Leland Maurice Mendelson (March 24, 1933 – December 25, 2019) was an American animation producer and the executive producer of the many Peanuts animated specials.
Mendelson was born in San Francisco and grew up in San Mateo graduating from San Mateo High School. He graduated from Stanford University in 1954 with a degree in English. He was lieutenant in the Air Force for three years. He then worked several years for his father, a vegetable grower and shipper.
Mendelson's career in television began in 1961, when he started working at San Francisco's KPIX-TV, where he created public service announcements. A fortunate find of some antique film footage of the 1915 San Francisco World's Fair led to Mendelson's first production, a documentary entitled The Innocent Fair. The documentary was the first in a series on the history of the city, San Francisco Pageant, for which Mendelson won a Peabody Award.

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