Lucy Van Pelt
Lucy van Pelt is a character in the immensely popular comic strip Peanuts, written and drawn by Charles Schulz. She is the older sister of Linus and Rerun. Lucy has a dominant personality, is crabby and cynical, and is often mean to the other characters in the strip, particularly her brother and Charlie Brown. In one word, she is a fuss-budget (a word which was made popular by the strip); in fact, she was once made honorary president of the National Fussbudget Foundation.
Lucy was introduced into the strip on March 3, 1952 as a wide-eyed baby who constantly tormented her parents. Very early on, Schulz eliminated the circles around her eyes and allowed her to mature to the age of the other characters. She soon grew into her familiar persona of a bossy, sardonic little girl with a short temper.
Perhaps Lucy's most famous gimmick in her long existence as a character is as the one who pulls the football away from Charlie Brown right as he is about to kick it. The first occasion on which she did this was November 16,1952, taking over for Violet, who had previously (yet, unintentionally) subjected Charlie Brown to this trick on November 14, 1951 all because she was afraid that Charlie Brown would accidentally kick her instead of the ball while Lucy, later on, would intentionally pull the football away from Charlie Brown out of sheer malice. Ironically, the first time Lucy did this, she feared that Charlie Brown's shoes would dirty up the football; and the second time (in the same strip) she, for once, did not pull the ball away, but Charlie Brown fell over anyway when kicking it.
Lucy is frequently irked by her younger and more passive brother, Linus. In particular, she is frequently exasperated by his addiction to his security blanket, and has even gone so far as to steal and bury it. She once made a kite out of it and "accidentally" let go of it. The blanket flew around the country and people wrote Linus to let him know they saw it. The Air Force rescued it when it flew out over the Pacific Ocean.
Aside from trying to "cure him of his blanket habit," Lucy also generally treats Linus like dirt, hogging all the crayons (except black, white and gray, of course), changing the TV channel or turning the TV off entirely while Linus is watching it, and forcing him to shower her with lavish words of praise before she'll even consider sharing some of her food with him ("Thank you, dear sister, greatest of all sisters, without whom I'd never survive!") Lucy also treats Linus like her own personal servant, forcing him to bring her a snack or something to drink while she watches TV ("or else"). Lucy once bragged that she played Linus "like a pianist plays a concert grand," which isn't far from the truth. Linus's attempts to assert himself and stand up to his sister typically result in a verbal or physical beatdown, including when he thought he could beat her in a backyard boxing match, only to get knocked out cold instead.
Lucy has made no secret of the fact that she wishes she were an only child, and has actually tried to throw Linus out of the house a few times.
By contrast, Lucy's relationship with her other brother, Rerun (who entered the strip as a baby in 1972 and didn't become a major character until the late 1990s), is much less turbulent. Lucy has, in fact, taken on something of a "teacher" or "mentor" role for Rerun, teaching him important things he needs to survive in life, such as how to tie his shoes - in contrast to the outrageous misinformation she has been known to force on Linus (e.g. telling him that leaves falling off trees in autumn were "flying south for the winter"). As a result, Lucy's personality seemed to mellow out a bit in the final years of the strip, though she never did become totally "nice." Rerun often shows a knack for getting around Lucy and weakening her defenses, whereas Linus is apt to give up and just let Lucy dominate him.
Lucy is terrified of being licked or kissed by Snoopy - for example, the scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas in which Snoopy licks her face and she runs offstage screaming, "Get hot water! Get some disinfectant! Get some iodine!" Snoopy is naturally infatuated with her and likes to tease her about it. Lucy and Snoopy have also occasionally found themselves in not-so-friendly competition - the two faced off in an arm-wrestling tournament once (the competition ended abruptly after Snoopy kissed Lucy on the nose and she recoiled in horror), and more than once in the course of the strip have nearly come to fisticuffs (again, Snoopy wins the fights by default by trying to kiss or lick Lucy's face). As it turns out, Snoopy is perhaps one of the few characters in the strip who usually winds up outsmarting Lucy. In Snoopy, Come Home, Snoopy won a boxing match with her (Snoopy wore a single boxing glove on his nose.)
Lucy is also the proprietor of a psychiatric booth, parodying the archetypal lemonade stand operated by many young children. Here, she gives advice for five cents to the other characters in the strip, most frequently an anxious Charlie Brown. Of course, the advice that Lucy offered often leaves poor Charlie Brown feeling even worse than before he came. The psychiatric booth is a prime example of the more adult-oriented humor that Schulz incorporated into his comic strip, making it accessible to people of all ages. In the early years of the psychiatric booth, another of Lucy's most frequent clients was her own brother, Linus; Schroeder, Sally, Frieda, and Snoopy (whom Lucy once treated for hearing voices at night) have also been beneficiaries of Lucy's psychiatric wisdom.
Lucy is infatuated with Schroeder, who constantly rebuffs her advances. She spends much of her time leaning against his toy piano as he plays, striving to gain a fraction of the attention Schroeder gives to his music. Schroeder often responds to her flirting with a sarcastic remark. She constantly sees herself as being in competition with the piano (and, to an extent, Schroeder's favorite composer, Beethoven), which she has even tried to steal and destroy (and sometimes succeeding), earning her none of Schroeder's love or affection. In one incident, Lucy tossed Schroeder's piano up into the infamous Kite-Eating Tree which always devours Charlie Brown's kites, and in another incident, she threw his piano down a sewer. Schroeder, for his part, has on occasion exacted revenge by yanking his piano out from under Lucy, causing her head to strike the floor.
On Charlie Brown's baseball team Lucy plays right field (sometimes left field), and is characterized as a stupendously inept player, who, when temporarily kicked off the team, turns to heckling the games. Lucy has a knack for coming up with a novel excuse for every fly ball she misses (for example: "The moons of Saturn got in my eyes," or "I think there were toxic substances coming from my glove, and they made me dizzy."). Once, Charlie Brown traded Lucy to Peppermint Patty's baseball team for Marcie (and a pizza), but once Patty discovered what a terrible player Lucy really was, she traded her back. Even on the ball field, Lucy continually flirts with Schroeder, who plays catcher on Charlie Brown's team.
1960s child actress Tracy Stratford first voiced Lucy in 1965 and since then many actresses including sisters Robin (from 1972 to 1973) and Melanie Kohn (from 1974 to 1977) had voiced her. Pamelyn Ferdin also provied a voice to Lucy in Play It Again, Charlie Brown. 1980s child actress Angela Lee voiced her in 1983.
Popular culture
On a 1998 episode of Saturday Night Live, the Charlie Brown characters were parodied by actors who played out the football gag, with Charlie Brown, played by Brendan Frasier, suffering a severe head injury and bleeding profusely upon missing the kick. Lucy, played by Ana Gasteyer, seemed to finally understand the cruelness of her prank.
In a parody on Robot Chicken, Charlie Brown finally gets his revenge as he kicks Lucy instead of the football.
On an episode of Family Guy, Lois becomes a martial arts master, and Lucy pulls the football trick on her; Lois responds to this with a swift kick to the face.
In one Bloom County strip, Opus once visited Lucy's phychiatric booth, but she was not in.
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