Snoopy and the meaning of life

At its peak, Peanuts was the most successful strip of all, published in 75 countries, in 21 languages, and read by an estimated global audience of 355 million.

Sixty-five years ago, when Charles M Schulz first came up with the enlarged head and curly forelock of Charlie Brown, newspaper comic strips were big business. The men who drew them were among the highest-paid artists and entertainers in the United States.

At its peak, Peanuts was the most successful strip of all, published in 75 countries, in 21 languages, and read by an estimated global audience of 355 million. Schulz, who drew more than 18,250 strips over a 50-year career, earned as much as $40million a year. Merchandising (stationery, clothing, lunch boxes) and product endorsements (for life insurance, bread, cars) brought in a further $1billion.

Peanuts turns 65 this month: to celebrate, Charlie Brown and friends are making their big-screen debut - in Charlie Brown and Snoopy: The Peanuts Movie, released here in December - while a new book, Only What's Necessary, presents a compilation of Schulz's sketches, strips, photographs and letters, compiled by the American graphic designer Chip Kidd, in collaboration with Schulz's widow, Jeannie.

For Jeannie, the popularity of Peanuts comes back to the simplicity of its message, "how puzzling the process of navigating life can be", as she puts it. "It was about feelings we all share, wanting to be liked and wanting to have a friend," she adds, speaking from the Californian home she shared with the cartoonist until his death, aged 77, in 2000. "But however down you were feeling on the world, you could always find things in the strip that were funny. Schulz knew humour won over lessons and dictates every time, and that's why it caught everyone's imagination."

Over the years, the cast of Peanuts - which originally grew out of an earlier, weekly panel called L'il Folks, which Schulz produced for a local paper in his home town of St Paul, Minnesota - changed very little. There was hapless Charlie Brown and his pet philosopher dog Snoopy; Lucy and her pavement psychiatric clinic; Linus, a blanket-carrying existentialist; Peppermint Patty, a snoozy dunce; and Schroeder, the pianist. In a 1996 interview, Jeannie said that each character had elements of her husband's personality. "He's crabby like Lucy, diffident like Charlie Brown. There's a lot of Linus - he's philosophical and wondering about life." Schulz was also a classical music buff but, unlike Schroeder, he preferred Brahms to Beethoven.

Produced against a backdrop of McCarthyism and war in Vietnam, the vulnerability and humanity of Schulz's characters forced cartoons away from their slapstick past and into the modern world. Unafraid to show fear and anxiety, Schulz said he wanted to make "some comment on the important things of life".

Peppermint Patty never passed a test, Lucy's love for Schroeder went ever unrequited and, after countless failed attempts, Charlie Brown never got to kick the football. (Late in life, when Schulz was asked whether Charlie would finally get to kick the football, he said: "Oh, no! Definitely not! That would be a terrible disservice to him after nearly half a century.")

But, above all, Peanuts is admired most for its graphic simplicity, those few scratchy black lines and sparse dialogue that were capable of an incredible range of emotion. "It wasn't necessary to draw every little detail because the reader's imagination fills in what's needed," explains Jeannie. "Schulz said, 'The panel must be pleasant to look at.' And that white space helped with timing too. Because you also have to have a place where your brain halts, like a pause before the pay-off. All that happened instinctively for him, I think."

One might say fate led Schulz to his job. Before he could even write his own name, an uncle nicknamed him Sparky, after a character in the comic strip Barney Google, and the name stuck for the rest of his life.

When he was 15, Schulz had a portrait of his dog Spike accepted for the pages of Ripley's Believe It or Not! but it wasn't until after the war, during which he served in France and Germany, that he could concentrate on his artistic talent, writing lettering for comic strips and teaching at Art Instruction, Inc, which ran correspondence courses for artists from its headquarters in Minneapolis.

During these years, Schulz worked from a studio with a close group of artist friends. "They couldn't understand why he wanted to be a cartoonist," says Jeannie. "He was an oddity - a member of the church who didn't drink. But they let him be and he enjoyed their company. They played cards, bridge and charades, or listened to classical music."

Schulz and Jeannie first met in 1972, at the ice rink he and his first wife, Joyce, had built in Sebastopol, California - their daughters (Jeannie had two, Schulz three, as well as two sons) were keen skaters. They dated for about a year before they were married, during which time Schulz was sleeping in the rooms above the ice rink, having moved out of the family home.

I ask Jeannie, who is now 76 and president of the Charles M Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, if her children were excited to find themselves associated with the creator of Charlie Brown. "It was a small town," she says. "People knew Sparky owned the ice rink, but he was still an undercover kind of celebrity."

Schulz would draw every day from 9.30 until 11.30 in the morning, when he'd stop for lunch and walk over to the ice rink, where he would sit and talk to the kids and mums. He'd work for another two hours in the afternoon. To relax, he watched old movies - Beau Geste, Casablanca, The Natural. "When the scenes he liked came on, he would jump up and say, 'Come on! Come here! You gotta see this!'?" recalls Jeannie. "He said - and I think this is interesting when you consider his cartoons - that for a film to work it had to be punctuated with memorable scenes that people looked forward to."

As he grew older, Schulz began to prefer working at home, often with the curtains drawn. "Sparky liked feeling enclosed, the way they wrap a baby up tight," says Jeannie. "He never minded being interrupted; he wanted to be available, yet he suffered the consequences."

I ask if Schulz was as melancholic as his strip sometimes suggests. "It wasn't all the time, but enough of the time that he talked about it," says Jeannie. "Over the years doctors suggested taking a little this or that, but eventually he gave up. It bothered him though. He said, 'I have this sense of impending doom that never leaves me.'

"When I think back, about what he had to do - it was such a lot of work, a real strain. I don't think people realise - and then he had to be a normal person, to me and to his kids.

"I feel stupid sometimes, that I wasn't as sympathetic as I might have been," she adds.
"Now I look at the strips and when I see Snoopy smashing his racket or Charlie with his anxious frown, I think maybe that was Sparky, just a trace of him, coming through."