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The Peanuts special \u201cA Charlie Brown Thanksgiving\u201d has delighted viewers for over 50 years, but it caused some friction behind the scenes. <\/p>\n
Lee Mendelson, who was an animation producer and executive producer for several Peanuts animated specials, looked back on the making of the Thanksgiving episode in a 2013 celebrity.land <\/a>essay. He recalled getting into a \u201crare, minor dispute\u201d with Charles M. Schulz, the creator of the \u201cPeanuts\u201d comic strip. <\/p>\n Schulz \u201cinsisted\u201d that the character Woodstock carve and eat a turkey with his pal Snoopy, but Mendelson had ethical concerns about Woodstock eating a fellow bird. <\/p>\n \u201cI was bothered that Woodstock would eat a turkey. I voiced my concern, which was immediately overruled,\u201d Mendelson wrote. He was so perturbed by the cannibalistic feast that he removed it from from a later version of the special. <\/p>\n \u201cYears later, when CBS cut the show from its original 25 minutes to 22 minutes, I sneakily edited out the scene of Woodstock eating,\u201d he recalled. \u201cBut when we moved to ABC in 2001, the network (happily) elected to restore all the holiday shows to the original 25 minutes, so I finally have given up.\u201d<\/p>\n While they didn\u2019t see eye to eye on Woodstock\u2019s eating habits, Mendelson noted that it was a \u201cgreat privilege\u201d to work with Schulz for nearly four decades. <\/p>\n \u201cCharles Schulz drew over 18,000 comic strips (unassisted!) over a half century. He wrote all the television shows as well, and one of his favorites was our Thanksgiving show,\u201d Mendelson wrote. \u201cHe thought it would be very entertaining to see how kids would create a Thanksgiving dinner with no clue what to do. Along with a dog for good measure.\u201d<\/p>\n Schulz died at age 77 in 2000, and Mendelson died at age 86 in 2019. <\/p>\n