Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (1975)

Of all the Peanuts holiday specials, the two I remember seeing the most when I was a kid were A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown; all the others I either didn't know existed back then (actually a promo on the VHS of the animated movie, Donkey Kong Country: Legend of the Crystal Coconut, was where I learned of most of them and that was around the tail end of 1999) or I saw them when they were aired as part of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, which Disney Channel played during the latter part of my elementary school years. It was either there or on a VHS that they had us watch at school one day where I saw this one, as I remembered the plot and the bittersweet ending revolving around Charlie Brown and Linus. In any case, Valentine's Day has never been a holiday that I've particularly cared for, even back when I was a kid. The reason for that is not because of any soul-crushing incident that happened between myself and a girl (truth be told, I've never had a significant other) but the simple fact that nothing about it has ever rocked my world. I love Halloween and Christmas, for reasons that should be obvious, and I even like Easter, which I associate with fun memories of egg hunts and also because it's around that time when cold, miserable winter transcends into warm, pleasant spring, but Valentine's Day brings to mind the time of the year when winter is often at its grayest and most depressing (in fact, I'd say February is my least favorite month, in general), chocolates and tart candies that are too rich for me, and passing around and receiving valentines at school that are meaningless. I get the idea behind them but, by that point in the school year, you surely know who you like and don't like, so who cares if they give you little cards and such? Maybe I'm just cynical, especially since I've never had a special someone who could help me relate to it more, but Valentine's Day just doesn't do it for me. As for Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, I wouldn't call it one of my favorite Peanuts specials, mainly because of how sad things get near the end and the mixed feelings I have about the ending, but I wouldn't say it's a bad one either. It's kind of middle of the road.

Valentine's Day is coming and Charlie Brown is hoping for some valentines, to the point where he neurotically checks his mailbox every chance he gets (and every time, it's empty); at the same time, Linus has become infatuated with his teacher, Miss Othmar, and decides to buy her a big, heart-shaped box of candy. Little does he know that, when Sally sees him leaving the store with it, she believes that he bought it for her and decides to make a homemade valentine for him, with little success. By the time Valentine's Day rolls around, the kids put all their valentines into a large, slotted box and Schroeder passes them out, with the kids also receiving candy hearts with various writings on them. By the end of the day, both Charlie Brown and Linus have struck out, with the former receiving no valentines whatsoever and the latter missing his chance to give Miss Othmar her candy when she leaves with her boyfriend. Even Sally gets burned, as she's upset when Linus doesn't give her the candy that she thinks is for her. While they're all dejected, the next day, Charlie Brown may be surprised to receive a late valentine, although the circumstances surrounding it may not be ideal.

This is an example of a Peanuts special being directed by someone other than Bill Melendez, who was still involved with it as producer; in this case, the directorial duties were handled by Phil Roman, who'd first become involved with the Peanuts specials in the animation department with 1968's He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown and had co-directed A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving with Melendez. It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown in 1974 was the first cartoon he ever directed in a solo function, which he followed up with It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown the same year, and he went on to direct a number of other Peanuts specials after this, like It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown, It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown, What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown, and She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown, just to name a few. He also co-directed the latter Peanuts movies, Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown, and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and don't come back!!), with Melendez. In fact, Roman had a connection to Charles Schulz before he even created the Peanuts, as he was Roman's teacher in a correspondence art course he took in the 1940's when he was just learning to draw, so it was like serendipity that he eventually ended up working on animations based on his former teacher's best known work.

