Burlingame has Snoopy connection

However, Lee Mendelson changed all that in the early 1960s. We have Lee and his Burlingame-based Lee Mendelson Film Production company to thank for conceiving and producing the many Charlie Brown TV specials that play each holiday season along with their wonderful soundtracks.

Mendelson was raised in San Mateo — a proud San Mateo High School Bearcat and 1954 graduate of Stanford University. In the early 1960s, Lee’s career involved making film documentaries for KPIX, winning a Peabody Award for his film “The Innocent Fair” about San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition. In 1963, he formed his own company and set up shop in Burlingame. His film production offices were held in various locations in downtown Burlingame, but the one that current residents probably remember most fondly is the 1970s through 1990s era office where Snoopy and seven other Peanuts characters oversaw the comings and goings on Burlingame’s Chapin Avenue from their place on the exterior walls of the building.

Mendelson loved baseball and his first documentary was about San Francisco Giant Willie Mays. After its success, Mendelson thought, “I’ve made a film about the best ball player; why not make a film about the worst?” He headed off to Sebastopol to make his pitch to Charles Schulz to do a documentary about Schulz and Charlie Brown. His pitch to Schulz was successful, but the documentary was not. The television networks never picked up Mendelson and Schulz’s 1964 collaboration “A Boy Named Charlie Brown.” Yet, the documentary did accomplish a few things: it formed a trusting relationship between Schulz and Mendelson that would endure for nearly 35 years; it put the idea of a Charlie Brown TV special back into the heads of the network executives; and it gave Mendelson the idea of using jazz musician Vince Guaraldi in the soundtracks of his films.

On the way back from Sonoma, while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, Mendelson heard Guaraldi’s newly released jazz hit, “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” He knew then and there that Guaraldi was the next person he needed to pitch.  He did — and thereafter Guaraldi agreed to write music for the TV specials. Guaraldi’s first piece was “Linus and Lucy.” It was included in “A Boy Named Charlie Brown.” No one was interested in that documentary, but the soundtrack’s album did sell.

What came next is what really made Mendelson’s career skyrocket. After Schulz and Mendelson’s repeated attempts to promote the 1964 documentary continuously met with rejection, an executive from McCann Erickson (a large NYC advertising agency) called Mendelson in February of 1965 and said that his client, Coca-Cola, was interested in a Christmas special. The call came on a Wednesday. Coca-Cola wanted an outline on their desk in Atlanta on Monday. “Of course,” were the first words out of Mendelson’s mouth. He hung up the phone and called Schulz, whose nickname was Sparky. Mendelson recalled the next few minutes in his book “The Making of a Tradition: A Charlie Brown Christmas:”

“I hung up the phone and stared at it for a few minutes.

Then I called Sparky. ‘I think I may have just sold a Charlie Brown Christmas show,’ I said.

‘And what show might that be?’ Sparky asked.

‘The one you need to make an outline for tomorrow,’ I replied.  

Without missing a beat, he calmly said, ‘Okay. Come on up.’

The two met their Monday deadline and then they waited and waited. A few months later, they got another call. It was another good news, bad news call. Coca-Cola wanted the show, but they wanted it done in six months, an extraordinarily short time to produce a show.

The two recruited Bill Melendez, a former Disney exec who had started his own animation company, to serve as animator and director. Melendez had previously worked with Schulz and Mendelson to do the animation for the unaired documentary. Melendez was 49, Sparky was 43 and Mendelson was 32 at the time. They would form a formidable trio for 35 years.  

When their final product “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” aired on Dec. 9, 1965, it drew over 15 million viewers, second only to Bonanza. Its signature song, “Christmas Time is Here,” remains a holiday classic. The soundtrack album has sold over 5 million copies. Mendelson wrote the lyrics for it in 10 minutes on the back of an envelope. When he heard Guaraldi’s music for “Christmas Time is Here,” Mendelson thought it was such a pretty melody that someone should write some lyrics for it. But Mendelson never found that “Someone.”  

“So I sat down with an envelope — I’ll never forget this — at our kitchen table and wrote “Christmas Time is Here” in about 10 minutes. It was a poem that just came to me — never changed the words to this day. It was only about a minute long. And Vince got a bunch of little kids together to sing it.”

Recently, the Burlingame Historical Society was honored to host two of Mendelson’s sons, Jason and Sean, in the Lane Room of the Burlingame Library. During the pandemic and the downtime that it brought, the two men found many Guaraldi sessions for the soundtracks in their archives that had not been released to the public, in addition to some outtakes that had never been heard before.  

Now reengineered, the Mendelson company is releasing anew, but for the first time, the music of Vince Guaraldi, keeping the legendary music of those television specials alive. As children, both men served as voices for Peanuts characters, as did their older brother and sister, Glenn and Lynda. At the Burlingame Historical Society presentation, Jason played a video bit from one special where he was the voice of Peppermint Patty and Sean was a pilgrim. Jason quipped that after puberty he “was retired from his role of playing women and animals.” It was a special evening for all who love Charlie Brown and his friends, reminding us of the critical role that a local Burlingame businessman played in ensuring that Schulz’s characters would endure on film.

Sparky died Feb. 12, 2000, the night before his farewell Peanuts comic strip was published. Bill Melendez died Sept. 2, 2008. Lee Mendelson, the man who wrote “Christmas Time is Here,” passed away on Christmas Day, 2019. Charlie Brown and Snoopy and their friends live on.

 Joanne Garrison is the author of “Burlingame Centennial:  1908-2008” and a board member of the Burlingame Historical Society (www.burlingamehistoricalsociety.org).