Did You Know? - Fun Facts About "The Little Mermaid"

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.

Now, in the 1980s, Disney wasn't doing so well with their animated movies. Most of the films from this era are some of their lesser-known entries in the Disney Animated Canon (The Black Cauldron immediately comes to mind). In fact, animation as a whole was for all intents and purposes in a dark age at the time. Then in 1989, they released their twenty-eighth animated movie.

That movie was The Little Mermaid.

The Little Mermaid marked a turning point for animation. It was the first film released as part of the Disney Renaissance, which lasted for an entire decade and included films like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King (but we'll talk about those movies in later editions of "Did You Know?"). It's one of Disney's most iconic movies, spawning two sequels, a prequel TV series, a Broadway show, theme park attractions, and mucho merchandise. Predictably, a live action remake of the film is going to be released next month... which is why I'm posting this now.

There are a lot of things that you probably don't know about the film. Sure, you probably know that the film won two Academy Awards, and that Jodi Benson recorded "Part of Your World" with the lights dimmed so she'd feel like she was really underwater. You probably know that Sherri Stoner, the voice of Slappy Squirrel from Animaniacs, was the live action reference model for Ariel. And of course, there's the whole thing with the priest's knee (I want to keep this blog PG, so I won't go into any more detail than that). But did you know THESE things?

1) Disney had wanted to make an adaptation of The Little Mermaid since the 1930s (either as a full feature, a Silly Symphony, or a segment in one of those "package films" they were doing in the 1940s). Development started after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but was put on hold due to various circumstances.

2) When Ron Clements, one of the film's directors, pitched the idea of a Little Mermaid adaptation to Jeffrey Katzenberg in the 1980s, he initially turned it down. In fact, he didn't just turn it down, he went over to a large gong and banged it to let everyone know that he didn't like the idea (this was apparently what he did to EVERY pitch that he didn't like - he called these meetings "the gong show"). Part of the reason why is that Disney was already making a movie about a mermaid, 1984's Splash. Fortunately, Ron had a story treatment document with him and gave it to Jeffrey for him to read. After that, Jeffrey decided to greenlight the film after all.

3) Ariel is the first red-haired Disney princess. Originally, she was going to be blonde, but the filmmakers felt that would make her too similar to the mermaid from the aforementioned Splash. Many different hair colors were considered before they decided to make her a redhead.

Concept art for Ariel.

4) Patrick Stewart was offered the role of King Triton, but he had to turn it down due to scheduling conflicts with Star Trek: The Next Generation. This was one of the many, MANY Disney characters Patrick Stewart had to turn down doing the voice of due to that show.

5) Jim Carrey - yes, THAT Jim Carrey - auditioned for Prince Eric. I've heard that Matthew Broderick was also considered, but I don't know if there's any truth to that.

6) Sebastian was originally to be an British crab named Clarence. When Howard Ashman read the script, he suggested making the crab Jamaican instead. When Samuel E. Wright auditioned for the character, he had no idea what it was for - and when he found out it was a Disney movie, he was thrilled.

7) According to Will Finn, who was instrumental in designing Sebastian,  the filmmakers wanted a "Geoffrey Holder-type voice" for the character before Samuel was cast. The trouble was, Will couldn't imagine a voice like Geoffrey Holder's coming out of "the rough sketches I had seen of the beady-eyed, Frisbee-shaped crustacean". He kept thinking of Holder's long face and soulful eyes, and eventually decided to just forget about a crab's real anatomy and "have a face like that just extend out of the shell" - he described it as a cross between a turtle and the Twiddlebugs from Sesame Street. He was also inspired by the caricatures of Brazilian musicians he'd seen in a book called Echole! that fellow artist Haroldo Guimaraes had lent to him.

Will did a few scribbles of the crab he was envisioning. When Howard Ashman saw them, he loved them, so the directors wanted Will to do a more finished model sheet. Problem was, in Will's words, "I was still very inexperienced at the time and although I could get lucky with the odd scribble, I had never designed a feature character before and could only bring the drawings to a point. Story artist Ed Gombert and animator Chris Buck worked up the design a good deal more successfully as storyboarding began, and then that work in turn was handed to the amazingly gifted Duncan Marjoribanks, who, as Supervising Animator, ultimately fashioned the character into the version we all know and love."

Concept art for Sebastian.

