Trailer
Plot summary
An old beggar woman comes to a prince's castle out of a storm, offering a rose in exchange for shelter. He refuses her because of how she looks, and she becomes a beautiful enchantress. She transforms him into a beast and turns the household staff into objects, and the spell will hold unless he wins someone's love before the final petal of the rose drops. In a village nearby, Belle, who reads and dreams of adventure, turns down the hunter Gaston. Her father Maurice, an inventor, gets lost in the forest and ends up locked in the castle's tower. Belle offers her own freedom in exchange for his, and the Beast agrees. The enchanted servants, hoping for their own release, welcome her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Lyricist Howard Ashman died of AIDS-related complications at 40 on 14 March 1991, eight months before release, and only ever saw the film unfinished. When Don Hahn told him after the first screening that it would be a great success, who would have thought it, Ashman replied that he would.
- Angela Lansbury did not think her voice suited the title song, so Alan Menken and Howard Ashman asked for one take, performed as she saw fit. She reduced everyone in the studio to tears and nailed it in that single take, and the version won the Oscar for Best Original Song.
- It was the first animated film ever nominated for Best Picture, and the only one nominated while the category held just five slots. It was also the third Disney film nominated, after Mary Poppins in 1964 and Dead Poets Society in 1989.
- With production nearing its deadline, the final dance between Belle and the Prince was reused from the dance between Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip in the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty. Trousdale said it was the easiest way to do the sequence.
- Julie Andrews was first considered for Mrs. Potts but turned it down, and Angela Lansbury was cast instead. John Cleese was among those considered for Cogsworth, and Rupert Everett auditioned for Gaston before Richard White was cast to make the character sound more arrogant.
- Richard Williams, who had directed the animated portions of Roger Rabbit, was approached to direct but declined to prioritise his long-gestating project The Thief and the Cobbler, suggesting English animation director Richard Purdum in his place.
- At the behest of Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Beauty and the Beast became the first Disney animated film to use a screenwriter in an official capacity, an unusual move when animated films were traditionally developed on storyboards rather than in scripted form.
