Bill Melendez
| Bill Melendez | |
|---|---|
| Born | José Cuauhtémoc Meléndez November 15, 1916 Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico |
| Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Santa Monica, California, United States |
| Occupation | Animator |
| Years active | 1938–2006 |
| Spouse(s) | Helen Melendez (1940–2008; his death) |
José Cuauhtémoc "Bill" Meléndez (November 15, 1916 – September 2, 2008)[1] was a Mexican American character animator, film director, voice artist and producer, known for his cartoons for Walt Disney Productions (working on four Disney films Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi), Warner Bros. Cartoons, UPA and the Peanuts series. Melendez provided the voices of Snoopy and Woodstock in the latter as well.
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Early life
A native of the Mexican city of Hermosillo, Sonora, Melendez was educated in U.S. public schools in Douglas, Arizona. He was a very good student, and later attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles (which would later become California Institute of the Arts).
UPA and commercial animation work
Following the 1941 Disney strike, Bill was hired by Leon Schlesinger to animate in Bob Clampett's unit. After Clampett's departure, Bill moved to the Arthur Davis unit. When the number of animation units at Warner Bros. was reduced from four to three in 1948, Melendez, after being moved to Robert McKimson's unit for a time, moved over to United Productions of America (UPA) where he animated on cartoons such as Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950). Melendez also produced and directed thousands of television commercials, first at UPA, then Playhouse Pictures and John Sutherland Productions.[2] In 1963, Melendez founded his own studio in the basement of his Hollywood home. Bill Melendez Productions is still active and is currently run by his son Steven Melendez.[3] In addition to animation, Melendez was once a faculty member at the University of Southern California's Cinema Arts Department.
Melendez was the only person Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz trusted to turn his popular comic creations into television specials. He and his studio worked on every single television special and direct-to-video film for the Peanuts gang and Melendez directed the majority of them. He even provided the vocal effects for Snoopy and Woodstock in every single production, voice acting the characters in the studio by uttering gibberish, and the voices were mechanically speeded up at different volumes to represent the two different characters. According to a New York Times article shortly after his death, Melendez did not intend to do voice acting for the two characters. "Schulz would not countenance the idea of a beagle uttering English dialogue, Mr. Melendez recited gibberish into a tape recorder, speeded it up and put the result on the soundtrack.“ He also directed, did the animation for, and provided voice acting in the first four Peanuts theatrical films, A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Snoopy, Come Home (1972), Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977), and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (1980). The last Peanuts-related production he worked on was He's a Bully, Charlie Brown (2006).
Melendez and Lee Mendelson, who also worked on the Peanuts specials, films, and TV shows, formed their own production team and did other animated specials. They were responsible for the first two Garfield animated specials, Here Comes Garfield (1982) and Garfield on the Town (1983), as well as Frosty Returns (1992), the pseudo-sequel to Rankin/Bass' Frosty the Snowman (1969).
Death
On September 2, 2008, Melendez died at his home in Santa Monica at the age of 91. He had been in declining health after a fall a year earlier.[4]
Posthumous return to Peanuts
Archive recordings of his work as Snoopy and Woodstock were utilized for the film The Peanuts Movie.[5] This makes him the only member of the film's cast to have been involved in a previous Peanuts project, save for Kristin Chenoweth, who won a Tony Award for her performance as Sally Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown on Broadway.[6]
Related companies
- Melendez Films – Animation division : United Kingdom, video and interactive entertainment
References
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- ↑ http://www.billmelendez.tv/index3.html
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- ↑ Chenoweth Awards at IMDb, accessed January 4th, 2016
External links
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- Bill Melendez at the Internet Movie Database
- Bill Melendez Productions Inc.
- Bio of Bill Melendez on Chuck Jones site
- Interview of Melendez (August '06)
- Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the gang flowed with good grief from his pen
- Washington Post: Bill Melendez, 91; Award-Winning 'Peanuts' Animator
- Los Angeles Canyon News: Peanuts" Animator Bill Melendez Dies At Age 91
- Variety Magazine: Animator Bill Melendez dies at 91
- Bill Melendez interview video at the Archive of American Television
- The Independent: Bill Melendez: Animator who worked on Disney classics and adaptations of the 'Peanuts' cartoons
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- Pages using infobox person with unknown parameters
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- 1916 births
- 2008 deaths
- American animators
- American film directors of Mexican descent
- American film producers
- Animated film directors
- American television personalities of Mexican descent
- American writers of Mexican descent
- Mexican cartoonists
- Mexican emigrants to the United States
- Mexican male voice actors
- Peanuts media
- People from Hermosillo
- People from Sonora
- University of Southern California faculty
- People from Douglas, Arizona
