Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. The 30th film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and the third film of the Disney Renaissance, Beauty and the Beast is based on the fairy tale La Belle et la Bête by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont. Featuring the voices of Paige O'Hara, Robby Benson, Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, Angela Lansbury, and Rex Everhart, the film tells the story of a handsome prince who is transformed into a hideous beast as punishment for his selfish ways. To become human again, the Beast must earn the love of a beautiful young woman he imprisons in his castle, or else remain a beast forever.

 

Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, and produced by Don Hahn, the film was written by Roger Allers, Brenda Chapman, and Chris Sanders, with a screenplay by Linda Woolverton. Originally, the film was to have been by directed by English director Richard Purdum, but he resigned following the studio's decision to turn Beauty and the Beast into a musical. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken wrote the film's songs, while Menken composed its score. Ashman, who also served as an executive producer on the film, died of AIDS six months before its premier. The film is dedicated to him in his memory.

 

Beauty and the Beast was released on November 22, 1991 to positive reviews. The film was a significant commercial success during its initial release, and has since then garnered over $424 million in box office earnings. Beauty and the Beast was nominated for several awards, winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy. Famously, Beauty and the Beast was the first-ever animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, remaining the only animated film to hold this honor until 2009 when Pixar's Up was nominated. Beauty and the Beast received five additional Academy Award nominations, including Best Original Score, Best Sound, and three separate nominations for Best Original Song. Ultimately, Beauty and the Beast won Best Original Score, and Best Original Song went to its title song. In 2002, Beauty and the Beast was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

 

In April 1994, Beauty and the Beast became Disney's first animated film to be adapted into a Broadway musical. The success of the film spawned two direct-to-video midquels: Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, released in 1997, and Belle's Magical World, released in 1998. This was followed by a spin-off television series, Sing Me a Story with Belle. An IMAX special edition version of the original film was released in 2002, with a new five-minute musical sequence included. After the success of the 3D re-release of The Lion King, the film returned to theaters in 3D on January 13, 2012.

 

Plot

An enchantress disguised as an old beggar woman offers a young prince a rose in exchange for a night's shelter. When he turns her away, she punishes him by transforming him into an ugly beast and turning his servants into household items. She gives him a magic mirror that enables him to view faraway events, along with the rose, which will bloom until his twenty-first birthday. He must love and be loved in return before all the rose's petals have fallen off, or he will remain a beast forever.

 

Years later, a beautiful young woman named Belle lives in a nearby French village with her father Maurice, an inventor. Belle loves reading and yearns for a life beyond the village. Her beauty and non-conformity attracts attention in the town and she is pursued by many men, but mostly the arrogant local hunter, Gaston. Belle is uninterested in Gaston, despite being sought after by single females and considered godlike in perfection by the male population of the town.

 

As Maurice travels to a fair, he gets lost on the way and is chased by wolves before stumbling upon the Beast's castle, where he meets the transformed servants Lumière, a candelabra, Cogsworth, a clock, Mrs. Potts, a teapot, and her son Chip, a teacup. The Beast imprisons Maurice, but Belle is led back to the castle by Maurice's horse and offers to take her father's place which the Beast agrees to. While Gaston is sulking over his humiliation in the tavern, Maurice tells him and the other villagers what happened but they think he has lost his mind.

 

At the castle, the Beast orders Belle to dine with him, but she refuses, and Lumiere disobeys his order not to let her eat. After Cogsworth gives her a tour of the castle, she finds the rose in the forbidden West Wing and the Beast angrily chases her away. Frightened, she tries to flee, but she and her horse are attacked by wolves. After the Beast rescues her, she nurses his wounds, and he begins to develop feelings for her. The Beast grants Belle access to the castle library, which impresses Belle and they become friends, growing closer as they spend more time together. Meanwhile, the spurned Gaston pays the warden of the town's insane asylum to have Maurice committed unless Belle agrees to Gaston's marriage proposal.

 

Back at the castle Belle and the Beast share a romantic evening together. Belle tells the Beast she misses her father, and he lets her use the magic mirror to see him. When Belle sees him dying in the woods in an attempt to rescue her, the Beast allows her to leave to rescue her father, giving her the mirror to remember him by. As he watches her leave, the Beast admits to Cogsworth that he loves Belle.

