Sally Brown

Character and appearance

Sally has flipped blonde hair with a cluster of curls. In the early sixties and in her early television appearances, she is shown to have a bow in her curls. However, this was dropped by 1969. She wears a polka dot dress. In the TV specials, TV series and movies, the dress is colored light blue, although it is usually colored pink in The Peanuts Movie, Peanuts (TV series), and the Sunday strips. In the winter, and most of the time in the later years of the strip, she switched to a (no sleeves or long sleeves) shirt and pants. Sally also wears a long sleeves sweater that usually covers her dress.

Sally is the complex little sister of Charlie Brown. On one hand, she is good-hearted, sweet, and innocent. However, on the other, she can be lazy, naive, slow, obsessive, greedy, insecure, and sometimes even self-centered and manipulative.

Sally has a "take it easy" approach to life, preferring to slide by while doing as little work as possible. Her favorite pastime is sitting in her beanbag chair watching TV. One summer, Sally actually went to "beanbag camp," which consisted of nothing but lazing around in beanbags, eating snack foods and watching TV causing her to get fat as a result and needs to exercise when she comes back from camp in order to lose weight. Sally has a good heart and a strong moral sense; like her older brother she is extremely sensitive to the unfairness of life. Charlie Brown usually goes to Lucy in her psychiatric booth when he is feeling depressed, but Sally prefers to confide her troubles to the school building, which is very protective of her and will drop a brick on anyone who does not treat her nicely.

Sally has a lot of trouble in school. For one thing, she has a problem with malapropisms, both in speech and writing. For example, she says "violins broke out" rather than "violence broke out," or "controversial French" instead of "conversational French". One of the strip's running jokes is the unintentionally humorous school reports she gives at the front of the class, which are frequently inspired by malapropisms and end with her feeling humiliated as all of her classmates laugh at her. Some of the more memorable reports she has given over the years include "Santa and His Rain Gear," "Footbidextrousers" people, and "The Bronchitis" (a dinosaur which supposedly became extinct from coughing too much), and her report on the oceans of the world, in which she reported that there are no oceans in individual landlocked states in the U.S. She often struggles with homework despite Charlie Brown's patient efforts to help her, and she has a particular dislike for math, which she largely finds both intimidating and incomprehensible. However, she has expressed interest in becoming a nurse once she becomes an adult, although this is due to her interest in wearing white shoes, as opposed to the job itself.

Sally also can be very naive. In one strip, she thinks her family is famous, because their name appears in the telephone book. Another time, she is watching TV and wonders why Monday Night Football is not on. When Charlie Brown tells her the day is Wednesday, she says "That's no excuse".

Sally has wanted Charlie Brown's bedroom for years. Every time he either leaves home for a while (such as going to summer camp) or talks about leaving, the first thing she always wants to know is if she can have his room while he is gone. A few times, she has actually begun to move her possessions into her brother's room when she thinks he is never coming home, such as when Charlie Brown fails to come home after falling ill during a baseball game in the strip from July 10, 1979, when he gets lost in the woods in a series of strips from November 1980, and when Snoopy accidentally turns him invisible in the TV special It's Magic, Charlie Brown.

Unlike most of the Peanuts gang, Sally does not seem to have much interest in playing sports. On the rare occasions when she does play, it is usually because Linus invites her. She is one of the few children in the neighborhood who has never played on Charlie Brown's baseball team, and her attempts to play catch with a football usually lead to comic results. She joins a "snow league" in a series of strips from November and December 1973 in which the local adults turn snowman building into an organized sport, but her team is not very good. They lose one match when the referee penalizes them for "improper mittens," and lose another because their snowman is offside.

Being Charlie Brown's sister, she refers to him as "big brother", having called him by his full name only on very rare occasions.

History

Sally was born on May 26, 1959, with Charlie Brown receiving a telephone call from the hospital and dashing out of the house yelling that he had a new baby sister. She was given the name "Sally" on June 2, 1959. Although Sally was often talked about and was the cause for a celebration that included Charlie Brown passing out chocolate cigars, it was not until August 23, 1959 that she finally made her first appearance in the strip.

As a baby Sally liked playing with empty baby bottles, which she used for everything from building blocks to bowling pins, and being taken out for walks. The latter caused poor Charlie Brown no small amount of frustration when he had to miss an important baseball game to walk her around the neighborhood in her stroller. He ended up leaving her to return to the game due to the pleading of his team, and, in typical Charlie Brown fashion, quickly lost the game, incurring the wrath of both his mother and his teammates.

