Charles Schulz Essay, Research Paper
Charles Schulz
Charles Schulz was the cartoonist for the comic strip peanuts. He researched, designed, wrote, and drew every strip that appeared in the daily and Sunday newspapers around the world for almost 50 years.
Charles Schulz was born November 26, 1922 in St. Paul Minnesota. His father was a barber and struggled to make enough money. Early on he knew that he had talent for drawing because he could draw better than his older cousin. His teachers kept telling him that he was going to be an artist. He said that he was born to draw comic strips. My ambition from earliest memory was to produce a daily comic strip, said Schulz.
Even though his family did not have a lot of money they still found a way to enroll Charles in a correspondence course in cartooning. The school is now called the Art Instruction Schools, Inc. in Minneapolis. As a student, Schulz struggled through the program because he was shy and insecure. He submitted his coursework by mail instead of in person. He received a C+, at the art school, in the Drawing of Children.
Schulz s mother, Dena, was diagnosed with cancer at about the same time he was going to school. The whole family from their nice home to an apartment above a drug store. Eventually Schulz finished his correspondence courses in cartooning and tried to sell his cartoons. Before he could successfully sell any of them, he was drafted into World War II. Within days of being drafted, his mother passed away.
Charles Schulz said that being drafted into the military welcomed a change of pace and a shocking confirmation that life would never be the same again. In the military, Schulz developed the work ethic that caused his life-long success. He excelled as an infantryman, a staff sergeant, and the leader of a machine-gun squad. During his years in the service, Schulz s put most of his illustrating aside. However, he did decorate the soldiers letters with cartoons from life in the military.
After the military, Schulz returned to St. Paul looking for a job. He took the job of lettering tombstones until he was offered a job from Timeless Topix. It was a Roman Catholic magazine that was interested in him doing some cartooning work. His first task was to letter already drawn cartoons. The position never really offered him some creative opportunities, but he did learn how to letter cartoons really well.
Schulz s second job was at an art instruction school. This job allowed him to gain support of the artistic community and helped him to get his name out there. He practiced his drawings and met a friend named Charlie Brown and a girl with red hair who broke his heart. They were inspirations for later work.
Eventually his hard work paid off and he was able to publish a number of cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post. People started seeing his cartoons and he landed a weekly comic picture called L IL Folks. It stared Charlie Brown and Shermy who eventually became the focus of his career.
After a number of years, Jim Freeman suggested that he draw his cartoons in comic strip format.
He signed a 5-year contract with the United Feature Syndicate and began his career as a full time cartoonist. There was legal issues with the name L`il Folks so the name of the cartoon was changed to PEANUTS. It took some time for comic readers to grow attached to PEANUTS. The comic strip was purely Schulz s, and no one could change it. After fifty years, it has grown to be one of the longest running and most popular comics ever.
Charles Schulz died on February 12, 2000, in Santa Rosa, California, of colon cancer. He was 77 years old at the time. It was only hours before his last original PEANUTS strip was to appear in Sunday newspapers. He said it was to be the last one even before he knew he was going to die.
Today, PEANUTS lives on as one of the most successful comic strips in newspaper history,
appearing in about 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries and translated into 21 languages.
Works Cited
http://www.peanuts.com/comics/peanuts/b_artist/html/b1a.html. PEANUTS UFS, Inc.
Peanuts About Charles Schulz.