A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) on Netflix

TV-G196525mAnimation Comedy Family

Charlie Brown cannot shake his gloom as Christmas arrives, and he tells Linus that the commercialism around him is the problem. Lucy suggests he direct the group's Christmas play.

Netflix4.4/5
IMDb8.3/1050,980 votes
Rotten Tomatoes94%

Trailer

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Plot summary

Christmas has come, but Charlie Brown is gloomy all the same, and he tells Linus that the commercialism around him is what troubles him. Violet puts him down, so he brings the problem to Lucy's psychiatric booth, and she tells him to take charge of the group's yearly Christmas play. He accepts. On the way to rehearsal: Lucy wants real estate, Snoopy is entering his decorated doghouse in a neighborhood contest with a cash prize, and his little sister Sally is drafting a selfish request to Santa. The rehearsal has dancing, loud music, a cast that will not obey, and Lucy as the Christmas Queen. Charlie Brown calls for a proper mood and says the pageant needs a Christmas tree, so Lucy proposes a big pink aluminum one, and he and Linus go to the tree lot.

Cast

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

When producer Lee Mendelson assumed the special would use a laugh track, standard for animated shows at the time, Charles Schulz ("Sparky") silently got up and walked out of the room in objection; Mendelson and director Bill Melendez took the hint and dropped the idea before Schulz returned as if nothing had happened.
Charles Schulz insisted on keeping Linus's recitation of the biblical Nativity story even though producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez worried religion was too controversial for television; when they raised concerns, Schulz simply replied, "If we don't do it, who will?"
Charlie Brown's disparagement of artificial Christmas trees virtually eliminated demand for the aluminum Christmas trees that were a fad at the time; by 1967 they were no longer manufactured regularly.
Days before the premiere, Melendez first saw the completed animation at a showing in a theater and turned to his crew of animators to remark, "My golly, we've killed it."
Kathy Steinberg was the youngest performer on the recording, just six years old at the time, and was too young to read, so the producers had to give her one line at a time to recite.
CBS gave the production a budget of $76,000 to make the show, and by the time it was finished it had gone $20,000 over that budget.
A Charlie Brown Christmas was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007 and added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" American sound recordings in 2012.