Peter Robbins is an American former child actor, voice actor and real estate broker. Robbins earned national fame in the 1960s as being the first actor to voice Charlie Brown in the Peanuts animated specials. Robbins left the entertainment industry as an adult, later pursuing a career in real estate and brief stints in radio. Robbins spent much of the 2010s in legal trouble facing charges from threats and stalking; he served a four-year sentence in prison.
Career
Robbins is of Hungarian descent. He first began acting in various films and television shows in 1963. As a child, he made a guest appearance as "Elmer" in the popular series The Munsters. Most distinctly, at the age of nine, Robbins provided Charlie Brown's voice in one television documentary, six Peanutstelevision specials and one movie from 1963–69, including the film A Boy Named Charlie Brown and the television specials A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. While Robbins, aged 14 in 1971, was replaced by younger child actors in the Peanuts specials produced after the 1960s, his trademark scream of "AUGH!!", first used in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, continued to be used in the later specials for Charlie Brown and other characters. Robbins appeared in an episode of F Troop in 1966 entitled "The Sergeant And The Kid" and appeared in an episode of Get Smart as the mysterious "Dr. T". He also appeared in the 1967 film, Good Times starring Sonny & Cher. Robbins graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 1979. In 1996, he hosted a talk radio show in Palm Springs at KPSL 1010 Talk Radio. By 2006, according to a broadcast by National Public Radio, he was managing real estate in Van Nuys, California.
Legal troubles
On January 20, 2013, Robbins was arrested by San Diego County Sheriff's Department deputies at San Ysidro, California Homeland Security's Port of Entry, while re-entering the United States, and charged with "four felony counts of making a threat to cause death or great bodily injury and one felony count of stalking." The four counts involve four victims, including a San Diego Police sergeant, whom Robbins reportedly threatened with bodily harm during a January 13, 2013 incident. He was held on $550,000 bond. On May 8, 2013, he was sentenced to a year in jail for threatening his former girlfriend and stalking her plastic surgeon, but he was allowed to log time in treatment instead. After release, he was sent to a residential drug treatment center. In 2015, Robbins was arrested for multiple probation violations, including drinking alcohol and failing to complete mandatory domestic violence classes. On June 5, 2015, he was ordered to undergo a mental health exam after an outburst during a court proceeding in San Diego. On December 7, 2015, Robbins was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison as part of a plea agreement for sending threatening letters to a manager and his wife of the mobile home park in which he lived in Oceanside, California. Robbins has stated at previous hearings that he suffers from bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. Robbins was incarcerated at the California Institution for Men in Chino, California and was transferred to a psychiatric hospital because of his mental state. He was released in 2019 "fter serving 80 percent" of his sentence, under orders not to drink alcohol or take any illegal drugs.
