Peanuts cartoon studio that had Ford as a client. Schulz and Meléndez became friends, and when producer Lee Mendelson decided to make a two-minute animated sequence for a TV documentary called "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" in 1963, he brought on Meléndez for the project. Before the documentary was completed, the three of them (with help from their sponsor, the Coca-Cola Company) produced their first half-hour animated special, the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning "A Charlie Brown Christmas", which was first aired on the CBS network on December 9, 1965. This episode is undoubtedly the most widely recognized of all "Peanuts" TV
'Twas the Night Before Christmas (1977 TV special) casting Martha Raye as his mother-in-law, telling an interviewer: "It's my chance to repay her for all the times she used me in her NBC "Comedy Hour" back in the 1950s." George Gobel's casting in this production was an apparent coincidence and not related to his appearance three years earlier in a holiday special of the same name, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974 TV special). For the climactic recitation of "A Visit from St. Nicholas," Lynde was not allowed to rely on cue cards because director Tim Kiley felt they would distract the child actors in the cast. Lynde