| Bill Melendez | |
| Birth Name: | José Cuauhtémoc Melendez |
| Birth Date: | 15 November 1916 |
| Birth Place: | Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico |
| Other Names: | C. Melendez J.C. Melendez William Melendez |
| Death Place: | Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
| Notable Works: | Peanuts animated specials |
| Employer: |
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| Years Active: | 1938–2006 |
| Children: | 2, including Steven C. Melendez |
José Cuauhtémoc "Bill" Melendez (November 15, 1916 – September 2, 2008)[1] was an American animator, director, producer, and voice actor. Melendez is known for working on the Peanuts animated specials, as well as providing the voices of Snoopy and Woodstock. Before Peanuts, he previously worked as an animator for Walt Disney Productions, Warner Bros. Cartoons, and UPA.
In a career spanning over 60 years, he won six Primetime Emmy Awards and was nominated for thirteen more. In addition, he was nominated for an Oscar and five Grammy Awards. The two Peanuts specials, A Charlie Brown Christmas and What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?, which he directed, were each honored with a Peabody Award.
A native of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, Melendez was educated in American public schools in Douglas, Arizona. He later attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles (which would later become California Institute of the Arts).
On completion of his studies, Melendez found his first job at a lumber mill. After watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he gained employment at Disney in 1938, where he worked as an assistant animator to Hawley Pratt whom he befriended and worked together to developed a naval game with toy ships. He worked on what are now considered classics: Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi and he worked once as an animator for a Donald Duck short, The Flying Jalopy.[2] Following the 1941 Disney strike, Melendez was hired by Leon Schlesinger Productions, later known as Warner Bros. Cartoons, where he served as animator on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series. He worked in Bob Clampett's unit, first as an assistant animator for Rod Scribner, and then as a full animator. After Clampett's departure in 1946, the unit was given to Arthur Davis. When the number of animation units at Warner Bros. was reduced from four to three in 1949, Melendez along with Emery Hawkins moved to Robert McKimson's unit for a time.
After animating a few shorts for McKimson's, Melendez was fired by producer Edward Selzer. Afterwards, he moved over to United Productions of America (UPA), where he animated on cartoons such as Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950). Melendez also produced and directed thousands of television commercials, first at UPA, then John Sutherland Productions and Playhouse Pictures.[3] In 1963, Melendez founded his own studio in the basement of his Hollywood home. Bill Melendez Productions is still active and is currently run by his son Steven C. Melendez.[4] In addition to animation, Melendez was once a faculty member at the University of Southern California's Cinema Arts Department.
Melendez would also be referenced in the 1961 Looney Tunes short The Pied Piper of Guadalupe, where his name was used for a music instructor for Sylvester to learn how to play the flute. At that point, Melendez has been away from Warner Bros. for 10 years.
In 1959, Melendez was hired to do some animated television commercials featuring characters from the comic strip Peanuts for the Ford Motor Company. These animations were seen by documentary producer Lee Mendelson, and Mendelson hired Melendez to do some interstitial animations for a film he was producing about the comic strip entitled A Boy Named Charlie Brown.
Melendez was the only person Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz trusted to turn his popular comic creations into television specials. He and his studio worked on every single television special and direct-to-video film for the Peanuts gang and Melendez directed the majority of them. He provided the vocal effects for Snoopy and Woodstock in every single production, voice acting the characters in the studio by uttering gibberish, and the voices were mechanically sped up at different speeds to represent the two different characters, although some later specials had Snoopy speaking in a clear voice, reflecting how he would be thinking to himself in the comics.
According to an article in The New York Times published shortly after his death, Melendez did not intend to do voice acting for the two characters. "Schulz would not countenance the idea of a beagle uttering English dialogue, Mr. Melendez recited gibberish into a tape recorder, sped it up and put the result on the soundtrack."[5] He also directed, did the animation for, and provided voice acting in the first four Peanuts theatrical films, A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Snoopy Come Home (1972), Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977), and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (1980), as well as the video games Get Ready for School, Charlie Brown! (1995) and Snoopy's Campfire Stories (1996).[6]
The last Peanuts-related production he worked on was He's a Bully, Charlie Brown (2006). Melendez and Lee Mendelson, who also worked on the Peanuts specials, films, and TV shows, formed their own production team and did other animated specials. They were responsible for the first two Garfield animated specials, Here Comes Garfield (1982) and Garfield on the Town (1983), as well as Frosty Returns (1992), the pseudo-sequel to Rankin/Bass' Frosty the Snowman (1969).
During the 1980s and 1990s Melendez served on the advisory board of the National Student Film Institute.[7] [8]
On September 2, 2008, Bill Melendez died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California at the age of 91.[9] He had been in declining health after a fall a year earlier. No cause of his death was made public.[5] Melendez was cremated and his ashes were given to his family.
