All right.
I’m opening up this blog entry with a question. How many of you know that classic fairy tale “Beauty
and the Beast”?
I’m only under the assumption that most of you
probably have heard some variation of the classic fairy tale. But for those of you who haven’t, here’s a
little bit of a run down.
The story originated almost four centuries ago, in
1740. The first rendition of the fairy
tale was penned by a French woman named Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de
Villeneuve. However, the version that
most people became familiar with was published sixteen years later, in 1756,
which was more or less an abridgement of de Villeneuve’s work by Jeanne-Marie
Le Prince de Beaumont.
(Man, the French had some impossibly long names
back in those days. If driver’s licenses
had existed in the eighteenth century, I’d wonder how they would fit all of
that on one card!)
Anyways, the basic plot of “Beauty and the Beast”
is like this. When the story begins, we’re
introduced to a wealthy merchant who has three beautiful daughters. Two of them are spoiled rotten, and have
absolutely no concern for anything except material things. Only the youngest daughter, Belle, is
described as being pure of heart.
When the merchant ends up losing everything to a
tempest at sea, he and his daughters are forced to work and live in a tiny
farmhouse. The merchant soon hears that
one of the cargo ships carrying his riches did make it safely to port, so he
goes to the city to see if there is anything that could be salvaged that he
could sell. When he asks his daughters
if they would like him to bring something home with him upon his return, two of
them naturally ask for gold, diamonds, beautiful dresses...basically anything
that a “What Not To Wear” gift card can buy.
Belle, on the other hand is much more frugal.
All she wants is a simple red rose. Since roses were very rare where they were, a
rose was all that she needed. A
beautiful request from someone pure of heart.
The merchant is dismayed to learn that upon
arriving in town, the cargo inside the ship has been liquidated in order to
take care of his debts, leaving him without a single penny to spend on presents
for his three girls. To add insult to
injury, he ends up getting lost in the woods.
Luckily for him, he ends up stumbling across a palace. Upon entering, he discovers that there is food
and beverages available for him to sample, courtesy of the unseen owner. The merchant spends the night there. Upon leaving the palace, he discovers a rose
garden outside of the castle, and he remembers Belle’s request. He picks the biggest, most beautiful rose out
of the garden, and sets out back home...when he is attacked by the most hideous
beast known to man!
(No, seriously, the beast confronts the man.)
He actually does more than that. The rose he picked was the beast’s prized
possession, and because the merchant couldn’t keep his paws off of it, he must
die. The merchant, obviously regretting
ever going near the flowers, pleads with the beast to let him go, telling him
that the flower was a present for his daughter, Belle. The beast decides that threatening to kill
the merchant was a bit harsh...so he lets him go with the rose and all the
presents that he can carry...but he must return one day.
So the merchant arrives back home, gives his
daughters the presents, and makes a promise to himself never to tell Belle what
happened. But you know how persistent
teenage girls can be, and when her father explains what happened, she goes to
the beast’s castle, taking her father’s place.
Upon arriving, Belle is treated like a queen by the beast, and bestows
love, attention, and everything her heart desires. He is smitten by the young girl, and each
night he asks for her hand in marriage, which Belle politely declined. She only has her heart set on marrying a
handsome prince, which she mistakenly believes is held captive by the beast
himself.
If only she knew.
Anyway, I’m not going to spoil the ending of this
classic story because I never like to reveal movie endings.
Because, in 1991, Disney created an animated movie
based on this classic tale.
“Beauty and the Beast” was released on November 13,
1991. It was directed by Gary Trousdale
and Kirk Wise, produced by Don Hahn, and the screenplay was written by Linda
Woolverton. And the songs were all
composed by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman, including this one...
ARTIST: Celine Dion &
Peabo Bryson
SONG: Beauty and the Beast
ALBUM: Beauty and the Beast
DATE RELEASED: November 16, 1991
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #9
SONG: Beauty and the Beast
ALBUM: Beauty and the Beast
DATE RELEASED: November 16, 1991
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #9
The voice cast was very good as well. Paige O’Hara played Belle, and Robby Benson
played the Beast. Other voices included
Angela Lansbury, David Ogden Steirs, Jerry Orbach, Richard White, and Bradley
Michael Pierce.
