A Boy Named Charlie Brown

Plot[edit]

When Charlie Brown's baseball team loses their first league game of the season, he becomes morose that he will never win anything. On the way to school one day, Lucy suggests to Charlie Brown that he should enter the school spelling bee. Linus encourages him to participate despite the jeers of Lucy, Violet, and Patty. Meanwhile, Snoopy is seen having a nightmare about fighting an unseen enemy, possibly the Red Baron, causing him to take over Charlie Brown's bed (the same sequence would be recycled in several other films).


Charlie Brown nervously enters the spelling bee and defeats his classmates. As he studies for the school championship, he and Linus sing a song about the spelling mnemonic "I Before E" as Snoopy accompanies them on a Jew's harp. During class, Charlie Brown freezes when challenged with perceive, but recovers when Snoopy plays the song's accompaniment outside the classroom window and wins, despite misspelling maze as M-A-Y-S. His classmates cheerfully follow him home. Lucy proclaims herself his agent, and to his statement that he won and it's over, his friends react with confusion. They then tell Charlie Brown that he must now take part in the National Spelling Bee in New York City, and he is again filled with self-doubt. As Charlie Brown boards the bus for New York, Linus reluctantly offers him his blanket for good luck, and the other kids cheer for him.


Back at home, Linus suffers terrible withdrawal after being separated from his blanket, and takes Snoopy (who ice skates causing him to forget the mission) with him to New York, to find Charlie Brown and recover it. They find Charlie Brown exhausted from studying in his hotel room, without any knowledge of the blanket's whereabouts. After an exhaustive search that leads Linus outside the hotel, he returns to find Charlie Brown using the blanket as a shoe-shine cloth. Charlie Brown competes in the spelling bee with Linus and Snoopy in the audience and the rest of the kids watching it on television at home. One-by-one, the other contestants are eliminated until only Charlie Brown and one other boy remain. However, after Charlie Brown spells several words correctly, he is eliminated when he accidentally (and ironically, given that Snoopy is a beagle) misspells beagle as B–E–A–G–E–L, much to the despair of him and his friends. Lucy, who is equally ashamed that Charlie Brown lost, says that he made her mad and turns off the TV.


Despite being the national runner-up, Charlie Brown returns home depressed and defeated. The next day, Linus visits a moody and morose Charlie Brown, who has spent the entire day in bed and refuses to see or talk to anybody. Linus tells him that all the kids missed him and that they won their first game of the season, worsening Charlie Brown's bad mood, saying he will never return to school or do anything again. However, Linus points out that the world did not end despite Charlie Brown’s defeat. After Linus leaves, he thinks for a moment, gets dressed, and goes outside. He sees the other kids playing, and when he spots Lucy as she plays with a football (which was the same football he failed to kick earlier), he sneaks up behind her to kick it. She pulls it away and welcomes him home and they look at us as the film ends.