 

Belle finds her father and takes him home. Gaston arrives to carry out his plan, but Belle proves Maurice sane by showing them the Beast with the magic mirror. Realizing Belle has feelings for the Beast, Gaston arouses the mob's anger against the Beast, telling them that the Beast is a man-eating monster that must be killed, and leads them to the castle. Gaston detains Belle and Maurice in the basement, though Chip, who had hidden himself in Belle's baggage, uses one of Maurice's inventions to release them.

 

While the servants and Gaston's mob fight in the castle, Gaston hunts down the Beast. The Beast is initially too depressed to fight back, but he regains his will when he sees Belle returning to the castle with Maurice. After winning a heated battle, the Beast spares Gaston's life, demanding that he leave the castle and never return. As the Beast is about to reunite with Belle, Gaston, refusing to admit defeat, stabs the Beast from behind, but loses his balance and falls off the balcony to his death.

 

When the Beast succumbs to his wounds, Belle professes her love for him, breaking the spell just as the rose's last petal falls. The Beast comes back to life, his human form restored. As he and Belle kiss, the castle and its inhabitants return to their previous states as well. Belle and the prince dance in the ballroom with her father and the humanized servants happily watching.

 

Cast and crew

Cast and characters

• Paige O'Hara as Belle – A beautiful, book-loving young woman seeks adventure, and offers her own freedom to the Beast in return for her father's. In their effort to enhance the character from the original story, the filmmakers felt that Belle should be "unaware" of her own beauty and made her "a little odd".[4] Wise recalls casting O'Hara because of a "unique tone" she had, "a little bit of Judy Garland", whose appearance she was modeled after.[5] James Baxter and Mark Henn served as the supervising animators for Belle.

• Robby Benson as the Beast – A handsome prince who is transformed into a hideous beast by a beautiful enchantress as punishment for his selfish ways. He has the head structure and horns of an American bison, the arms and body of a bear, the eyebrows of a gorilla, the jaws, teeth, and mane of a lion, the tusks of a wild boar and the legs and tail of a wolf. Chris Sanders, one of the film's storyboard artists, drafted the designs for the Beast and came up with designs based on birds, insects and fish before coming up with something close to the final design.[6] Glen Keane, supervising animator for the Beast, refined the design by going to the zoo and studying the animals on which the Beast was based.[6] Benson commented, "There's a rage and torment in this character I've never been asked to use before."[7] The filmmakers commented that "everybody was big fee-fi-fo-fum and gravelly" while Benson's voice had the "big voice and the warm, accessible side" and that "you could hear the prince beneath the fur".[6] Glen Keane served as the supervising animator for the Beast.

• Richard White as Gaston – (Animation – Andreas Deja) – A highly egotistical hunter who vies for Belle's hand in marriage and is determined not to let anyone else win her heart. He commented that they had "big line-ups of good-looking men with deep voices" during the casting auditions, but that Richard White had a "big voice" that "rattled the room".[6] Gaston's supervising animator, Andreas Deja, was pressed by Jeffrey Katzenberg to make Gaston handsome in contrast to the traditional appearance of a Disney villain, an assignment he found difficult at first.[8]

• Jerry Orbach as Lumiere – (Animation – Nik Raineri) – The kind-hearted but rebellious maître d' of the Beast's castle, he has been transformed into a candelabra. He has a habit of disobeying his master's strict rules, sometimes causing tension between them, but the Beast often turns to him for advice. He is depicted as a bit of a ladies' man, as he is frequently seen with Babette the Featherduster and immediately takes to Belle.

• David Ogden Stiers as Cogsworth – (Animation – Will Finn) – The castle majordomo and Lumiere's best friend, transformed into a clock. While he is as good-natured as Lumiere, he is extremely loyal to the Beast so as to save himself and anyone else any trouble, often leading to friction between himself and Lumiere. Stiers also voices the narrator.

• Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts – (Animation – David Pruiksma) – The head of the castle kitchens, turned into a teapot, who takes a motherly attitude toward Belle. The filmmakers went through several names for Mrs. Potts, such as "Mrs. Chamomile", before Ashman suggested the use of simple and concise names for the household objects.[6]

• Bradley Michael Pierce as Chip – (Animation – David Pruiksma) – A teacup and Mrs. Potts' son. Originally intended to have only one line, the filmmakers were impressed with Pierce's performance and expanded the character's role significantly, eschewing a mute Music Box character.[6]

• Rex Everhart as Maurice – (Animation – Ruben A. Aquino) Belle's inventor father.

• Jesse Corti as Lefou – (Animation – Chris Wahl) – Gaston's bumbling and often mistreated, but loyal and rather clever sidekick.

• Hal Smith as Philippe – (Animation – Russ Edmonds) – Belle's horse.

• Jo Anne Worley as the Wardrobe – (Animation – Tony Anselmo) The castle's authority over fashion, and a former opera singer, turned into a wardrobe. The character of Wardrobe was introduced by visual development person Sue C. Nichols to the then entirely male cast of servants, and was originally a more integral character named "Madame Armoire". Wardrobe is known as "Madame de la Grande Bouche" (Madame Big Mouth) in the stage adaptation of the film, and is the only major enchanted object character we do not see the human form of in the film.

• Mary Kay Bergman and Kath Soucie as the Bimbettes – A trio of village girls who constantly fawn over Gaston. Known as the "Silly Girls" in the stage adaption.

• Brian Cummings as the Stove – The castle's chef who was transformed into a stove.

• Alvin Epstein as the Bookseller

• Tony Jay as Monsieur D'Arque – The owner of the Maison de Lune. Gaston bribes him to help him in his plan to blackmail Belle.

• Alec Murphy as the Baker

• Kimmy Robertson as the Featherduster – A maid turned into a featherduster and Lumiere's lover. She is named "Babette" in the stage adaptation of the film, and "Fifi" in Belle's Magical World.

• Frank Welker as the Footstool – The castle's pet dog turned into a footstool.

 

Production

Early versions

Walt Disney sought out other stories to turn into feature films after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Beauty and the Beast was among the stories he considered. Attempts to develop the Beauty and the Beast story into a film were made in the 1930s and 1950s, but were ultimately given up because it "proved to be a challenge" for the story team.Peter M. Nichols states Disney may later have been discouraged by Jean Cocteau having already done his version.

 

Decades later, after the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988, the Disney studio resurrected Beauty and the Beast as a project for the satellite animation studio it had set up in London, England to work on Roger Rabbit. Richard Williams, who had directed the animated portions of Roger Rabbit, was approached to direct, but declined in favor of continuing work on his long-gestating project The Thief and the Cobbler. In his place, Williams recommended his colleague, English animation director Richard Purdum, and work began under producer Don Hahn on a non-musical version of Beauty and the Beast set in Victorian France.At the behest of Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Beauty and the Beast became the first Disney animated film to use a screenwriter. This was an unusual production move for an animated film, which is traditionally developed on storyboards rather than in scripted form.Linda Woolverton wrote the original draft of the story before storyboarding began, and worked with the story team to retool and develop the film.

 

Script rewrite and musicalization

Upon seeing the initial storyboard reels in 1989, Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered that the film be scrapped and started over from scratch.A few months after starting anew, Purdam resigned as director. The studio had approached Ron Clements and John Musker to direct the film but turned down the offer saying they were "tired" after just having finished directing Disney's recent success The Little Mermaid. Disney then hired first-time feature directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. Wise and Trousdale had previously directed the animated sections of Cranium Command, a short film for a Disney EPCOT theme park attraction.In addition, Katzenberg asked songwriters Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, who had written the song score for The Little Mermaid to turn Beauty and the Beast into a Broadway-style musical film in the same vein as Mermaid. Ashman, who at the time had learned he was dying of complications from AIDS, had been working with Disney on a pet project of his, Aladdin, and only reluctantly agreed to join the struggling production team.

