Did You Know? - Fun Facts About "Beauty and the Beast"

Welcome to another edition of a series that I like to call Did You Know?. Inspired a little by the Nostalgia Critic's "What You Never Knew" series, this series will allow me to share with you some interesting tidbits, behind-the-scenes information, and fun facts about an animated movie or TV series. Because I like sharing new information with people.

Ask somebody - anybody - what their favorite Disney movies are. There's a very good chance that Beauty and the Beast will be somewhere in the top five. The original, not the 2017 live action remake. We don't talk about that one.

This is one of THE most iconic animated movies in the history of cinema, and for good reason. It's got everything that people think of when they think of animated Disney movies - charming characters, beautiful animation, wonderful songs, all that stuff. Disney doesn't make movies like it anymore.

But there's a lot that you likely don't know already about the film. For example, did you know that...

1) The original choice for the voice of Belle was Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel from The Little Mermaid. Liz Callaway, who would go on to provide the singing voice of Jasmine in the Aladdin sequels, also auditioned. In the end, of course, the role went to Paige O'Hara, who incidentally has been friends with Jodi Benson since 1980, quite a few years before they both gave voice to Disney princesses. Liz Callaway is still in the movie - you can hear her during the opening song, "Belle".

Concept art for Belle.

2) Speaking of Ariel, Kirk Wise said in 1991 that "We were absolutely aware that comparisons to The Little Mermaid would be inevitable because we were working in the same realm: a Disney fairy tale with a strong female lead. We didn't want Belle's characterization to go in the same direction as Ariel's. Ariel was definitely the All American teenager, while we pictured Belle as a little older, a little wiser and a little more sophisticated. In addition, Belle is very protective of her father unlike Ariel."

Linda Woolverton, the film's writer, based Belle on Jo March from Little Women. As she put it, "Though the character of Jo is more tomboyish, both were strong, active women who loved to read - and wanted more than life was offering them." Gaston, meanwhile, was inspired by some of Linda's previous boyfriends.

3) Apparently, at one point in the film's development, Belle and the Beast weren't going to hook up - they were going to be just friends. Linda Woolverton didn't like that - "At heart, the story is a romance, and I didn't want to disappoint," she said. "Belle wanted excitement and adventure in her life - but, like most of us, she also wanted someone to share it with. The Beast is someone who shares her love of books, her values... in the end, Belle gets a great guy."

Concept art for the Beast saving Belle from a pack of hungry wolves.

4) Among the ninety actors who auditioned to voice the Beast was Tim Curry. Ironic, since he went on to voice the main villain, Forte, in the 1998 direct to video follow-up Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.

Also considered for the role were Laurence Fishburne, Val Kilmer, Mandy Patinkin, and even Regis Philbin. According to Kirk Wise, when they were looking for a voice for the Beast, "We needed someone who could stand like an eight foot tall hairy monster and at the same time express the warmth, sincerity and intelligence of a human prince." Robby Benson managed to combine both in a believable way.

5) Early in development, Lefou was going to be Gaston's accountant - back then, Gaston wasn't a macho hunter but rather a foppish aristocrat who Belle's aunt desperately wanted her to marry. This version of Lefou the studio was hoping they could get Woody Allen to do the voice of.

Then they considered calling him "Oui-Oui" and making him a horrific ethnic stereotype.

And I also found this piece of concept art for Lefou where he looks like a smaller Quasimodo in a nice suit.

6) Like Ariel, the reference model for Belle was Sherri Stoner, otherwise known as the voice of Slappy Squirrel from Animaniacs.

7) The "Be Our Guest" musical number was originally going to be earlier in the film, sung to Maurice when he arrives at the Beast's castle. The filmmakers thought the song was too good to be sung to a supporting character, so they moved it to when Belle's in the castle.

