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Bill Melendez,91,an Emmy Award-winning animator(動(dòng)畫片制作者)who transformed the two-dimensional drawings of the Peanuts comic strip into some of the most beloved cartoon characters on television and film,died Sept 2 at St．John's Health Center in Santa Monica,Calif．
The cause of death was not reporteD．
Mr．Melendez,who began his career at the Hollywood animation stud ios of Walt Disney and Warner Bros,found his greatest fame as the animator of A Charlie Brown Christmas,The Great Pumpkin and dozens of other Peanuts Presentations．
With producer Lee Mendelson,Mr．Melendez formed a 43-year partnership that has generated more than 70 Peanuts productions,including four feature films He also animated more than 370 commercials using Peanuts characters and remains the only animator Charles M．Schulz trusted to bring his famous comic strip figures to life．
Success was hardly assured when the first Peanuts special,A Charlie Brown Christmas,was broadcast by CBS in 1965 Network executives feared it would be a colossal flop．with no laugh track,a jazz musical score by pianist Vice Guaraldi and religious message．
Much to everyone's surprise,the show was a huge hit and got Emmy and Peabody awards Cartoonist Robert Smigel called it“the greatest half－h(huán)our American TV has ever produced” In addition to animating every Peanuts film and TV special,Mr．Melendez provided the wordless voice of Snoopy Before his work oil Peanuts,Mr．Melendez drew many of the famous Disney and Warner Bros．a(chǎn)nimated figures of the 1930s and 40s,including Mickey Mouse,Donald Duck,Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig．The peanuts characters,with their complicated personalities contained in round,childlike figure,proved unexpectedly challenging．
Mr．Melendez won five Emmy Awards for his work oil Peanuts．He also won Emmys for creating the first animated cartoons of Jim Davis'Garfield and for animating CS Lewis'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe．
Melendez was born in 1916 in Hermosillo,Mexico and moved to Douglas,Arizona in 1928, and later to Los Angeles．He began drawing as a child．He studied at what is now the California Institute of the Arts and joined the Disney studio in 1938．
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