Archive recordings of his work as Snoopy and Woodstock were used for the film The Peanuts Movie.[10] This makes him the only member of the film's cast to have been involved in a previous Peanuts project, save for Kristin Chenoweth, who won a Tony Award for her performance as Sally Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown on Broadway. Melendez also has archival recordings on the film's game, Snoopy's Grand Adventure.
| Year | Film | Animator | Producer | Director | Actor | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1940 | Pinocchio | Assistant animator | |||||
| Fantasia | |||||||
| 1941 | Dumbo | ||||||
| 1942 | Bambi | ||||||
| 1943 | The Flying Jalopy | ||||||
| A Corny Concerto | Assistant animator | ||||||
| Falling Hare | |||||||
| An Itch in Time | |||||||
| 1945 | Draftee Daffy | ||||||
| Wagon Heels | |||||||
| The Bashful Buzzard | |||||||
| 1946 | Book Revue | ||||||
| Baby Bottleneck | |||||||
| Kitty Kornered | |||||||
| The Great Piggy Bank Robbery | |||||||
| The Big Snooze | |||||||
| 1947 | The Goofy Gophers | ||||||
| The Foxy Duckling | |||||||
| Doggone Cats | |||||||
| Mexican Joyride | |||||||
| Catch as Cats Can | |||||||
| 1948 | Two Gophers from Texas | ||||||
| What Makes Daffy Duck | |||||||
| A Hick a Slick and a Chick | |||||||
| Nothing But the Tooth | |||||||
| Bone Sweet Bone | |||||||
| The Rattled Rooster | |||||||
| Dough Ray Me-ow | |||||||
| The Pest That Came to Dinner | |||||||
| Odor of the Day | |||||||
| The Stupor Salesman | |||||||
| Riff Raffy Daffy | |||||||
| 1949 | Holiday for Drumsticks | ||||||
| Porky Chops | |||||||
| Bowery Bugs | |||||||
| Bye, Bye Bluebeard | |||||||
| A Ham in a Role | |||||||
| 1950 | Punchy de Leon | ||||||
| Boobs in the Woods | |||||||
| Spellbound Hound | |||||||
| The Leghorn Blows at Midnight | |||||||
| The Miner's Daughter | |||||||
| An Egg Scramble | |||||||
| What's Up Doc? | |||||||
| It's Hummer Time | |||||||
| Giddyap | |||||||
| Trouble Indemnity | |||||||
| A Fractured Leghorn | |||||||
| Pop 'im Pop! | |||||||
| Gerald McBoing-Boing | |||||||
| Bushy Hare | |||||||
| Dog Collared | |||||||
| Albert in Blunderland | |||||||
| 1951 | Hare We Go | ||||||
| Bungled Bungalow | |||||||
| A Fox in a Fix | |||||||
| Corn Plastered | |||||||
| Georgie and the Dragon | |||||||
| The Wonder Gloves | |||||||
| 1952 | The Oompahs | ||||||
| Willie the Kid | |||||||
| Madeline | |||||||
| 1953 | Little Boy with a Big Horn | ||||||
| Christopher Crumpet | |||||||
| Gerald McBoing-Boing's Symphony | |||||||
| 1954 | Ballet-Oop | ||||||
| It's Everybody's Business | |||||||
| 1957 | Energetically Yours | ||||||
| 1963 | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World | ||||||
| 1965 | A Charlie Brown Christmas | Snoopy | |||||
| 1969 | A Boy Named Charlie Brown | Snoopy | |||||
| 1970 | The Rainbow Bear | ||||||
| 1972 | Snoopy Come Home | Snoopy, Woodstock | |||||
| 1975 | Dick Deadeye, or Duty Done | ||||||
| Escape to Witch Mountain | |||||||
| 1977 | Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown | Snoopy, Woodstock | |||||
| 1978 | Tooth Brushing | Snoopy | |||||
| 1980 | Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!!) | Snoopy, Woodstock | |||||
| 1985 | Molly and the Skywalkerz: Happily Ever After | Direct-to-video film | |||||
| 1989 | Molly and the Skywalkerz: Two Daddies? | Direct-to-video film | |||||
| 1992 | Cool World | ||||||
| 2015 | The Peanuts Movie | Snoopy, Woodstock | archival recordings | ||||
| Year | Film | Animator | Producer | Director | Actor | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Get Ready for School, Charlie Brown! | Snoopy, Woodstock | |||||
| 1996 | Snoopy's Campfire Stories | Snoopy, Woodstock | |||||
| 2015 | Snoopy, Woodstock | archival recordings | |||||