The basic idea of the character of Charlie Brown (voiced by Duncan Watson) is that he's a morose kid who's always down in the dumps and whose melancholia is always compounded by bad things that happen to him but this special takes it to a particularly sad extreme, even more so than the crap he dealt with in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. His getting nothing but rocks in his trick-or-treat bag was pretty depressing and it showed that the adults in whatever town this is are a bunch of assholes but that was only one small part of that special; here, one of the main plots is how poor Charlie Brown desperately wants to get some valentines and is turned down at every opportunity. He gets none in the mail, no matter how many times he checks; he expects to get a lot at school from the other kids, only to be crushed when he comes away with nothing except a candy heart that actually says, "FORGET IT, KID"; he's so disheartened that when he gets home, he angrily kicks the mailbox and hurts his foot in the process; and the next day, when he has one small ray of hope that the little red-haired girl may have sent him a valentine that arrived late, all he gets is a kiss on the nose from Snoopy. The poor kid is so discouraged and depressed that, when Violet and the other girls offer him their used valentines out of pity, he accepts them out of sheer desperation, despite Schroeder calling them out on what they're doing. The special ends afterward with Charlie Brown becoming hopeful about what such an act might mean for the future, saying, "Hey, maybe this is the start of a trend. Maybe this is a whole new trend for old Charlie Brown. Maybe this is the start of something big! Maybe next year I'll get a whole bunch of valentines! Maybe next year I'll need three briefcases instead of two! Maybe next year I'll even...", to which Linus can only respond, "Happy Valentine's Day, Charlie Brown." More than likely, he's in for more disappointment in the future. It's pretty sad and, save for a scene where he tries to show Sally how to make a paper valentine heart and narrating a puppet show that Snoopy puts on for Lucy, that's the gist of what he goes through in the special. In fact, just as what happened when The Great Pumpkin aired, viewers sent valentines to Charlie Brown out of sympathy after they saw this and, I have to say that such acts of kindness, despite being for a fictional character, do help to brighten my view of humanity.

Charlie Brown's not the only one who gets screwed over here. Linus (voiced by Stephen Shea) is hopelessly infatuated with his teacher, Miss Othmar, to the point where he gets excited even when she calls his name during the roll call and when she asks him to pound the erasers, calling such a thing an honor, even as he nearly chokes on the dust. To show how he feels, Linus buys an expensive box of candy for her, ignoring Violet's advice that falling in love with one's teacher is not a good idea (he says that he's merely very fond of the ground on which she walks), and is completely oblivious to the fact that Sally thinks the candy is for her. Not that it would manner to him anyway, given his less than sympathetic view of her, but it is still kind of sad how he has no idea of how misguided she is and coldly takes her valentine for him without giving it a single thought. As you'd expect, it ends badly for Linus, as he doesn't get a chance to give Miss Othmar the candy before she leaves with her boyfriend, and he's do dismayed by it that he laments, "I spent all my money. I made a fool of myself," and angrily throws the candy off a small bridge one piece at a time, yelling, "This one is for love! And this one is for valentines! This one is for romance! This one is for Elizabeth Barrett Browning! This is for, "How do I love thee!..." (not realizing that in doing so, he's giving Snoopy and Woodstock a free meal). The last time you see Linus, he's sadly lamenting how crappy his Valentine's Day was with Charlie Brown, with no silver lining coming for him. As a result, I don't know whose situation is worse: his or Charlie Brown's. One little bit of technical criticism I have to level at Linus is that his voice in this special is a little too deep, as Stephen Shea, who'd voiced him for the past six specials and in the movie, Snoopy Come Home, after taking over from his brother, Christopher, was 13 at the time and was clearly starting to enter puberty. Fortunately, this was the last one that he did.

