It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Directed by	Bill Melendez
Produced by	United Features Syndicate
Written by	Charles M. Schulz
Starring	Bill Melendez Peter Robbins
Distributed by	CBS, Paramount Home Video
Release date(s)	1966
Running time	25 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a critically-acclaimed and very popular animated television special based on the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.

The special depicts one Halloween night in which Linus van Pelt, Charlie Brown's security blanket-toting best friend, eagerly awaits the arrival of "the Great Pumpkin", who Linus believes to travel around the world each Halloween giving toys to all the good little children (in the manner of Santa Claus each Christmas).

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was the third Peanuts special to be produced and animated by Bill Melendez. Its initial broadcast took place on October 27, 1966, on the CBS network; CBS re-aired the special annually through 2000, with ABC picking up the rights beginning in 2001.

The program was nominated for an Emmy award. It has been issued on home video several times.

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, a retrospective book was published in 2006 entitled, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: The Making of a Television Classic with the entire script, never-before-seen photographs, storyboard excerpts, and interviews with the original child actors who provided the voices of the Peanuts gang.

Plot

As Linus and Charlie Brown's little sister, Sally Brown, sit in the pumpkin patch, the gang of Charlie Brown, Lucy van Pelt, Schroeder, Pig-Pen, Patty and Violet go trick-or-treating. Everyone gets candy (except for Charlie Brown, who for some reason always gets a rock in his bag).

Meanwhile, Charlie Brown's dog Snoopy, dressed up as the famous World War I flying ace, heads out in his Sopwith Camel (his doghouse) to shoot down the infamous Red Baron. Linus, missing out on trick-or-treating, also misses out on the Halloween party at Violet's house. At the pumpkin patch, Linus faints when he thinks he finally sees his mysterious hero, which turns out to be nothing but a silhouette of Snoopy in his World War I Flying Ace outfit. Sally is outraged and threatens to "sue" Linus. She leaves him alone in the pumpkin patch, where he stays late into the night.

At 4:00 AM, Lucy goes out to find Linus shivering on the ground, covered in his blanket, and helps him into the house and puts him to bed. Linus vows to Charlie Brown at the rock wall that the Great Pumpkin will return next year.

Quotes

"I got a rock."

• Lucy, seeing Linus writing his letter to the Great Pumpkin: "Not again!(shaking him) Writing a letter to a stupid pumpkin! You make me the laughing stock of the neighborhood! All they talk about is my little brother, who always writes to the Great Pumpkin. You better cut it out right now or I'll pound you."
• Linus: "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin."
• (As Lucy cuts a pumpkin open with a knife and begins "gutting" it in order to make it into a jack-o'-lantern, Linus flinches in horror and says:) "Oh! You didn't tell me you were going to kill it!"
• Lucy, putting on her costume: "A person should always choose a costume which is direct contrast to her own personality." (She proceeds to put on a witch's mask, contradicting what she just said.)
• Charlie Brown goes trick-or-treating in a ghost costume with far too many eye-holes ("I had a little trouble with the scissors"), and after each house when the kids announce what they got, he utters the famous sad line, "I got a rock."
• Linus: We'll just sit here in the pumpkin patch, and you can see the Great Pumpkin with your OWN EYES.
• Sally: If you try to hold my hand, I'll slug you.
• Lucy, bobbing for apples and getting Snoopy on the other end of the apple: "BLECH! My lips touched dog lips! (starts running in circles) Blech, uck, poison dog lips! Blech, uck!" (runs away)
• Sally, in response to Linus's complaint that little girls are supposed to be trusting and naive: "Welcome to the twentieth century".
• Sally, after Linus wakes up from fainting in the pumpkin patch: "I WAS ROBBED! I spent the whole night waiting for the Great Pumpkin, when I could have been out for tricks or treats! (pauses) Halloween is over and I missed it! You blockhead! You kept me up all night waiting for the Great Pumpkin! And all that came was a BEAGLE! I didn't get a chance to go out for tricks or treats! And it was all your fault! I'LL SUE! What a fool I was! I could've had candy, apples and gum! And cookies and money and all sorts of things! But no! I had to listen to you, you blockhead! What a fool I was! Trick or treats come only once a year! And I miss it by sitting in a pumpkin patch with a blockhead! YOU OWE ME RESTITUTION!"(shaking him by the collar)
• Linus:"You heard about fury and a woman scorned, haven't you?" Charlie Brown:"Yes, I guess I have." Linus:"Well, that's nothing compared to the fury of a woman who's been cheated out of tricks or treats."
• Linus: Dear Great Pumpkin, I am looking forward to your arrival on Halloween night. I hope you will bring me lots of presents.

