulz home page
- The biography of Charles Schulz in the Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Charles Schulz Museum
- Works by or about Charles M. Schulz in the library (WorldCat catalog)
- Charles M. Schulz on IMDb
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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