Charlie Brown Christmas original print

Here’s a video comparing the original print with the one they fixed the following year.
enjoy.

 

And an article as well....


A Charlie Brown Christmas (Found Original 1965 Version)

 

Does anyone know where you can watch the whole original print online?

 

Yes, the original print is available on the Internet Archive

Edit: title "A Charlie Brown Christmas Original 1965 Airing". I can't seem to get to copy a working link into this post.

 

Thank you

 

I love stuff like this! Thanks for posting.

I'm confused about why everything which should be white is a pale blue in the restored version from 5:25-6:30. Snoopy, the sheet of paper CB is holding, a girl's shoes during the dancing bit... All pale blue instead of white.

 

I wouldn’t mind going in and cleaning up parts of this print and doing colour restoration on the Coca Cola ads and re inserting them back into the HD version.

(Also is it just me or does the print look slightly off hue?)

 

Great stuff...love IA!

 

He went a little overboard with the color correcting, yes.

 

I’ll do a quick screen grab of the print and mess with the hue and white, grey and black points and see where I get

 

Excellent

 

It's not just you. It would make sense that the print was faded, so different colors fading at different rates and not easily correctable via a global change. The blacks are high and red and blue channels are often clipped, and the night sky "black" is very green. There's a good deal of dirt/noise. Having said all that, the color saturation seems much higher than I would expect, so someone may have just applied an automatic correction overall because it doesn't at all look as I'd expect for a faded print. And the gate scratches look funny to me, like they've been processed somehow. Each scene would really need individual grading to really restore it properly. I wonder how this was transferred...
I tried a quick overall correction balancing the R/G/B gain and moving black back to neutral. Of course, there's a certain charm factor just watching the print as-is with the hissy soundtrack. I like it, and I'm glad it was shared.

 

I understand that, It was just a passing thought that it was out of hue. Due to the yellows bleeding into orange and skin tones turning magenta. I’ll do some more scientific analysis tonight

 

hue do that.

please.

 

Fascinating! I never knew how many changes were made after the first airing. Just always assumed it was only the Coke sponsorship. Thanks for posting this!

dan c

 

Please share what you find!

 

I thought it was interesting too. My biggest surprise was learning CBS wanted to add a laugh track. We can all be thankful they didn't get their way. Can you imagine - "ugh... I've been kissed by a dog (hah hah hah)" and "my naturally curly hair (hah hah hah)". I'm pretty sure at one point they were against using Vince Guaraldi's music, too.

 

I just go into the studio, I’ll dig in soon!

 

I thank the people for finding the original version. I thought I was losing my mind because I always remembered the choir finishing Hark the Herald Angels Sing. I was confused and angry beyond words when I bought the DVD and it ended with the fade out. Now I know I was right all along.

 

It's reaaaaaally weird seeing Snoopy's mouth move in the first version. I think that change was a good call. Fascinating though. Should be bonus material on any future reissues, but at least it's out there for us to see now.

dan c

 

I love that soundtrack. Need to dig out my 4k copy of the movie and compare it to the original. Thanks for this thread!

 

As an aside, I watched Happiness is a Warm Blanket last week. It wasn’t as bad as I remember. The look was good. The cherry picking of lines from the strip is suspect but the look is good.
It’s weird seeing Woodstock and hearing “sweet babboo” in an early 1960s setting.
Plus the tone of the whole thing is dark.
Mothersbaugh trying to do Guaraldi is amusing.
Thoughts?

 

I didn't like it at all. It was too dark. The characters' eyes were dead (which I know is ridiculous as they are all just black dots but something about "Blanket" seemed cold and inhuman).

 

Yeah. I had watched it once when it came out and thought the same thing. The rewatch was better because I expected the worst.

It’s sort of like the Seinfeld Finale where the characters get unmasked....very unpleasant.