It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a 1966 American prime time animated television special based on the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. A Halloween special, it was the third Peanuts special to be produced and animated by Bill Melendez. The special features music composed by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi.

About It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown in brief

Summary It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie BrownIt’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a 1966 American prime time animated television special based on the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz. A Halloween special, it was the third Peanuts special to be produced and animated by Bill Melendez. The special features music composed by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi, whose contributions include the theme song “Linus and Lucy” The program was nominated for a 1966 Emmy Award. CBS re-aired the special annually through 2000, with ABC picking up the rights beginning in 2001, where it aired annually during the Halloween season until 2019. From 2006 until 2019, ABC has usually aired the special twice, once in a truncated format during a half-hour time slot and once in full during an hour-long time slot. Beginning in 2020, Apple TV+ will become the exclusive home of all Peanuts specials. The special is also aired on Family Channel in Canada since 2018. It has been issued on home video several times, including a Remastered Deluxe Edition of the special released by Warner Home Video on September 2, 2008, with the bonus feature It’s Magic,Charlie Brown which was released in 1981.

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, a retrospective book was published in 2006. A history of the program and the various religious interpretations of Linus’ sincere belief in the Great pumpkin are explained in the 2015 book, A Charlie Brown Religion, published by the University Press of Mississippi. In the opening credits, Snoopy helps Charlie Brown finish raking a pile of leaves, resulting in leaves sticking to his face and lollipop. Lucy entices Charlie Brown to kick a football with the usual results. Lucy selects the largest they can find, and makes Linus carry it back to the house to make a jack-o-lantern. Charlie Brown shows up to announce that he was invited to a Halloween party hosted by Violet. Lucy dresses as a witch, saying it is the opposite of her real personality. Snoopy, wearing his World War I flying costume, climbs aboard his Red Baron, but loses a fierce battle with the unseen Red Baron.