Lucy (voiced by Melanie Kohn) does what she does best here: make Charlie Brown even more miserable than he already is (the thing begins with her asking him what he's doing as he's sitting by the mailbox and when he says he's waiting for valentines, she comments, "Oh, well. Good luck... You'll need it,"), annoy Schroeder with her unwanted affections, and act as a butt-monkey for Snoopy. She has two really memorable scenes in this special. One is when she's talking to Schroeder as he's playing his piano and, when it becomes clear that he's ignoring her, as he always does, she goes, "Sometimes I don't think you realize that you could lose me. Are you sure you want to suffer the tortures of the memories of a lost love? Do you know the tortures of the memories of a lost love?", before proceeding to completely demolish his piano while ranting, "It's awful! It will haunt you night and day! You'll wake up at night screaming! You can't eat! You can't sleep! You'll want to smash things! You'll hate yourself and the world and everybody in it!" She then lets out an anguished cry and sobs while pounding the floor before instantly composing herself and asking, "Are you sure you want to risk losing me?" (Bi-polar much, Lucy?) The other memorable moment is when Lucy decides to attend a performance of a romantic story that Snoopy acts out with hand-puppets and, after the hassle she has to go through to get a ticket and popcorn from him, the show itself proves to be a little more interactive than she realizes. After being splashed with water, mud, junk, and more water, as well as pounded on by puppets, as part of the dramatization, Lucy decides to leave, telling Charlie Brown when he tells her that there will be another performance later, "Remind me not to come!" Not surprisingly, Lucy has no sympathy when Charlie Brown didn't get a valentine, telling Violet, "Who would waste a valentine on stupid old Charlie Brown?", and while she does join in the group of girls who give him some out of pity, I sincerely doubt it was genuine on her part.

As I said, Sally's (voiced by Lynn Mortensen) misery in this special comes from a case of simple misunderstanding when she sees Linus buying his box of chocolates for Miss Othmar and thinks that it's for her. As a result, she decides to try to get a present for him as well and ultimately settles on making one herself, which isn't without its problems, as she manages to cut out everything but a paper heart, much to Charlie Brown's dismay when he tries to help her. She does manage to get one made for Linus, only to be surprised when he takes it and doesn't give her anything in return. At first, Sally thinks it's a case of bashfulness on his part, but when she gets spurned a second time when Linus is rushing to catch Miss Othmar before she leaves, she becomes downright frustrated at his "mixed up" nature. While it's not made out to be as sad as Charlie Brown or Linus' own heartbreak and is played for laughs, it's still rather poignant when you think about how Sally went out of her way to get Linus a valentine out of complete ignorance of the fact that she was the furthest thing from his mind. Aside from that subplot, the only other memorable part in the special involving Sally is a moment where a candy heart that she receives at school seems to have a lot more written on it than should be humanly possible (either that, or she can't read and this is merely what she thinks it says, as we'll get into later).

I wasn't expecting much out of Schroeder (voiced by Greg Felton) save for the usual shtick of Lucy annoying him while he's trying to play the piano, which you do get, but he also shows that, out of the entire Peanuts gang, he's one of the few who actually cares about Charlie Brown. As he's passing out the valentines at school, he's constantly asked by Charlie Brown if there are any for him and he has to repeatedly tell him no, so by the end of the day, he knows the crushing disappointment that he suffered. Therefore, the next day when Violet and the other girls decide to give him valentines out of pity, Schroeder absolutely unloads on them with some harsh truths: "What do you think you're doing? Who do you think you are? Where were you yesterday when everyone else was giving out valentines? Is kindness and thoughtfulness something you can make retroactive? Don't you think he has any feelings? You and your friends are the most thoughtless bunch I've ever known. You don't care anything about Charlie Brown! You just hate to feel guilty! And now you have the nerve to come around one day later and offer him a used valentine just to ease your conscience!" It's a great speech and it's really nice to somebody stand up to the others and call them out for how they treat Charlie Brown for once... which is why it sucks that Charlie Brown is so desperate for a valentine that he pushes Schroeder aside and accepts the used on. That's what I meant when I said I have mixed feelings about how this one ends. On the one hand, I get that Charlie Brown has reached the point where he'll take any valentine he can get but, still, it's a shame that Schroeder makes this great speech about the crap they're pulling, only for it to be wasted. It's small wonder why, as Charlie Brown says at the end, Schroeder wasn't exactly thrilled with him afterward.