 

To accommodate Ashman's failing health, pre-production of Beauty and the Beast was moved from London to the Residence Inn in Fishkill, New York, close to Ashman's New York City home.Here, Ashman and Menken joined Wise, Trousdale, Hahn, and Woolverton in retooling the film's script. Since the original story had only two major characters, the filmmakers enhanced them, added new characters in the form of enchanted household items who "add warmth and comedy to a gloomy story" and guide the audience through the film, and added a "real villain" in the form of Gaston.These ideas were somewhat similar to elements of the 1946 French film version of Beauty and the Beast, which introduced the character of Avenant, an oafish suitor somewhat similar to Gaston as well as inanimate objects coming to life in the Beast's castle. The animated objects were, however, given distinct personalities in the Disney version. By early 1990, Katzenberg had approved the revised script, and storyboarding began again. The production flew story artists back and forth between California and New York for storyboard approvals from Ashman, though the team was not told the reason why.

 

Animation

Production of Beauty and the Beast had to be completed on a compressed timeline of two years rather than four because of the loss of production time spent developing the earlier Purdam version of the film.Most of the production was done at the main Feature Animation studio, housed in the Air Way facility in Glendale, California. A smaller team at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Lake Buena Vista, Florida assisted the California team on several scenes, particularly the "Be Our Guest" number.

 

Beauty and the Beast was the second film, following The Rescuers Down Under, produced using CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), a digital scanning, ink, paint, and compositing system of software and hardware developed for Disney by Pixar. The software allowed for a wider range of colors, as well as soft shading and colored line effects for the characters, techniques lost when the Disney studio abandoned hand inking for xerography in the late 1950s. CAPS also allowed the production crew to simulate multiplane effects: placing characters and/or backgrounds on separate layers and moving them towards/away from the camera on the Z-axis to give the illusion of depth, as well as altering the focus of each layer.

 

In addition, CAPS allowed easier combination of hand-drawn art with computer-generated imagery, which before had to be plotted to animation cels and painted traditionally. This technique was put to significant use during the "Beauty and the Beast" waltz sequence, in which Belle and Beast dance through a computer-generated ballroom as the camera dollies around them in simulated 3D space.The filmmakers had originally decided against the use of computers in favor of traditional animation, but later, when the technology had improved, decided it could be used for the one scene in the ballroom.The success of the ballroom sequence helped convince studio executives to further invest in computer animation.

 

Music

Ashman and Menken wrote the Beauty song score during the pre-production process in Fishkill, the opening operetta-styled "Belle" being their first composition for the film.Other songs included "Be Our Guest", sung (in its original version) to Maurice by the objects when he becomes the first visitor to eat at the castle in a decade, "Gaston", a solo for the swaggering villain, "Human Again", a song describing Belle and Beast's growing love from the objects' perspective, the love ballad "Beauty and the Beast", and the climactic "The Mob Song".

 

As story and song development came to a close, full production began in Burbank while voice and song recording began in New York City. The Beauty songs were mostly recorded live with the orchestra and the voice cast performing simultaneously rather than overdubbed separately, in order to give the songs a cast album-like "energy" the filmmakers and songwriters desired.

 

During the course of production, many changes were made to the structure of the film, necessitating the replacement and re-purposing of songs. After screening a mostly animated version of the "Be Our Guest" sequence, story artist Bruce Woodside suggested that the objects should be singing the song to Belle rather than her father.Wise and Trousdale agreed, and the sequence and song were retooled to replace Maurice with Belle.

 

"Human Again" was dropped from the film before animation began, as its lyrics caused story problems about the timeline over which the story takes place.This required Ashman and Menken to write a new song in its place. "Something There", in which Belle and Beast sing (via voiceover) of their growing fondness for each other, was composed late in production and inserted into the script in place of "Human Again". Menken would later revise "Human Again" for inclusion in the 1994 Broadway stage version of Beauty and the Beast, and another revised version of the song was added to the film itself in a new sequence created for the film's Special Edition re-release in 2002.