Like other characters, such as Linus and Schroeder (who were also introduced to the strip as babies), Sally grew up quickly. On August 22, 1960, she took her first steps, and in the next day's strip she fell in love with Linus for the first time. Her first day of kindergarten came on September 5, 1962. Although the first glimpse of her new school made her run away screaming, she had a wonderful day once she got there. Unfortunately, her lack of aptitude for formal education quickly became apparent, as she nervously admitted in a later strip that she was sure they had made her go through kindergarten again because she had failed flower-bringing. Nevertheless, she did eventually complete kindergarten and settled in at about first or second grade age for the remainder of the strip's run. Interestingly, it was originally Linus who expressed a possible romantic interest in Sally. In a strip appearing shortly after Sally's birth, Linus is seen scribbling calculations on a fence. When Charlie Brown wanders by, Linus asks him, "When I'm 22 and Sally is 17, do you think she'll go out with me?" When Schulz revived the joke more than a year later, though, it was Sally who fell for Linus rather than the other way around.

In a storyline which began on November 29, 1965, Sally was diagnosed with amblyopia ex anopisa (lazy eye) which REQUIRED her to wear an eye patch for a while. Her eye patch often went missing because Snoopy took it to play pirates. Sally gave Snoopy the eye patch after her ophthalmologist told her that she did not need to wear it anymore. Some of the strips in which Sally was diagnosed with LAZY EYE were later reprinted in a comic book, Security is an Eye Patch, which was published and distributed for free by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Sally was the first character to befriend Eudora, arguably the last major character to be introduced to the strip. Sally first met her during a trip to summer camp in 1978. She became a pupil in Sally's class later that year and was Sally's closest friend for most of her run in Peanuts.

In the later years of the strip, Sally started developing "Philosophies" on life. They were not the most well thought out philosophies, basically being phrases such as, "Who cares?", "Why me?", and "How should I know?"

Relationships

Being Charlie Brown's sister, she refers to him as "big brother", having called him by his full name only on very rare occasions (and usually only in her early years in the strip). Charlie Brown doted on her in the beginning, and was usually very patient with her. Yet Sally has never developed proper respect for her big brother, and invariably ends up disappointed in him when he fails to protect her from being teased or threatened by bullies. However, Sally constantly relies on Charlie Brown to help her with her homework, which usually results in his doing her assignments for her.

Sally often annoys Charlie Brown and regularly complains to him. She obviously thinks that Charlie Brown has a better bedroom than she does because she often tries to take it over from him.

However, deep down Sally loves her big brother.

Like Lucy Van Pelt, Sally does not care that much for Snoopy and often calls him a stupid beagle. Sally usually complains when her big brother asks her to feed Snoopy whenever he is away from home. When she was still an infant, Sally had a friendly and playful relationship with Snoopy. In one comic strip, dated August 30, 1959, Snoopy is shown happily playing with Sally, then stating that he liked playing with her and felt that they had something in common because, "She's the only one around here who knows how to walk on four feet." Snoopy was so fond of Sally that he once reluctantly declined to eat his dinner because Sally was asleep on his back. During this time period, Snoopy and Sally were also seen teaming up to snatch away Linus' blanket. In later years, Sally occasionally enlists Snoopy's help in school assignments - she even treated him to an ice cream cone (a very tall ice cream cone, with scoops of about a dozen flavors) when Snoopy helped her get an "A" on a report about "Our Animal Friends." Sally also once used Snoopy as a "weapon" to help protect her from bullies on the playground (Snoopy would bark loudly at anyone who threatened Sally, leading Snoopy to comment, "I feel like a can of mace!"), but this ended in disaster when Snoopy saw an old girlfriend of his and ran off to meet her, abandoning Sally and leaving her to get "slaughtered" by the playground bullies.

Sally has a strong crush on Charlie Brown's friend Linus Van Pelt. She calls him her "Sweet Babboo" and when Linus says something Sally finds especially witty or intelligent, she expresses her admiration by asking, "Isn't he the cutest thing?" Her crush is a frequent source of embarrassment to Linus, but he endures it stoically for the most part, although he is sometimes driven to yell in exasperation, "I'm not your sweet babboo!" As Schroeder does with Lucy, Linus often attempts to fend Sally off with a sarcastic remark. No matter how vigorously he protests, though, her devotion remains unwavering. Although in one of the animated episodes, she treats Linus with an air of indifference, which resulted in him growing jealous, much to her enjoyment. It is unknown how Sally keeps calling him Sweet Babboo no matter how many times he says he is not her sweet babboo, likely his or Sally's parents do not take him seriously when he says she keeps annoying him by calling him sweet babboo.

Sally was the first character Eudora met on the bus to summer camp. She later appeared in Sally's class that fall and the two quickly befriended each other. But Sally does get angry at her at times, for example when Eudora shows feelings towards Sally's crush, Linus.

Portrayals

Kathy Steinberg was the first to voice Sally Brown in A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965. Various actresses have voiced her since. Linda Jenner voiced her from It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown (1974) to Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (1975). In It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown (1984), Snoopy's Getting Married, Charlie Brown (1984), and the 1984 season of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, Sally was voiced by Stacy Ferguson, better known as Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas. In It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (1992), Sally was voiced by Jodie Sweetin (Stephanie on Full House).

Other voice actresses who have played Sally include:

Kristin Chenoweth played Sally in the Broadway revival of the musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress. The character of Sally had not been in the original production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. In the revival Sally replaced Patty who had long since disappeared from the comic strip.