It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a 1966 American prime time animated television special based on the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.
A Halloween special, it was the third Peanuts special (and second holiday-themed special, following A Charlie Brown Christmas) to be produced and animated by Bill Melendez. The special features music composed by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi, whose contributions include the theme song “Linus and Lucy”. It was also the first Peanuts special whose title used the pattern of a short phrase followed by "Charlie Brown", a pattern which remained the norm for almost all subsequent Peanuts specials.
Its initial broadcast took place on October 27, 1966, on CBS, preempting My Three Sons. The original sponsors were Coca-Cola (which had been the original sponsor of A Charlie Brown Christmas) and the Dolly Madison brand of baked snack food. Dolly Madison continued to co-sponsor the Peanuts specials on CBS for many years. CBS re-aired the special annually through 2000, with ABC picking up the rights beginning in 2001. It aired annually on ABC during the Halloween season until 2019. From 2006 until 2019, ABC usually aired the special twice, once in a truncated format during a half-hour time slot and once in full during an hour-long time slot (filled out with an abridged version of the 1972 special You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown). Beginning in 2020, Apple TV+ will become the exclusive home of all Peanuts specials. The special is also aired on Family Channel in Canada since 2018.
The program was nominated for a 1966 Emmy Award. It has been issued on home video several times, including a Remastered Deluxe Edition of the special released by Warner Home Video on September 2, 2008, with the bonus feature It's Magic, Charlie Brown which was released in 1981. To celebrate its 40th anniversary, a retrospective book was published in 2006. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: The Making of a Television Classic includes the entire script, never-before-seen photographs, storyboard excerpts, and interviews with the original child actors who provided the voices of the Peanuts gang.
A history of the program and the various religious interpretations of Linus' sincere belief in the Great Pumpkin are explained in the 2015 book, A Charlie Brown Religion, published by the University Press of Mississippi.
Category:Films
Category:1966 Films
Category:TV Specials
Category:1966 TV Specials