Trailer:
Playhouse Video Promo
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The Peanuts' Gang in their First Movie!

The lovable characters from the popular comic strip by Charles M. Schulz appear in this full-length feature. The perennial failure Charlie Brown attends the National Spelling Bee and manages the worst sandlot team in the history of baseball. Linus loses and retrieves his security blanket. Snoopy the beagle dances wildly and plays shortstop. The irascible Lucy Van Pelt tricks Charlie Brown into kicking the football, but at the last minute she pulls it back and sends him flying onto his back. Although he loses the spelling bee, his friends gladly welcome Charlie Brown back to town upon his return. Nearly two-dozen songs are included. The characters remain true to the original works of Schulz, and great care was taken in matching the appropriate voices to the character's personalities. This is the first of many successful animated features of the gang from Peanuts. ~

A Boy Named Charlie Brown is a 1969 animated musical film, produced by Cinema Center Films, distributed by National General Pictures, and directed by Bill Meléndez, it is the first feature film based on the Peanuts comic strip. It was also the final time that Peter Robbins voiced the character of Charlie Brown (Robbins had voiced the role for all the Peanuts television specials up to that point, starting with the debut of the specials, 1965's A Charlie Brown Christmas).

Time praised its use of "subtle, understated colors" and its scrupulous fidelity to the source material, calling it a message film that "should not be missed." The New York Times' Vincent Canby wrote: "I do have some reservations about the film, but it's difficult - perhaps impossible - to be anything except benign towards a G-rated, animated movie that manages to include references to St. Stephen, Thomas Eakins, Harpers Ferry, baseball, contemporary morality (as it relates to Charlie Brown's use of his 'bean ball'), conservation and kite flying."[5]
A 1971 Associated Press story argued the success of A Boy Named Charlie Brown "broke the Disney monopoly" on animated feature films that had existed since the 1937 release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. "The success of 'Peanuts' started a trend," animation producer Fred Calvert told the AP. "But I hope the industry is not misled into thinking that animation is the only thing. You need to have a solid story and good characters, too. Audiences are no longer fascinated by the fact that Mickey Mouse can spit.

Release Date: December 3, 1969

Distrib: National General