Bill Melendez, the animator who brought Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the Peanuts gang to life in various movies and TV specials died of natural causes on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 at St. John’s Health Center. He was 91 years old.

Melendez worked for nearly seventy years as a professional animator, beginning in 1938 when he worked on Mickey Mouse cartoons and legendary Disney films Pinocchio and Fantasia. He was the animator behind the perennial holiday favorite A Charlie Brown Christmas and also voiced Snoopy’s unintelligible language of howls and sighs.

Born in 1916 in the Mexican state of Sonora, he moved with his family in 1928 to Arizona, then on to Los Angeles in the 1930s where he attended the Chouinard Art Institute. After working for Disney, he moved on to Warner Bros. for 15 years as a director and producer of over 1,000 commercials and movies.

He met Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz in 1959 while he was working on Ford Motor Co. TV commercials featuring the Peanuts characters. They became friends and Melendez was giving the honor of being the only person Schulz would authorize to animate the Peanuts characters. Then, he started his own production company in 1964 with Lee Mendelson, and went on to direct, animate, and produce more than 70 TV specials, 4 movies, and hundreds of Peanuts commercials.

On behalf of Geppi’s Entertainment Publishing & Auctions, Scoop would like to offer our condolences to his family and friends.