8) Another character whose design was hard to pin down? Ursula. Before deciding on the half-octopus look, they went through a number of designs based on different sea creatures. At one point, Ursula looked like a manta ray. Some concept art depicts her as looking like a lionfish or a scorpionfish. Dan Haskett did some hypothetical designs for Ursula that were inspired by Patti LaBelle. One thing that Ron Clements and John Musker DID know was that they didn't want to make Ursula look too beautiful because at one point she turns into the beautiful but wicked Vanessa and they wanted to have some contrast. Rob Minkoff (the director of The Lion King) whipped up a sketch where Ursula looked like, in Ron Clements' words, "a Miami Beach matron". Ron, John, and Howard Ashman all liked it. Eventually, they started modeling Ursula after Divine, the famous drag queen who starred as Edna in 1988's Hairspray.

Storyboard artist Matthew O'Callaghan was the one who came up with the idea of giving Ursula octopus tentacles. Chris Buck helped refine the design into the Ursula we got. Glen Keane was originally going to be Ursula's supervising animator, but he wanted to animate Ariel instead. So then the job of Ursula's supervising animator went to Rob Minkoff, but he left production to work on a 1990 Roger Rabbit short. Ruben Aquino was given the task of animating Ursula after that.

9) Thus began the quest to find Ursula's voice. While writing the script, Ron and John envisioned Bea Arthur as the character, whereas Howard though Joan Collins would be a good choice. They weren't able to offer Bea the part - it would seem that her agent was upset that they envisioned her playing a witch. They also considered Nancy Marchand, Nancy Wilson, Charlotte Rae and Elaine Stritch before Pat Carroll was chosen.

Concept art for Ursula that has her looking like Miss Piggy with octopus tentacles.

10) The multiple scenes in the movie where Ariel sits on a rock? That's a reference to a statue of Hans Christian Anderson's original Little Mermaid located in Copenhagen.

11) At some point in the 1980s, the animation section of the Walt Disney Studio Lot got the axe to make room for the bigger live action productions being made. So the animators worked in a warehouse and a bunch of trailers next to a Glendale bowling alley. On the bright side, this meant that the animators were freed from the looming pressure of Disney's former glory that had haunted their previous offices and could define their own style. Peter Schneider, the president of Disney's animation division at the time, called this "the best thing that could have happened to the animators."

12) Ariel is named after Lori Singer's character from the film Footloose. Physically, she's modeled after Alyssa Milano (she didn't learn that until Disney asked her to host a TV special about the making of the movie).

13) Among those who auditioned to provide the voice of Ariel was Liz Callaway (who also provided the singing voice of Jasmine in the Aladdin sequels and Kiara in The Lion King II: Simba's Pride), as she confirms here. Voice actress Melissa Fahn also auditioned.

14) Andreas Deja was given the job of animating King Triton because "he was a very dynamic, aggressive character that had to be drawn realistically." He based the design on his own father, who would often argue with his sisters when they brought home boys.

Concept art for Flounder.

15) Remember that shark from the beginning of the film? Glut? He was originally supposed to show up again when Flounder was trying to get Ariel to the wedding ship. Flounder apparently would've tricked him into biting a gunpowder barrel, resulting in the shark blowing up.

16) Of King Triton's daughters, Ariel is the only one to wear her hair down - this is to help her stand out.

17) Speaking of which, the animation of Ariel's hair underwater was inspired by footage of astronaut Sally Ride in weightless conditions.

18) As Ursula is turning herself into the human Vanessa, among the things she includes in the potion is a butterfly. "Vanessa" is a genus of butterfly. It's a visual pun. Now, where Ursula found a butterfly underwater I have no idea...

19) Cameos, cameos, cameos! Who doesn't love a good cameo? And The Little Mermaid is full of 'em. For example, look closely during the scene near the beginning of the film where King Triton is arriving at the concert. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Kermit the Frog are part of the crowd (as are a few kids wearing those Mickey Mouse ear hats).

In addition, the King and the Grand Duke from Cinderella are in attendance at Prince Eric's wedding...

There's a painting of Aurora and Phillip from Sleeping Beauty in Eric's castle...

And a non-Disney character appears at the end of the "Under the Sea" sequence - one of the fish in this screencap is none other than the Incredible Mr. Limpet!

Mr. Limpet also makes a cameo in the Little Mermaid dark ride at Disney's California Adventure. Look for him across from the animatronic of Ariel awkwardly scratching her back on a piece of coral. And no, for whatever reason he's not in the Disney World version of the ride.

20) The animators created a brand new color for Ariel's tail. That color's name? Fittingly enough, "Ariel".

