Teanuts’ inspiration dies

Press, 9 December 1983, Page 6

Teanuts’ inspiration dies

NZPA-AP Minneapolis Charlie Brown, a friend of the cartoonist, Charles Schulz, who inspired the hapless character bearing his name in the comic strip, Peanuts, is dead at 57 after a seven-year battle with cancer.

Brown died on Tuesday in the hospice at Metropolitan Medical Centre in Minneapolis.

Brown and Schulz became friends after they met in an art class in Minneapolis. Schulz told Brown he intended to market a comic strip with a central character named Charlie Brown.

The strip, which Schulz had planned to call “Good Old Charlie Brown,” was eventually titled “Peanuts” and its characters—Charlie Brown, his fanciful beagle, Snoopy, his blanket carrying philosophical friend, Linus, and Linus’s bossy sister, Lucy—became internationally known through the strip and its resulting movies, television specials and toys. In the cartoon, Charlie Brown suffers one misfortune after another as his baseball team loses or his kite gets stuckk in a tree. His typical response to his disasters is “Good grief.”

The real-life Brown also was known for his insecurities, his flops as a schoolboy athlete and his failed relationships; but he was also remembered for his geniality which carried him through an uneven career as a young artist and a bout with alcoholism. When asked if he was excited abut being famous, Brown would reply that he had done nothing to deserve notoriety, apart from being Schulz’s friend.

Brown, who did not marry, is survived by a brother, Harry, and a sister, Catherine.