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
A Charlie Brown Christmas comics and animation industries, among them Eric Goldberg ("Pocahontas"), Pete Docter ("Monsters, Inc.", "Up"), Andrew Stanton ("Finding Nemo", "WALL-E"), Jef Mallett ("Frazz"), and Patrick McDonnell ("Mutts"). The show's score made an equally pervasive impact on viewers who would later perform jazz, among them David Benoit and George Winston. More directly, the special launched a series of Peanuts films, TV specials (many of them holiday-themed) and other works of entertainment. Linus' speech near the end of the special was used in the Sidewalk Prophets Christmas song "What a Glorious Night". In 2013 Tams-Witmark Music Library, Inc. began licensing an official stage