The Disney classic "Beauty and the Beast’, which is a "tale as old as time’, as sung by Mrs Potts, is a musical which I am pretty sure you are all very much familiar with from when you were a child. I saw it so many times on my VCR as a child, I literally fried the video tape. After last night’s first performance of the University’s take on "Beautie and the Beast’, and in anticipation of the next two shows, I thought, why not list down some facts which you all might not have known about the movie adaptation?
1. Beauty and the Beast had been attempted to be produced into an animated film by Walt Disney in both the 1930s and the 1950s but didn’t due to writers finding it hard to adapt the story.
2. Disney borrowed ideas from Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film.
3. British animation director, Richard Purdum was hired by Walt Disney in 1988 to adapt the film. However, his version was darker and non-musical.
4. Linda Woolverton was then hired to rewrite the script. Her only previous experience with Disney was writing a few episodes of Chip "n’ Dale Rescue Rangers.
5. The characterization of Belle was inspired by Katherine Hepburn’s portrayal of Jo March in the 1933 Little Women film, because Linda wanted to make Belle a stronger and independent character.
6. Sherri Stoner, who served as the reference model for Belle, was also the reference model for Ariel in The Little Mermaid.
7. Disney originally wanted Jodi Benson to voice Belle, who also voiced Ariel in The Little Mermaid. But then Paige O’Hara was chosen as the voice for Belle, who actually sobbed real tears when recording the death scene of the Beast.
8. The real name of the Beast is actually Adam. His name is never mentioned in the film.
9. The cute character of Chip was originally meant to be a little music box.
10. The animator Glen Keane, based the Beast’s appearance on several animals.
11. The final dance between Belle and the Beast, is actually a reused scene from Sleeping Beauty’s final dance.
12. In the original draft of the movie, the villain Gaston was meant to be killed by wolves after surviving his fall. However, the plot still made it to the big screen for Scar’s death scene in The Lion King.
13. Some of the sculptures within the Beast’s castle are actually early concept versions of how the Beast would look.
14. Belle is the second Disney princess not to be of royal decent. The first one is Cinderella and the third is Tiana from The Princess and The Frog.
15. Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and to bank more than $100 million dollars at the box office.
