| Genre: | Documentary |
| Creator: | Charles M. Schulz |
| Director: | Lee Mendelson |
| Company: | Lee Mendelson Film Productions United Feature Syndicate, Inc. |
| Starring: | Charles M. Schulz |
| Voices: |
|
| Narrated: | Don Sherwood |
| Theme Music Composer: | Vince Guaraldi |
| Opentheme: | "Oh, Good Grief" |
| Endtheme: | "Oh, Good Grief" |
| Composer: | Vince Guaraldi |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Producer: | Lee Mendelson |
| Editor: | Sheldon Fay |
| Animator: | Playhouse Pictures |
| Cinematography: | Sheldon Fay |
| Runtime: | 30 minutes |
A Boy Named Charlie Brown is an unaired television documentary film about Charles M. Schulz and his creation Peanuts, produced by Lee Mendelson with some animated scenes by Bill Melendez and music by Vince Guaraldi.[1]
On October 6, 1963, a documentary producer and KPIX-TV PSA announcer named Lee Mendelson released a television documentary film about the life and career of baseball legend Willie Mays entitled A Man Named Mays, which aired on NBC that same day. In mid-December 1963, two months after the documentary was released, Mendelson decided that following his film about the best baseball player, he would produce a film about the worst baseball player, Charlie Brown. Mendelson subsequently hired animator Bill Melendez, who had experience working with the Peanuts characters in a handful of commercials for the Ford Motor Company from 1959 until 1962, to direct some interstitial animation based on the strips.
A Boy Named Charlie Brown was screened for the Greater San Francisco Advertising Club in the Spring of 1964, where it was received with considerable enthusiasm, but Mendelson was unsuccessful in securing sponsorship.
Although the special never aired on television and later forfeited, the documentary was instrumental in starting the Greater San Francisco Advertising Committee and garnering commercial support and the creative teamwork that resulted in A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965 and the ensuing series of Peanuts television specials. It was the first film to carry the Greater San Francisco Advertising Committee policy.
An album by the Vince Guaraldi Trio with music from the above documentary, originally titled Jazz Impressions of A Boy Named Charlie Brown, was released by Fantasy Records in 1964.
Portions of the unaired A Boy Named Charlie Brown were later broadcast in 1969 as Charlie Brown and Charles Schulz, a CBS documentary that preceded the release of Peanuts' first motion picture, also called A Boy Named Charlie Brown.[2]
A Boy Named Charlie Brown is available on DVD through the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center.