Yeah, Violet (voiced by Linda Ercoli) did what she did mainly so she could stop feeling guilty about not getting Charlie Brown a valentine but, that said, I don't think it came from a place of 100% selfishness. When she realizes that he didn't get any at all at school, you can tell that her reaction is kind of one of, "Man, that's awful." Granted, she could have thought enough to give him one herself at that time or sharing hers with him rather than waiting until the next day to give him her used one, but she still seemed to recognize that it wasn't right and so, even though, as Schroeder pointed out, she offered it to Charlie Brown to ease her feelings of guilt, I think there was a little bit of genuine compassion in there as well. Some may look at it differently and see her reaction to his not getting one at school as a sign of that selfish feeling of guilt but I like to think she did honestly feel bad for him, even for just a little bit. Aside from that, there's a moment at the beginning of the special where Violet, seeing Linus buying the chocolate for Miss Othmar, advises him against falling in love with his teacher, only to prove be a hypocrite when she asks for a heart-shaped type of shaving lotion for her male teacher.

As usual, Snoopy and Woodstock (voiced by Bill Melendez) are up to mischief throughout the special, especially the former. The special opens with Snoopy trying to play cupid and shoot Charlie Brown with a suction cup arrow of love, only to miss a bunch of times and ultimately have to put it on the side of his head. In addition, he runs a puppet show, spelled as "Pawpet," that he actually charges people five cents to see, and when Lucy becomes intrigued with the idea of it being a dramatization of romance, she has to put up with his shenanigans as he has a hard time printing out a ticket for her and getting her some popcorn. The actual show itself proves to be a little more realistic than Lucy would've expected, as Snoopy splashes her with water, mud, and such as he acts out the story with hand-puppets, and later, Snoopy shows off his skills at cutting out valentines, able to make an elaborate piece that moves and plays music as well as a simple heart, which he goes out and sticks on Woodstock's beak (near the end of the special, Woodstock gets some payback by sticking one on his snout). When Sally gets the candy heart at school that appears to have the long poem, "How Do I Love Thee?" written on it, Snoopy gives a melodramatic performance of it behind her back, and when Linus is angrily throwing away the chocolates, he's unknowingly giving Snoopy and Woodstock a free snack as they're catching and munching them from behind a nearby bush. Finally, during the closing credits, Snoopy is messing around with hand-puppets again, only this time, each one he holds up is a caricature of the cast and crew members who are listed in the credits.

While this special doesn't dwell on the look and feel of the time of year it takes place in like A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, it does still bring to mind the images that I've always associated with Valentine's Day, chief among them hearts, the color red, and rich candies that you can buy by the armful in stores (that store that Linus goes into to buy the chocolates looks like how our town's Dollar General Store does in the time leading up to Valentine's Day). The scenes that take place in the school, where the kids are talking about dropping off their valentines in a box and then passing them out amongst themselves, also bring back memories of what we did when I was in elementary school on that day. They're not the fondest memories for me, as I've made clear, but they're nostalgic in their own way. (This is also where you see other members of the Peanuts gang like Peppermint Patty, Marcy, Pigpen, and Franklin in nonspeaking roles.) And while the look of the neighborhood doesn't give off that cold, dreary feeling that inevitably comes to mind when I think of this holiday, I will say that I can still pick up on the look with the kind of gray, cloudy skies and the leafless trees you often see in the backgrounds.

Like all good Peanuts specials, this one does have its fair share of memorable and funny sequences, with the first one being Charlie Brown, after checking his mailbox for the first time, walking off sadly into a field, when Snoopy jumps out of a bush, dressed as a cupid. He tries to hit Charlie Brown with a suction cup arrow but misses five times in a row and then, simply walks up to him, taps him on the shoulder, and sticks one to the side of his big head. Not too long after that, you have the scene between Lucy and Schroeder, where she's leaning up against his piano as he plays, reading to him from a book about how the valentine may have been the first type of greeting card. She yammers on about this for a little bit, but when she realizes that Schroeder isn't listening to anything she says, she then goes into that psychotic diatribe about the horrors of the memory of a lost love, pounding the top of the piano and sending him flying away from it, before kicking it up into the air, stomping on it when it hits the floor, and either kicks away the pieces or crushes them with her feet as she does so. What makes this sequence noteworthy is not just how off-the-wall and funny it is but also because how the animation goes from its usual simple style to being quite fluid and bouncy when Lucy goes off, with the background changing from a mellow purple to bright pink, orange, yellow, and red throughout her tantrum.