8) Andreas Deja came up with Gaston's design out of frustration towards Jeffrey Katzenberg's complaints that his previous designs weren't handsome enough. He threw every cliched "masculine" feature on Gaston, showed it to Katzenberg, and demanded, "Is THIS what you want?!" - and ironically enough, it was indeed exactly what Katzenberg wanted.

9) The signpost that Maurice comes across in the woods has signs pointing to Ramona, Saugus, Newhall, Valencia and Anaheim. I'm not sure what the significance of the first three are, but CalArts (the college that most Disney animators graduated from) is in Valencia, and Disneyland obviously is in Anaheim.

Some have interpreted this scene as a jab at Six Flags Magic Mountain, which is located in Valencia as well - the "Anaheim" sign points down a bright and cheery path, whereas the "Valencia" path points down a dark and scary path.

10) Okay, so obviously this gag is intended to be a reference to The Wizard of Oz:

But that's not the only reference to that movie in the film. Belle is drawn to resemble Dorothy. Notice how she's the only one in town who wears blue - this helps her stand out from the townsfolk. It was the idea of Brian McEntree, the film's art director, to have her ballroom dress be gold "to show her love and her warmth".

11) The film apparently takes place in the 18th century. This leads to some anachronisms - for example, the band at Gaston's wedding plays "Here Comes the Bride", which was composed at some point in the mid-19th century. And the baker uses the word "baguettes", despite the fact that "baguettes" wasn't used in France to refer to a type of bread until the 1920s. Of course, there weren't any big buffalo-like monsters or talking candelabras in the actual 18th century France either.

12) Here's an amusing fun fact John Musker shared on a now-deleted Howard Ashman tribute site - during production of The Little Mermaid, Ron Howard, John, and Howard were standing in the Flower Street building near where the animators sat. Nik Ranieri started talking to Howard about how much he hated the song demos he'd heard for Beauty and the Beast. He claimed that they weren't nearly as good as the songs Howard had written for The Little Mermaid. Then Nik realized that those songs he was trash-talking were written by Howard, which made for a really awkward situation. Ironically, Nik wound up animating Lumiere.

Concept art for Lumiere.

13) Chip is the only one of the Beast's servants (well, technically he's not one of his servants, but you know what I mean) to refer to Belle by name.

14) Lots and lots of different designs were done for the Beast. Early designs had him looking like a mandrill, a minotaur, Pumbaa, a dog, a lion... a lot of things. The final design has the head structure and horns of a buffalo, the arms and body of a bear, the eyebrows of a gorilla, the jaws, teeth and mane of a lion, the tusks and nose bridge of a wild boar, and the legs and tail of a wolf. I believe he also has the neck hair of an ibis. Oh, and according to Glen Keane, the Beast has a rainbow bum. Y'know, like the one on a mandrill. But nobody knows that except Belle (and I really don't want to know HOW she knows it).

On the flip side, when designing the prince that the Beast turns into at the end, the animators didn't put much effort into it because they knew people would prefer his beast form anyhow.

Concept art for the Beast, which might or might not have eventually inspired Goliath
from Gargoyles.

15) The animation of Belle and Prince Adam (it's for all intents and purposes his official name) dancing at the end is recycled animation of Aurora and Prince Phillip dancing from Sleeping Beauty.

16) The fight between the Beast and the wolves originally had a bit where the Beast breaks a wolf's neck. Paige O'Hara and Don Hahn both hated it (probably because animal cruelty doesn't exactly make for a sympathetic hero) and convinced the team to get rid of it.

17) A character cut from the movie was a music box who was basically meant to be the film's equivalent of Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. After Chip's role was expanded, he wound up replacing the music box (for example, originally the music box stowed away with Belle when she left the castle, but in the finished movie it's Chip). However, the music box still makes a very brief appearance in the film just before the battle between the servants and the townsfolk (he's sitting next to Lumiere).

See the music box?

18) Throughout the movie, Maurice's socks are mismatched - one of them is striped, one isn't - as a sign of his eccentricity.

