Lessons in Love with Charlie Brown

Poor Charlie, forever pining for the love of the 'Little Red-Haired Girl'. She was real, you know...

Peanuts animator Charles Schulz was known to say, “To read the strip is to know me” - Snoopy was inspired by his own family dog, and he had a lot in common with Charlie Brown, including a personal story of unrequited love.

You may remember how so many of the Peanuts strips revolved around a pretty redhead. The first time we hear about her is in a strip from November 1961 where Charlie, while sitting on a bench eating his packed lunch and lamenting his unpopularity, endearingly says “I’d give anything in the world if that little girl with the red hair would come over and sit with me.”

Is there anyone who can’t relate to the misery of the unattainable love of our youth? But the real red-head in Schulz’s life was not a childhood love, but one that he met at work.

In 1950, ‘Sparky’ - as friends called him - worked as an instructor at an art school that offered young people classes in cartooning and illustration. It was here that he met Donna Mae Johnson, a 21-year-old in the accounting department with fiery red hair. Sparky would often pass by her desk and leave doodles and cartoons on her calendar, eventually taking her out on Monday night dates.

Here are Charles and Donna (circled) in a photo with the company softball team, which Charles coached.

But Donna had another suitor called Al, a strapping firefighter, and when things with Sparky started to amp up (he proposed a number of times), Al upped his game. Donna had a genuine dilemma on her hands, once writing in her diary: “How will you ever decide?”

But, as you can probably predict from the comic strips, Donna eventually chose Al and Schulz was shattered, writing about the sting of the loss:

“I can think of no more emotionally damaging loss than to be turned down by someone whom you love very much. What a bitter blow that is. It is a blow to everything that you are.”

And so Donna became somewhat of a lost muse for Schulz, and her mentions in the Peanuts strips (we never see the little red-head despite the fact that Charlie can’t keep his eyes off of her), were like a secret love letter to her.

He channelled much of the storyline into an annual Valentines comic narrative that resonated and entertained us for decades. As readers, we shared in Charlie’s annual ritual of hope, perseverance - and his abiding belief in love.

Here are a few…

In honour of that unrequited love, the Charles M. Schulz Museum give free admission to all little (and not so little!) red-heads on Valentine’s Day. *Sigh*.

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If you want to go deeper:

Here’s a documentary about Charles Schulz that we’ve lined up for our weekend viewing. Donna appears at time stamp 13:55; she talks so kindly about Charles.