The plot of the movie version was loosely based on
the classic fable, but there were some significant differences...in particular
with the Beast’s backstory. Having a
curse placed upon him by an enchantress, the servants of the Beast are
transformed into household furniture.
Lumiere (Orbach) becomes a candleabra, Cogsworth (Stiers) turns into a
clock, and poor Mrs. Potts (Lansbury) and her son, Chip (Pierce) turn into a
teapot and a tea cup respectively. The
Beast is also given a magic mirror which can see into the future, as well as an
enchanted rose, which will continue to bloom until the day he turns 21. If he does not find true love before the last
petal falls off the rose...well...no, I can’t say. I have said too much.
There’s a little bit of a difference in Belle’s
backstory as well. Belle lives in a
little French village with her father, Maurice (no sisters present in this
version), and Belle is actively pursued by the smug, arrogant, evil Gaston
(White). Other than that, the story goes
almost exactly the same as the classic fable.
And would you know that there are lots of things
about this film that I didn’t even know about?
Did you know that the role of Chip was only
supposed to have one line of spoken dialogue in it? Turns out that Bradley Michael Pierce did
such a great job with his one line that the writers actually wrote in more lines
for him to say as a result of it!
Did you know that when the Beast was being
designed, the animators drew inspiration from several animals including an
American bison, a bear, a gorilla, a lion, a wolf, and a wild boar? Talk about mutant species!
Did you know that the original name for Mrs. Potts
was supposed to be Mrs. Chamomile?
Did you know that Tony Anselmo worked on the
animation of the film? In case you’re
wondering who Tony Anselmo is, he is currently the voice of another Disney
character, Donald Duck.
Did you know that the film won two Academy Awards
for “Best Original Song” and “Best Original Score”? It was also nominated for four others.
Did you know that the line that Cogsworth says
that begins with “flowers, chocolates, promises you don’t intend to keep...”
was ad-libbed by David Ogden Stiers?
Did you know that in the village scenes, Belle is
the only person in the town to wear blue as a predominant colour? There’s only one other person in the movie
that wears a lot of blue...I wonder who it could be?
Did you know that there is at least one scene that
was reused animation from “Sleeping Beauty”?
I can’t really reveal what that scene is, but it’s near the end of the
movie. It was done as a time-saving
measure.
Did you know that the film was shown with a 70%
completion rate at the New York Film Festival two months before the film was
officially released? To make up for the
thirty per cent still under construction, storyboard reels and rough animation pencil
tests were put in place. It reportedly
received a standing ovation at the festival.
Did you know that before Angela Lansbury got the
part of Mrs. Potts, the role was initially written for Julie Andrews?
Did you know that Howard Ashman came up with the
idea of turning the enchanted objects into living creatures with their own
distinct personalities?
Did you know that the film’s soundtrack takes up a
little over a quarter of the entire movie’s length?
Did you know that in order to disguise Robby
Benson’s voice when he was portraying the Beast, it was mixed in with the
growls of real lions and panthers?
Did you know that before Paige O’Hara was hired on
as the role of Belle, the Disney crew considered Jodi Benson for the role? Jodi Benson, of course, played Ariel in “The
Little Mermaid”.
Did you know that Patrick Stewart was initially on
board to play Cogsworth, but had to turn it down due to shooting conflicts with
“Star Trek: The Next Generation”?
Did you know that the movie was adapted into a
Broadway musical in 1994? It is the
seventh longest running Broadway play ever, ending its run thirteen years
later, in 2007.
Did you know that the stained glass window that
appears in the end of the film was added into Disneyland shortly after the film
was released in 1991?
Did you know that this film was the first animated
feature film to be nominated for the “Best Picture” Academy Award? It lost out to “Silence of the Lambs”.
Did you know that this film is the 30th
animated feature film by Disney?
No comments:
Post a Comment