A Boy Named Charlie Brown (partially found deleted scenes of animated film based on comic strip; 1969)

File:Https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/fJf6RrUahV24DN6zIdvpfp20PqY.jpg

The movie’s theatrical poster.

Status: Partially Found

A Boy Named Charlie Brown is an American animated film released on December 4th, 1969. The film was the first animated feature based on the Peanuts franchise by Charles M. Schulz.

Since the film’s release, certain deleted scenes have been revealed and subsequently found, while others are yet to be confirmed.

Deleted Scenes

Failure Face and Linus hallucination

On November 4th, 2014, Cartoon Research writer Greg Ehrbar created a post dedicated to A Boy Named Charlie Brown, specifically its original 1970 LP.

In the comment section of the post, user dbenson posted a comment stating how in the early 1970s they were shown in an animation class a studio reel containing deleted scenes from A Boy Named Charlie Brown.[1]

These include:

• “A complete alternate version of “Failure Face”, full of “After You’re Gone” surrealism. Charlie Brown running on a rubbery sidewalk and momentarily becoming a statue of a hero on a horse before it all collapses under him. The song is in the movie, but the staging is simple and earthbound.”
• “Linus, on the bus to New York, has a nightmare about becoming half-fish and later an ostrich while a demonic Charlie Brown puts his blanket through a meat grinder, producing little blanket monsters. Very weird colors.”

Furthermore, dbenson states they were shown a scene that they “thought was from (A Boy Named Charlie Brown), but probably wasn’t”. Said scene was “a Hubleyesque thing with two kids playing and turning into various creatures, all from one angle against a white background.” They also state that they remember being told that these scenes were cut because they were “vetoed” by Charles Schulz, who wrote the film.

On March 20, 2021, YouTube user Pedro Janov e seu Archivo de Videos posted a video entitled “Lanterna Mágica - Cultura, 1987”.[2] This video was a broadcast of Lanterna Mágica, described by the user as “RTC (likely The Dirección General de Radio, Televisión y Cinematografía)’s experimental animation and filming program” dated to 1987.

At 1:10:37 in the video, a portion of the described deleted scene during the song “Failure Face” is shown. However, it does not include the whole song, as the clip only begins as the second verse of “Failure Face” is starting (probably due to the videotaping of the broadcast having cuts). This likely means that the first portion of the alternate animation for the song is still missing. At 1:14:48, the aforementioned Linus deleted scene plays. Also worth noting is that the alternate version of the instrumental track “Bus Wheel Blues”[3] plays in the background of the scene. This likely means that the alternate version of the track was created for this scene, but altered when the scene was cut.

This remained unknown until 2024. The year prior, on August 19, 2023, YouTube user Elgrae98 posted a video entitled “A boy Named Charlie Brown Deleted Scene!”[4] This video displayed the storyboard version of the Linus hallucination scene. The following year, user upnesCaute linked the Lánterna Magica video in the comment section, leading to the deleted scenes being rediscovered by fans.

In March of 2024 said deleted scenes were posted individually by YouTube user tarvinneeko mainitikaan.[5][6]

Ten animation cels for the cut “Failure Face” sequence are available for purchase on eBay.[7][8][9][10] Three of these cels (specifically slide 2, 3 and 5 of the fourth linked eBay page) display images that were not seen in the Lanterna Mágica video, and so are likely from the missing first verse animation.

Extended psychiatry scene

In the storyboards of A Boy Named Charlie Brown that were linked in the comment section of Elgrae’s video,[11] the psychiatry scene plays out differently than in the final film. The quantity of slides that are shown to Charlie Brown is far higher, and after Lucy tells Charlie Brown that he’s fat, instead of moving on to his “most damaging faults”, Charlie Brown walks outside the house to the curb where he talks to Schroeder. Then Lucy walks to the curb and escorts Charlie Brown back to her house. From there the scene continues as in the final film. This cut scene appears to be based on the Peanuts comic strip from January 28th, 1964.[12]

This scene may have been finished. In a poster for the Italian release of the film, entitled Arriva Charlie Brown, an image is shown that is not from the film, but instead resembles the cut Schroeder scene.[13] This proves that the scene, and furthermore, the rest of the cut psychiatry scenes may have been finished, or at least partly animated. Also worth noting is that the scene, if existing, was likely cut earlier into production than the Linus hallucination scene, as different music would probably have been created for the longer psychiatry scene as was “Bus Wheel Blues”.

Unused Rod McKuen songs

Poet Rod McKuen created three songs for A Boy Named Charlie Brown that ended up in the final film: the aforementioned “Failure Face”, “I Before E” and “Champion Charlie Brown”. However, another three were reportedly planned for the feature.[14] One of these, entitled “Something for Snoopy” has an instrumental version existing, released on one of McKuen’s own albums.[15] However, this is most likely not the version recorded for the film. In fact, it is unknown if any of the unused songs were actually recorded for the film’s soundtrack. The two other songs are completely lost. Furthermore, the lyrics to “Something for Snoopy” are also lost.

McKuen himself may have vetoed the songs. He spoke: ”Actually, they wanted more songs, but I think sometimes too much music can drag something down.”[16]

McKuen also spoke ill of “Something for Snoopy”, saying: “I never felt good about the lyric. There are some strains of the music in the film, but not the vocal. It was, after all, a movie about Charlie Brown, and I didn’t want anything to detract from that.”[17]

The cut “Failure Face” sequence.

The cut Linus hallucination sequence.

The storyboard version of the Linus hallucination scene.

The instrumental version of “Something for Snoopy” by Rod McKuen

See Also

• Peanuts (partially found sponsorship ads of animated specials based on comic strip; 1965-1970s)
• Jimmy Kimmel Live! (found Peanuts/Tiger Woods crossover skits; 2009-2010)
• Snoopy Flying Ace (found Xbox 360 dogfight game based on "Peanuts"; 2010)
• Peanuts: Oct. 2nd, 1955 (partially lost newspaper comic strip; 1955)
• Charlie Brown's All-Stars (lost build of cancelled Peanuts PlayStation 2/PlayStation Portable baseball game; 2007)