The Amazing Mystery of the Hidden Charlie Brown and Snoopy Wall (2024)

Welcome to the 933rd installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine three comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. In the third legend of this all-Peanuts installment, learn the amazing story of a hidden Charles Schulz painting of the Peanuts cast discovered years after the fact.

Like almost every comic strip ever, Charles Schulz's Peanuts was not an overnight success when it launched in 1950. Heck, it probably actually took a bit LONGER than other famous comic strips to become the blockbuster strip that it eventually became (by the time that Schulz retired ahead of his death in 2000, Peanuts was the most popular comic strip in the country, and now, decades after the strip ended, it's still very popular in reruns, and the characters remain iconic despite no new strips since 2000).

As I noted in a recent Comic Book Legends Revealed, a major turning point for Schulz was when an editor at the publishing company, Rinehart and Winston, saw one of Schulz's Peanuts strips about the character Schroeder loving classical music. The editor wrote Schulz a letter about how impressed he was by the attention to detail. He then began reading the strip regularly because of that strip, and soon, he contacted Schulz, and arranged for a deal to be made to reprint Peanuts in a cheap reprint book..

And that, as they saw, was that, as the Peanuts collections reached a new audience, the strip became more and more popular, and soon, it was an institution. That book came out in July 1952, though, so before that point, Schulz wasn't even REMOTELY famous. He lived with his family in Colorado Springs in 1951, and they moved back to Minnesota a year later, leaving Schulz's stay in Colorado relatively forgotten...except for a little something that he had left behind, something that was hidden for years before being uncovered by another family, and that was not even the weirdest part of the story!

How long did Charles Schulz live in Colorado?

Charles Schulz married Joyce Halverson in April 1951, and adopted Halverson's daughter, Meredith, who had only been born a year earlier (Meredith Schulz Hodges didn't know she wasn't Schulz's biological daughter until she was an adult). The family moved to Colorado Springs, where Schulz continued work on his Peanuts comic strip. Schulz' first son, Monte, was born in Colorado Springs. Here is a photo shared by Bill Vogrin of Schulz, Joyce, and baby Monte in their Colorado Springs home...

Schulz rented an office in downtown Colorado Springs to work on his comics (he wouldn't have a dedicated studio for many years), and amusingly, while at the office, he ran into Phillip Van Pelt, who Schulz had served with during World War II! They didn't know each other that well in the military, but when you run into a guy you served with, come on, whether you were close or not, you're going to talk to each other. As it turned out, the Van Pelts lived near the Schulzes. They all became close friends, and obviously, Schulz used Van Pelt's last name for Lucy and Linus Van Pelt, two of the most famous Peanuts characters, with Lucy making her debut in 1952. Phillip's wife, Louanne, was almost certainly the inspiration for Lucy Van Pelt, as well, but whether it was just the name or not is up for debate, Louanne's daughter, Martha, noted when her mother passed away back in 2018, "Mom always said when she was interviewed that she was much nicer than that (Lucy) in person. She was a loving mother, but she was very bossy. She even looked a little like her (Lucy), if you look at some of her old pictures, with dark wavy hair. I don't know how to describe it, but they resembled each other."

In any event, while they lived in Colorado Springs, Schulz painted a mural on the wall of Meredith's room. They left for Minnesota (where Craig Schulz was born in January 1953), and the house was sold, and the wall was painted over as, again, this wasn't CHARLES SCHULZ at the time. He was just a mostly unknown cartoonist who had painted nonsense all over a wall, and the new owners painted over it.

That would be that for over two decades...until it wasn't.

How was the Peanuts wall discovered? How did it become part of the Schulz Museum?

The small house changed hands a few times, and the room in question was painted three more times before the house was purchased by Stanley and Polly Travnicek in 1979, who planned on using the home as a rental house. They heard from neighbors that the home had belonged to Charles Schulz, who, by 1979, had become CHARLES SCHULZ. They were told about the mural, and Polly Travnicek even got into contact with Schulz himself to find out if he really HAD painted a mural in the home. He confirmed he had, and also revealed that he had used oil paint to do so. Travnicek was a painter herself, so she knew that the four coats of water-based paint would not likely destroy the original oil painting below it, so she set out to painstakingly restore the wall, which she eventually did.

It became a source of pride for her, a wall mural painted by CHARLES SCHULZ featuring early drawings of Charlie Brown and Snoopy (and various other cute characters). When Schulz passed away, and the Travniceks learned that there were plans to build a Charles M. Schulz Museum, they agreed to allow the museum to cut out the wall in September 2001, and bring it to the museum - free of charge (The wall was removed and repaired on the Schulzes' dime, but otherwise, free of charge)!!

The wall remains a highlight of the museum's permanent collection to this day...

Here is a detail with Snoopy and Charlie Brown...

Amazing. What an awesome story.

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That's it for Comic Book Legends Revealed #933! See you next installment! Be sure to check out my Entertainment Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of film and TV. Plus, Pop Culture References also has some brand-new Entertainment and Sports Legends Revealeds!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com.