19) And now, more about voices! Julie Andrews was considered to voice Mrs. Potts. Jason Alexander auditioned for the roles of Lefou and Cogsworth. The role of Cogsworth was written with John Cleese in mind, but he turned it down, as did Patrick Stewart due to scheduling conflicts with Star Trek: The Next Generation. I've mentioned before that Rupert Everett auditioned to voice Gaston, but from what I've heard, Patrick Swayze and Donny Osmond auditioned as well. The latter would go on to play Gaston on Broadway.

TV Tropes also claims that Don Rickles and Ian McKellen (who, of course, played Cogsworth in the 2017 live action remake) also auditioned to voice Cogsworth, but I have no idea if there's any truth to that.

20) During the battle between the Beast's servants and the townsfolk, at one point you can see a baby buggy coming down the stairs. This is a reference to the Sergei Eisenstein movie Battleship Potemkin, which I have not seen.

Concept art for Belle and Rafiki... I mean, the Beast.

21) Most of the statues seen in the West Wing and around the castle are based on early designs for the Beast.

22) Paige O'Hara's husband, Michael Piontek, went on to be an understudy for Gaston for the Broadway adaptation of the movie. So I guess Gaston wound up marrying Belle after all, in a way.

23) When Angela Lansbury was on a flight to New York to record the film's title song, "Beauty and the Beast", her plane had to make an emergency landing because there was apparently a bomb on the plane. She came into the recording session exhausted... but still managed to do the song in one take!

And while we're on the subject of the title song, every lyric in the song has exactly five syllables. Jeffrey Katzenberg loved the song so much that he asked Howard Ashman to give it a third verse - after a week of trying, Howard told Jeffrey that the only other things he could think of that rhymed with "Beast" were "yeast" and "Diane Wiest".

24) Mrs. Potts' name was originally Mrs. Chamomille, after a very soothing herbal tea. Meanwhile, Lumiere was originally called Chandal (like a chandelier, get it?). Problem was, these names are hard to pronounce, so they decided to call them Mrs. Potts and Lumiere instead. Lumiere was named after the Lumiere Brothers, manufacturers of photo equipment.

Concept art for Mrs. Potts.

25) During "The Mob Song", Gaston sings "Screw your courage to the sticking place." For those not familiar with Shakespeare, he's quoting a line from Macbeth. I don't know what it means.

26) The smoke during the Beast's transformation at the end isn't animated. It's real smoke. The same real smoke used years earlier in The Black Cauldron.

27) Beauty and the Beast was the first animated Disney film to cross the $100 million box office mark.

28) 1970s Disney animator Ken Anderson loved the film, as did Chuck Jones.

Concept art for those creepy dancing forks in "Be Our Guest".

29) A lot of people have already pointed this out - if the curse is supposed to last until the Beast turns twenty-one, and Lumiere says in "Be Our Guest" that they've been "rusting" for ten years, that means that the Prince was cursed when he was eleven years old.

This is because Howard Ashman originally pitched a prologue for the film where the Prince is shown as a seven year old (so he would've been seventeen when Belle met him?) refusing to give an old woman shelter during a storm, resulting in the old woman revealing herself to actually be an enchantress and chasing the prince through the castle before finally turning him into a beast. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise hated the idea. Kirk kept imagining "this Eddie Munster kid in a Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit". When they told Howard this, he didn't take it very well.

30) In 1992, the Chairman of the Malaysian Censorship Board screened Beauty and the Beast - and demanded that a five second scene of a pig scurrying around in the background be cut before the film would be shown, believing that Malaysia's fundamentalist regime would "find the pig offensive". Disney executive Kevin Hyson's reaction to this was to say, "I guess we won't ever be releasing The Three Little Pigs there."

31) Let's end this post with something funny - the March 1992 issue of TV Guide had THIS on the cover:

For more fun facts about Beauty and the Beast, I'd recommend going searching for 'em with Google. I also found an interesting article bringing up more similarities the film and its characters have to The Wizard of Oz. I recommend checking it out.