 

Ashman died of AIDS-related complications on March 14, 1991, eight months prior to the release of the film. He never saw the finished film, and his work on Aladdin was completed by another lyricist, Tim Rice. Before Ashman's death, members of the film's production team visited him after the film's well-received first screening, with Don Hahn commenting that "the film would be a great success. Who'd have thought it?", to which Ashman replied with "I would."[11] A tribute to the lyricist was included at the end of the credits crawl: "To our friend, Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice, and a beast his soul. We will be forever grateful. Howard Ashman: 1950–1991".

 

A pop version of the "Beauty and the Beast" theme, performed by Céline Dion and Peabo Bryson over the end credits, was released as a commercial single from the film's soundtrack, supported with a music video. The Dion/Bryson version of "Beauty and the Beast" became an international pop hit, reaching the Top Ten of the singles charts in the United States and the United Kingdom Later home video releases of Beauty and the Beast would include, as bonus features, new music videos featuring covers of the title song by Jump 5 (for the 2002 DVD release) and Jordin Sparks (for the 2010 Blu-Ray/DVD release).

 

Musical numbers

1. "Belle" – Belle, Gaston, and Townspeople

2. "Belle" (Reprise) – Belle

3. "Gaston" – Gaston, LeFou, and Townspeople

4. "Gaston" (Reprise) – Gaston and LeFou

5. "Be Our Guest" – Lumière, Mrs. Potts, and the Enchanted Objects

6. "Something There" – Belle, Beast, Lumière, Cogsworth, and Mrs. Potts

7. "Human Again" (added in the 2002 special edition) – Lumière, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, Wardrobe, Chip, and Enchanted Objects

8. "Beauty and The Beast" – Mrs. Potts

9. "The Mob Song" – Gaston, LeFou, and Townspeople

10. "Transformation (Beauty and the Beast – Reprise)" – Chorus

 

Release and re-releases

The film was shown at the New York Film Festival in September 1991. Because the animation was only about 70% complete, the film was shown as a "work in progress." Storyboards and pencil tests were used in place of the remaining 30%. In addition, parts of the film that were finished were "stepped back" to previous versions of completion. The "work-in-progress" version of Beauty and the Beast played to a standing ovation from the film festival audience.The completed film would also be screened out of competition at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival.The finished film premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on November 13, 1991, and went into wide release through Walt Disney Pictures on November 22.

 

Disney initially planned a re-release of the film to be released theatrically in December 1998 in an attempt of counterprogramming against DreamWorks' The Prince of Egypt. The idea to restore the "Human Again" sequence was originally for this re-issue. However, due to impending competition from the aforementioned Prince of Egypt as well as The Rugrats Movie, Babe: Pig in the City and Jack Frost as well as Disney's own holiday release schedule being quite full with Enemy of the State, A Bug's Life and Mighty Joe Young, the re-release was delayed to spring 1999. When Disney decided to bump Doug's 1st Movie from direct-to-video to a theatrical release, that film took the re-release's date, delaying it to the holiday season. Presumably due to competition, like the year before, and Disney's own efforts to promote Toy Story 2, this release date was also canceled.

 

In 2002, Beauty and the Beast was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The film was restored and remastered for its New Year's Day, 2002 re-release in IMAX theatres in a special edition edit including a new musical sequence. For this version of the film, much of the animation was cleaned up, a new sequence set to the deleted song "Human Again" was inserted into the film's second act, and a new digital master from the original CAPS production files was used to make the high resolution IMAX film negative.

 

A sing along edition of the film, hosted by Jordin Sparks, was released in select theaters on September 29 and October 2, 2010. Prior to the showing of the film Sparks showed an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the newly restored high definition animated classic and the making of her all-new Beauty and the Beast music video. There was also commentary from producer Don Hahn, interviews with the cast and an inside look at how the animation was created.

 

A Disney Digital 3D version of the film was originally scheduled to be released in US theatres on February 12, 2010, but the project was postponed. On August 25, 2011, Disney announced that the 3D version of the film would make its cinematic debut in the United States at Hollywood's El Capitan Theatre from September 2–15, 2011.Disney spent less than $10 million on the 3D conversion.

 

After the successful 3D re-release of The Lion King, Disney announced a wide 3D re-release of Beauty and the Beast in North America beginning January 13, 2012, Disney's second traditional animated film released in 3D.