Lucy has regrets about deciding to see Snoopy's puppet show almost from the start, as just getting into it proves to be a hassle. Snoopy is asleep in the ticket booth, forcing her to knock it to wake him up, and when he hits the button that prints out the tickets, it goes wild and struggles with it to keep it from coming out, ultimately getting all tied up. After she gets her ticket, Lucy tries to get some popcorn from a refreshments stand she finds beyond the ticket booth, only for Snoopy to apparently misunderstand what she says, offering her candy and soda before finally getting the message, and then, he has trouble getting the thing started, having to hit the button numerous times. As happened with the tickets, he gets caught up in the popcorn machine and thrown out, although Lucy does end up getting her little bag of popcorn. The show itself is unimpressive, to say the least, as Snoopy leads her to a little tiny stage atop his doghouse (actually wearing an usher's hat and carrying a flashlight while doing so, despite the fact that they're outside in broad daylight) and starts a phonograph that chokes out a very scratchy, somewhat romantic tune, as Charlie Brown comes in to narrate the story. The curtain on the stage goes up to reveal Snoopy with two hand-puppets and a little carriage he balances on his foot to represent the characters' coach. When Lucy says she's never been to a show like this before, Charlie Brown warns her about the first scene, only for her to find out herself when she gets splashed with water as the carriage crosses the "swollen river." After that they got up a "muddy road," which leads to the inevitable for Lucy, and that's followed up by an avalanche, where a bunch of trash is thrown at her. Charlie Brown asks if she wants to continue and when she asks what could be worse, she finds out when the carriage is attacked by bandits and gets pounded by the puppets meant to represent them. Thunder rolls overhead and a rainstorm begins, with Lucy getting drenched again, much to her irritation. Despite true love conquering all in the end, this proves to be the last straw, as she runs for it and makes it clear that she won't be sticking around for another performance.

Once Schroeder announces to the class that all of the students are to drop their valentines into the box and that they can be homemade as well as store-bought, we see Sally trying to make a valentine for Linus and failing miserably at it, as she fumbles a piece of construction paper in her hand and starts pounding the table with her head down in hopeless frustration. When Charlie Brown hears of her dilemma, he shows her how to cut a heart out of red-colored paper, but when she tries it, she makes a three-leaf clover instead. Sally tries again, only to this time cut a top-shape, causing Charlie Brown to face-palm. Snoopy then shows off his skills by cutting out a fancy display piece that actually plays music and moves. Confident that she can do that as well, Charlie Brown tries to do the same thing, except when he creates a similar piece, it falls apart almost instantly, much to Snoopy's amusement. He then cuts out a paper heart and, after showing it to them, walks outside with it and sticks it onto Woodstock's nose as he sits up in his nest; Woodstock simply lets out a defeated sigh in response.

Come Valentine's Day at school, Charlie Brown brings with him a suitcase in case he gets a lot of valentines and all of the kids proceed to put them in the box, save for Linus, who can't fit his big box of candy in there. After Sally gets her first taste of rejection when Linus doesn't think twice about the valentine she gives him (thinking he's bashful, she plots to get him back later with a kiss), Schroeder begins passing the valentines out while another kid passes out candy hearts, with Lucy getting one that says, "HUG ME." According to Frieda, she gets one that says, "SWEET BABY," while Sally begins reciting the poem, "How Do I Love Thee?", which apparently written in full on the heart. As she reads it, turning the heart over on both sides numerous times, Snoopy, who's walking by outside, hears her and runs inside, acting out melodramatic poses in response to the verses behind her. This goes on for a little bit and once she's done, Snoopy takes a bow and kisses Sally's hand. This is when it starts to become clear that there are no valentines for Charlie Brown, especially when Franklin, who's sitting on a bench next to him, gets one but he doesn't, and just to compound things further, he then gets the candy heart that reads, "FORGET IT, KID." Soon, all of the valentines have been passed and it's confirmed that there were none for him. After making sure there aren't some stragglers inside the box, he throws the thing out the window in frustration, while at the same time, Linus tries to give Miss Othmar the box of candy, only to find that she's heading for the parking lot. Rushing to the door, he completely bypasses Sally, who's waiting with puckered lips and becomes further perplexed and irritated at being ignored a second time, and heads by Violet out the door. She, Charlie Brown, and Sally all comment about Miss Othmar's being with her boyfriend, with Sally being completely distraught over what she's seeing.

