Snooping Behind the Scenes

Tucked between the rack of drawing pens and papers on Bill Melendez’s desk is a small Snoopy figurine--but not just any Snoopy.

This canine’s snout is graced with a handlebar mustache similar to the one worn by the 84-year-old animator. And it’s no accident.

For the last five decades, Melendez and his business partner Lee Mendelson have brought the beloved beagle and the rest of the “Peanuts” gang to life in animated versions of Charles M. Schulz’s cartoons.

And Schulz, who enjoyed a close working relationship with Melendez, used Snoopy’s mustachioed likeness as a nod to his good friend.

“Animators always use inside jokes in their strips and this was just one of them,” Melendez said. “When I first saw it, I immediately knew it was me and laughed.”

Since the first big television project they did together--the 1965 animated special “A Charlie Brown Christmas”--Melendez and “Sparky,” as everyone called Schulz, had plenty to laugh about.

Along the way, they created a library of “Peanuts” programming, including 63 half-hour specials, five one-hour specials and four feature films. That doesn’t even include 372 commercials.

“Schulz used to say to me, ‘Bill, I’m a cartoon-strip artist and you’re an animator. You do your thing and I’ll do mine,”’ Melendez recalled.

In some ways, that’s as much a job description as it is a reflection of their distinct personalities: Schulz reserved and self-effacing, Melendez an outgoing bon vivant with a taste for fine cuisine and a good martini.

Since 1999, Melendez has worked at his Sopwith Productions offices on Riverside Drive in Sherman Oaks. A staff of 10 produces new commercials and works on unfinished Schulz projects, though it’s a far cry from the 40 animators he had with him at the firm’s former headquarters in Larchmont during the “Peanuts” heyday.

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One of Melendez’s favorite stories from those days is about the new Jaguar sports car he was showing off when Schulz was in L.A. on a visit from his Northern California home in the late 1960s.

“I told Sparky to get behind the wheel,” Melendez reminisced during an interview. “Boy, his eyes popped out. But he went out and bought one, immediately.”

Meredith Hodges, Schulz’s eldest daughter, said Melendez was one of her dad’s best friends--even performing as the “voice” of Snoopy (mostly canine snickering) for the animated cartoons.

“He used to make my father laugh out loud,” Hodges said. “And my father wasn’t one to laugh at much.”

“The work that he does is just extraordinary,” she added.

Melendez speaks of Schulz in reverential tones, likening him to Linus, whom he calls the gentlest and smartest of the Peanuts kids.

And while he may fancy himself a carefree spirit and a trendsetter, Melendez has been married to the same woman for more than 60 years and is the proud father of two adult sons, including Navy rear-admiral Rod Melendez.

Through Schulz, Melendez said, he came to see his subjects as having distinct personalities “as if they are living things . . . like little humans.”

Melendez said the animator has to think like an actor, putting himself in the mind-set of his character.

“You know through experience what is acceptable and what isn’t for the characters. You find yourself thinking ‘Snoopy would never do that to Linus.’ Or, ‘Linus would have never said that to Charlie Brown.’ ”

Today, snippets from his collective work with Schulz adorn the walls of Melendez’s office, including familiar settings from past programs like the sickly Christmas tree, the pitcher’s mound and tangled pumpkin patch.

After Schulz’s death just over a year ago, Melendez decided that continuing his work would serve to carry on the legacy of his friend. In addition to commercials, Melendez is working on some of Schulz’s uncompleted “Peanuts” projects.

More than a half-century earlier, Melendez began his career as a Disney animator, a world away from the desert province of Sonora, Mexico, where he was born in 1916.

As early as he can remember, he was drawing the things around him, including horses, cattle and cowboys, he said. His family moved to Arizona in 1928 and then on to Los Angeles in the 1930s. He remembers a time when people would drive their Model Ts to the San Fernando Valley “just to shoot jack rabbits.”

During the heart of the Great Depression, Melendez said, a friend told him that a guy named Walt Disney was hiring artists in Burbank. And thus, almost by accident, began a long and enriching career in animation.

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At Disney, Melendez said, he had raw talent but not the proper training: “I had to learn that animation wasn’t all about doing it in a cartoon fashion, but as close to live action as possible.”

Among the projects he worked on for Disney were “Fantasia,” “Pinocchio” and “Bambi,” as well as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons.

Melendez went on to Warner Bros. to animate other famous cartoons such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. Over the next decade and a half came a series of jobs on short films and commercials with United Productions of America, John Sutherland Productions and a company he partnered with a friend.

It was at UPA that Melendez started doing work for the New York-based J. Walter Thompson ad agency, whose clients included Ford Motor Co.

The car maker was looking to use animated characters to sell its cars on television. Sometime in the mid-1950s, he said, Ford expressed interest in using “Peanuts” characters for one of its new models.

Melendez prepared his animation work and showed it to Schulz at the cartoonist’s home in Sebastopol. “The minute that he saw it, he couldn’t believe it,” Melendez said.

That led to “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” followed by “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” “A Boy Named Charlie Brown,” “Snoopy Come Home,” and countless other projects.

Although his company is doing less work now, Melendez said he would continue animation until he can’t do it anymore.

“People keep asking me when I’ll retire; I say from what to what. I don’t want to stop doing this, it’s what keeps me hopping and keeps me happy.”