No. 48: PETER ROBBINS II / The Boy behind the Boy Called Charlie Brown

Yesterday, in an entry titled The Dirty Ghostwriter, I recounted how I met Peter Robbins, a former child actor best known as the original voice of Charlie Brown in the Peanuts TV specials. We stayed in contact for more than a decade (though interrupted for four years while he was serving time in Chino State Prison). Over three days and nights in November 2019 we sat down to compile a book proposal: a memoir of his life in Hollywood, his descent into mental illness and a second life thanks to medication and therapy. For paid subscribers and those on a free trial, you have access to the first chapter that I drafted for the book pitch: the day Peter Robbins auditioned to be the voice of Charlie Brown.

Peter Robbins in the centre, next to Christopher Shea. Bill Melendez at the right.

I was a little annoyed when my mother pulled me out of my third-grade class an hour or so early on the day that would forever echo through my life, that would follow me everywhere I went, that would make me…