21) The Little Mermaid is actually considered a "transitional" film of sorts - it was one of the last Disney movies to use xerography and the first to introduce the CAPS system. It was also the final Disney film to use a multiplane camera.

22) Ursula technically isn't an octopus - she's a cecaelia, a mythical creature that's a cross between a human and an octopus. She only has six tentacles (her arms serve as the other two limbs that make for eight in all). This is because animating EIGHT tentacles would've been too expensive.

23) Among the things Ariel has in her grotto are a bust of Abraham Lincoln and the painting "Magdalene With the Smoking Flame" by Georges De La Tour.

Another piece of concept art for Ursula.

24) Long before he was cast as the Genie in Aladdin, the filmmakers considered having Robin Williams in the movie voicing a dolphin. Then they decided that Ariel was too passive, so they decided to cut the dolphin and give the character's "agency" to Ariel.

25) The song that Scuttle attempts to sing when Ariel and Eric are in the rowboat is the love theme of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture. Earlier in the film, when Scuttle is first introduced, he is singing "1492". 1942 is the year when Christopher Columbus went sailing and thought he spotted mermaids.

26) Will Finn admitted on his blog that he doesn't think very highly of his animation of Grimsby. He said that "At this point I learned that it was one thing to make a decent sketch and quite another to make useful animation drawings. Simply put, the character was just too sophisticated for my skill level at that point... it was a year-long struggle from start to finish, and not an ultimately successful one. As much as I loved the character and wanted to do it well, I would say that I only got a few of the scenes right and both I and the directors knew it. At one point I noticed with a kind of despair that just about every time the character appeared in storyboard form, director John Musker himself had done the sketches, which was not typical. It dawned on me that this was exactly the kind of character that embodied his own dry sense of humor and he undoubtedly would have knocked it out of the park if he had animated it himself. Both John and Ron were world-class animators before they became directors so pleasing them is both a challenge and a reward. I knew that what they had in their heads was better than what I was capable of doing most of the time, but I kept on keeping on anyway."

27) Would you believe that Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted the iconic "Part of Your World" song cut from the movie? After a test screening, he decided that kids would find the song boring (apparently at least one kid in the test audience was more focused on picking up his popcorn than he was watching Ariel sing). Literally no one else in production agreed with him, especially not Howard Ashman, who gave Jeffrey a piece of his mind. He said, "You can’t cut the song. It’s an ‘I want’ song. And if you cut it, they’re not going to fall in love with Ariel and root for her for the rest of the film. There’s not going to be any heart in it whatsoever." Glen Keane urged Jeffrey to give the song another chance, and the rest is history. Just to be on the safe side, the animators added Sebastian into the scene so he could keep getting into hijinks involving Ariel's "gadgets and gizmos" - which would hopefully keep younger audiences more interested in the song.

Concept art of Ariel and Eric.

28) Surprisingly, many of the animators who worked on the film didn't care for the prequel TV series that premiered in 1992, feeling that their work was being trivialized by limited animation and foreign animation studios.

29) Speaking of people not being a fan of things, do you know who wasn't a fan of Disney's take on The Little Mermaid? None other than beloved author Maurice Sendak! It wasn't that he didn't like Disney or anything, it's just that... well, in his own words, "The tale is about sacrifice. The Little Mermaid has all the risks and no rewards. That's a hard lesson. The movie is about getting married, having cupcakes for bras and going to live in the White Plains somewhere."

30) This film was the most effects-heavy Disney animated feature since 1940's Fantasia. The storm sequence where Ariel rescues Eric took ten special effects animators over a year to finish. Effects animation supervisor Mark Dinal estimated that over a million bubbles were drawn for the film - the directors insisted that each bubble be hand-drawn as opposed to Xeroxed.

31) As you probably know, the voice of Melody in The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea was provided by Tara Strong. Melody is actually Tara's favorite role, because she loves the original Little Mermaid and was incredibly excited to be working with Jodi Benson. Tara also voices two of Ariel's sisters in The Little Mermaid 3: Ariel's Beginning.

Did you know any of these things before reading this post? If so, congratulations! I just wasted your time!

Sources:
- https://www.looper.com/850123/the-untold-truth-of-disneys-the-little-mermaid/
- Will Finn's blog
- https://www.insider.com/the-little-mermaid-ursula-concept-art-2019-7
- https://www.looper.com/1116014/disney-almost-removed-the-little-mermaids-part-of-your-world-from-the-films-final-cut/
- https://www.insider.com/little-mermaid-part-of-your-world-jeffrey-katzenberg-2019-2