josé cuauhtémoc "bill" melendez (november 15, 1916 – september 2, 2008) was a mexican-american animator, director, producer and voice actor. educated in arizona and at the chouinard art institute in los angeles, he joined walt disney productions in 1938 as an assistant animator and worked on pinocchio, fantasia, dumbo and bambi, and animated the donald duck short the flying jalopy.
after the 1941 disney strike he moved to leon schlesinger productions, later warner bros. cartoons, where he animated looney tunes and merrie melodies in bob clampett's unit, first as rod scribner's assistant and then as an animator. he animated daffy duck shorts for the director robert mckimson before being dismissed by the producer edward selzer. he then worked for united productions of america, animating gerald mcboing-boing (1950), and directed television commercials at upa, john sutherland productions and playhouse pictures.
in 1959 he animated peanuts commercials for the ford motor company; the producer lee mendelson saw them and hired him to make interstitial animation for a documentary about the comic strip. melendez directed a charlie brown christmas, produced by mendelson, which first aired on cbs on december 9, 1965. his own studio, founded in 1963 in the basement of his hollywood home, worked on every peanuts television special that followed, and he directed most of them and the first four peanuts features: a boy named charlie brown (1969), snoopy come home (1972), race for your life, charlie brown (1977) and bon voyage, charlie brown (1980).
melendez voiced snoopy and woodstock in every one of those productions, reciting gibberish that was then sped up to different pitches for the two characters. with mendelson he also made the first two garfield specials, here comes garfield (1982) and garfield on the town (1983). his last peanuts production was he's a bully, charlie brown (2006). he won six primetime emmy awards.
related profiles; Paul Terry, Alex Anderson, John Kricfalusi
sources; wikipedia: bill melendez, wikipedia: a charlie brown christmas, wikipedia: peanuts, the guardian: bill melendez obituary
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