Linus just misses Miss Othmar, who takes off in her car with her boyfriend, and both he and Charlie Brown walk their own ways home from school, completely dejected. Linus then walks into a stone bridge over a small creek and proceeds to vent his anger by throwing the candy away one by one, which Snoopy and Woodstock both gladly eat from behind a nearby bush. Meanwhile, Charlie Brown checks his mailbox another time and finding it empty yet again, kicks it and hurts his foot as a result. The next day, after a bit where Woodstock gets back at Snoopy for his earlier prank by slapping a cutout heart on his snout, Charlie Brown wakes up and walks outside, feeling really down. He almost kicks the mailbox again but stops himself this time, and talks about how he wishes that the little red-haired girl would've sent him a valentine. Holding out hope that it might be in there, he checks the mailbox, only to get kissed on the nose by Snoopy and growl that he hates Valentine's Day to Schroeder. This leads into the bittersweet ending when Schroeder tells off the girls for not giving Charlie Brown any valentines the day before, only for him to take it, and him and Linus lamenting what happened.

This was one of the last Peanuts specials to be composed by Vince Guaraldi, the jazz musician who, along with his band, the Vince Guaraldi Trio, had been involved with the series from the very beginning with A Charlie Brown Christmas (as well as the unaired 1963 TV documentary, A Boy Named Charlie Brown). As usual, Guaraldi's quiet, smooth music gives the special a mellow and, at points, appropriately melancholy feel, particularly during the scenes where Charlie Brown is waiting by the mailbox to check it for valentines (this theme is called "Heartburn Waltz" and there are many different parts of it that are played throughout) and when both he and Linus come away from school completely dejected. That latter scene is definitely the saddest, most downbeat piece of music in the whole special, with jazzy piano keys played against a distant, melancholy sound that you hear now and then. Other notable parts of the score are a couple of upbeat, casual-sounding themes when Linus buys the box of chocolates and when Sally gets the wrong idea upon seeing this, an energetic bit when Lucy first arrives at Snoopy's puppet show, a low-key, mellow bit when Snoopy is acting out the poem that Sally reads on her candy heart, and a mischievous theme when Woodstock gets his revenge on Snoopy with that cutout heart to the snout. The only thing about the score to this one is that it doesn't have a really memorable main theme like A Charlie Brown Christmas (you could even say that one has a couple) or It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. The main title has a very brief, saccharine bit that's played as a regular piano piece rather than the stylistic ones Guaraldi was known for and does have that loving, sentimental sound you'd associate with Valentine's Day but that's about it.

There's a reason why Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown doesn't have the classic status of some of the other Peanuts holiday specials, as it's nothing all that special at the end of the day. There's nothing wrong with the characters or the writing, there are some memorable, funny moments, and the music is fine and fits the mood, but it doesn't give you the holiday feeling quite like the Christmas and Halloween specials (although that could be due to the holiday it's based around, and it does manage to reinforce my apathetic view of it, so...), it gets pretty melancholic and sad near the end, and the ending is definitely one that will give you mixed feelings. I would say that it's worth watching at least once if you're a fan of the Peanuts but don't expect something that'll fill you with glee or have the depth of some of its brethren.