Cast

• Bill Melendez: Snoopy
• Peter Robbins: Charlie Brown
• Sally Dryer: Lucy Van Pelt
• Kathy Steinberg: Sally Brown
• Christopher Shea: Linus Van Pelt
• Gail De Faria: Pigpen
• Lisa De Faria: Patty
• Ann Altieri: Frieda
• Glenn Mendelson: Schroeder and Shermy

In popular culture

• In the opening to The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror II", the Peanuts gang, wearing their costumes from the special, runs in front of the Simpsons house.
• At the beginning of A Pinky and the Brain Halloween, three kids are shown comparing what they just got. One kid, wearing Charlie Brown's costume, laments, "I got a bowl of soup."
• At the beginning of the Family Guy episode "E. Peterbus Unum", when Peter's friends brag about what they got with their tax refunds, Charlie Brown appears, in his ghost costume, holding out his bag and saying "I got a rock."
• At the beginning of the 2006 Homestar Runner cartoon "Happy Hallow-Day", Strong Bad attempts to scare Marzipan while wearing a witch mask identical to the one Lucy wears in this special.
• In the Halloween short It's the Great Pumpkin, Mason from the internet sitcom Life From The Inside, Mason muses on the darker side of Charles Schulz's holiday classic, especially the dubious parenting habits of the Peanuts "adults."
• MADtv parodied the special as "Its the Bigass Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", which shows the Peanuts characters as African-Americans in an inner city neighborhood. MAD TV did another parody when KISS guest starred as themselves and had received trinkets, and one of the members exclaims "I got a rock".
• In the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy episode "Grim or Gregory", Billy says Charlie Brown's line, "I got a rock."
• In the Robot Chicken episode Vegetable Funfest, Linus uses dark magic to summon the Great Pumpkin, but it soons kills him. It later kills the rest of the "Peanuts" gang one by one. Charlie Brown, the last remaining survivor, is spared when the Kite-Eating Tree eats the Great Pumpkin.
• In the song "Halloween" by German power metal band Helloween, there is a reference to Charlie Brown's rock scene and Linus' belief about big pumpkin traveling around the world.

With the Lyrics
"Someone's sitting in a field,
Never giving yield.
Sitting there with gleaming eyes,
Wating for big pumpkin to arise.
Bad luck if you get a stone,
Like the good old Charlie Brown.
You think Linus could be right
The kids will say it's just a stupid lie"

• A small part of the episode "Have Yourself a Joyful Little Animas" in the Cartoon Network series My Gym Partner's a Monkey spoofs the Great Pumpkin in the scene where Horace is in the pumpkin patch with Coach Gills holding a sign that says "Welcome Great Gourd".
• In a World of Warcraft Halloween audio play, one of the characters (a gnome named Wimpy J. McWiddle) receives a rock every time the group receives gifts from the people they encounter, upon which he says dejectedly, "I got a rock..."

If you pause the show near the beginning of the party you can see that one of the characters grows a third hand.

External links

• It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown at the Internet Movie Database
• Official site
• ABC feature page for It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
• Review of the special at X-Entertainment (warning: contains vulgar language)

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