Trivia / A Boy Named Charlie Brown

• Adored by the Network: ABC Family had a tradition of airing this movie, along with Snoopy, Come Home, on the week of Thanksgiving (usually on the day after the holiday) as part of Countdown To 25 Days Of Christmas.
• Dawson Casting: This movie marked the last time Peter Robbins voiced Charlie Brown, having done so since A Charlie Brown Christmas. Robbins was 13 voicing an eight-year old at the time of the film's release.
• Deleted Scene: A couple of scenes were found on an archived Brazilian airing of the movie circa 1987:
  • The first one is an alternative scene of "Failure Face", which had much more Mushroom Samba elements to it. It's partially lost because the archived video didn't actually record the first part of the movie up until the girls start singing the second verse.
  • The second one is also a Mushroom Samba: an extended version of Linus' hallucinations as he rides the bus to New York, in which he imagines Charlie Brown as a demon destroying his blanket.
• Development Hell: It took decades to release the music-only soundtrack due to complex rights negotiations with Paramount (current owner of the Cinema Center Films catalog), Sony (current owner of Columbia Records, who had issued the "audio play" LP in 1970) and the estates of Vince Guaraldi, John Scott Trotter and Rod McKuen.
• Edited for Syndication: The original theatrical release was 86 minutes. At some point seven minutes got lopped off, and during The '80s, the 79 minute version was the one circulating on VHS and cable TV. The 86 minute cut didn't resurface until 2004, when it was used in, of all places, the Hasbro VideoNow personal player release (which was spread out over three discs), then it finally made it to DVD in 2006. The following was cut out of the edited version:
  • An extension of Charlie Brown trying to fly his kite in the opening.
  • The Lucy/Charlie Brown "faults" scene where she finds a way to use the football gag on him under the guise of therapy.
  • Lucy talking to Charlie Brown about being his agent and asking for a commission.
  • A bit where Charlie Brown attempts to stay awake in his hotel room, thinks about Lucy berating him, and orders room service. This edit made the line "Let's see, what was it? I before E after milk?" seem more like a Non Sequitur, *Thud*.
  • More of Snoopy's figure skating scene.
• He Also Did: The lyrics for "I Before E" were written by director Bill Melendez and one of his animators, Al Shean.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: There was an LP album based on the film, with Charlie Brown and Linus narrating the story, plus dialogue and song snippets. It quickly went out of print and is very hard to find. It also gets mixed up with the Similarly Named Vince Guaraldi album mentioned below. A full soundtrack music-only album got released in 2017 after a long time in Development Hell, but it was only as a 1,000 copy limited edition that sold out in under a week.
• Late Export for You: Not released in Japan until 1972, although it had re-releases there in 1976 and 1984 (the latter being a double bill with the Toei Animation feature Kenya Boy).
• Non-Singing Voice: Very noticeable with the song "Champion Charlie Brown," where the kids' singing voices are clearly provided by adult women and sound nothing like their speaking voices.
  • Averted with "Failure Face" and "I Before E". Even one can easily hear Pamelyn Ferdin sing in her Lucy voice on the former.
• The Other Darrin: In Japan, several different dubs exist. Masako Nozawa played Charlie Brown for the 1976 theatrical re-release, while Charlie was voiced by Chika Sakamoto in the TBS TV broadcast version. Lucy was dubbed by Michiko Hirai (1976) and by Yuriko Fuchizaki (TBS).
• Recycled Script: A couple things were borrowed from It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: some of the animation for Snoopy's Flying Ace scene, and the version of "Linus & Lucy" that plays when Linus is reunited with his blanket.
• Similarly Named Works: In 1963 producer Lee Mendelson made a half-hour documentary about Charles Schulz and Peanuts called A Boy Named Charlie Brown. The title was a take-off on a previous Mendelson documentary A Man Named Mays (about baseball great Willie Mays). The documentary never aired in its original form (though The Coca-Cola Company was impressed enough with the brief animated sequences to commission a ''Peanuts'' holiday special). So when it came time to do a full-length movie, Mendelson, Bill Melendez and Schulz saw no problem with re-using the title. One problem though: even though the documentary didn't air, Vince Guaraldi released a soundtrack album for it, leading to some confusion after the movie came out.