Bill Melendez

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Melendez was the only person Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz trusted to turn his popular comic creations into television specials. According to an article in The New York Times, Schulz would not allow a beagle to utter English dialogue, so Melendez recited gibberish into a tape recorder, sped it up, and put the result on the soundtrack. He provided the vocal effects for Snoopy and Woodstock in most productions, voice acting the characters in the studio by uttering gibberish, with the voices mechanically sped up at different speeds to represent the two different characters. Melendez did not intend to do voice acting for the two characters initially. He and his studio worked on the majority of the television specials and direct-to-video films for the Peanuts gang, though some later specials were produced by other studios or without his direct involvement. Melendez directed most of the specials he worked on. The last Peanuts-related production he worked on was The Peanuts Movie (2015), for which he served as a creative consultant.

In Their Own Story

In 1959, Melendez was hired to do some animated television commercials featuring characters from the comic strip Peanuts for the Ford Motor Company. These animations were seen by documentary producer Lee Mendelson, who then hired Melendez to do some interstitial animations for a film he was producing about the comic strip entitled A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Melendez went on to direct, do the animation for, and provide voice acting in the first four Peanuts theatrical films: A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Snoopy Come Home (1972), Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977), and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (1980). He also provided voice work for the video games Get Ready for School, Charlie Brown! (1995) and Snoopy's Campfire Stories (1996). Archive recordings of his work as Snoopy and Woodstock were used for the film The Peanuts Movie, making him the only member of the film's cast to have been involved in a previous Peanuts project.

Reader's Guide

Melendez founded his own studio in 1963 in the basement of his Hollywood home. As of 2009, Bill Melendez Productions was still active and run by his son Steven C. Melendez. Melendez and Lee Mendelson formed their own production team and did other animated specials, including the first two Garfield animated specials Here Comes Garfield (1982) and Garfield on the Town (1983), as well as Frosty Returns (1992). Melendez also produced and directed thousands of television commercials, first at UPA, then John Sutherland Productions and Playhouse Pictures. During the 1980s and 1990s, he served on the advisory board of the National Student Film Institute. Melendez died at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, on September 2, 2008, at the age of 91. No cause of his death was made public, but he had been in declining health after a fall a year earlier. He was cremated and his ashes were given to his family.

Did You Know?

• Melendez was born in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, and educated in American public schools in Douglas, Arizona.
• He worked as an assistant animator at Disney on classics like Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi.
• Melendez was fired from Warner Bros. by producer Edward Selzer after animating several shorts for Robert McKimson.
• The 1949 Looney Tunes short 'The Pied Piper of Guadalupe' features a character named Melendez, though it is not confirmed to be a reference to Bill Melendez.
• Melendez served on the advisory board of the National Student Film Institute during the 1980s and 1990s.