Now, almost 20 years on from its 1991 release, Beauty And The Beast remains a classic of cinema. With a romance story as iconic as Romeo and Juliet, and after the recent live-action version of the Disney classic, the love for this film remains the same. The fairytale is almost enchanting to watch and definitely stays with you for a lifetime.
It was a record-breaking film for animation, had some instantly timeless songs, and every time we click play again, fans seem to learn more and more about the classic. The film taught many little girls and boys the important lesson of ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’, but now it’s time for us to take a deep dive behind the cover and find some unknown facts about the film.
10 Belle Was Inspired By Little Women And Is Known As The Woman Of The ’90s
According to screenwriter Linda Woolverton, Belle had a key difference from other Disney princesses like Snow White and Cinderella. Belle was “someone who wanted to do something other than wait for her prince to come”, and called her the “woman of the ’90s”. Another iconic woman, this time from 1933, was Jo March from Little Women played by the brilliant Katharine Hepburn.
Katharine Hepburn’s Jo March was also an inspiration for Belle and Linda Woolverton told The Los Angeles Times “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.”
9 Two Key Characters Were About To Have Different Names Before Its Release
Recently we heard from produced Don Hahn told Vanity Fair that two characters from the film were about to have different names than the ones we all knew them as. Mrs. Potts was initially going to be called Mrs. Chamomile, but thankfully, they realized Mrs. Potts would be an easier name to rhyme with and easier for kids.
Another character, Lumiere, originally had another name “Chandal”, inspired by the word chandelier of course. This was also changed because it was easier to say and in honor of the Lumiere brothers, who are icons in the film and photography world.
8 Belle Is Older Than All The Other Disney Princesses
Part of what makes Belle such a fan-favorite is her independence and intelligence. Not to say that the other princesses aren’t intelligent, but Belle was intentionally written to have a more individualistic personality. This is reflected in her age, where all other princesses were teenagers, Belle was created to be in her 20s.
This sense of maturity, as told by actress Paige O’Hara, who played Belle, at the screening of the film’s 25th anniversary in September 2016, makes her even more iconic for women around the world. Truly an inspiration.
7 Beauty And The Beast Was The First Ever Animated Film To Be Nominated At The Oscars For Best Picture
The film was already revolutionary thanks to its brilliant writing and iconic characters, but it made history when a few months after its release it was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. In fact, until Up was nominated in 2010, it was the only animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Ultimately, it lost out to Silence Of The Lambs, but this doesn’t dampen the impact of the film, in fact, the film went on to win two other Oscars, one for Best Music, Original Song, and Best Music, Original Score for Alan Menken. So, overall the film completely changed the game for the Academy Awards.
6 The Beast Was Designed To Be A Combination Of Different Animals And Could Have Looked A Lot Different
Glen Keane, the animator for Beauty And The Beast, wanted to make the Beast a character “based on something that was real”, and to do this, he used a combination of many different animals as inspiration for the iconic character. A gorilla inspired his strong brow, a buffalo for the head shape (since “there’s a sadness” in the way a buffalo hangs its head), a lion for the mane, a bear’s body, a wolf’s legs, and so on.
Finalizing his look took a very long time and the initial sketches weren’t imaginative enough for the filmmakers. Things also got a little too weird at times as well, but eventually, they managed to come up with an awesome-looking character.
5 There’s A Hidden Mickey Mouse Cameo In The Movie
Of course, the most iconic Disney character of all time isn’t Belle, it’s actually not a princess at all — it’s the one and only Mickey Mouse. Because Mickey Mouse is such an iconic character there are several Disney movies that have hidden Mickey mouses if you look closely. To do this Disney created a thing called a classic Mickey which is a geometric figure composed of three circles that resembles none other than Mickey’s silhouette.
In Beauty and the Beast, there is a hidden Mickey at the top of the center bookshelf in the huge library. It’s hard to spot but is it a cool little Easter egg for any Disney fans out there.
4 The Revolutionary Animation Became An Inspiration To All Filmmakers
With a crew of 600 Disney animators and artists and a total of 4 years of drawing and painting the scenes, it’s fair to say that Beauty and the Beast took a lot of hard work to get done. In fact, it was only the second ever Disney film to use the computer animation production system, or CAPS, which allowed the animators to use a wider range of colors and even give a better presentation of depth on screen.
Thanks to this technology, James Baxter the supervising animator for Belle, was able to design her movements based on ballerinas which would have only been possible with the new technology technological advancement that would be later used for all of Disney’s Pixar films.
3 Windows Had A Huge Symbolic Meaning To The Film
When watching films who doesn’t love a nice metaphor and Beauty and the Beast doesn’t disappoint. Windows are a major motif in Beauty and the Beast in fact the camera pans in and out of several windows throughout the movie, where the filmmakers considered the eyes to be the windows to the soul.
In fact from the very first scene, the film shows us a stained glass window giving us that once upon a time feeling and setting the tone for the rest of the movie to be different from any classic Disney movie we have seen before.
2 Chip Was Initially Only Meant To Be A One Line Of Dialogue Character
Initially, the world’s cutest animated character Chip was only meant to get one line of dialogue for his part in beauty and the beast. Thankfully Bradley Pierce who voiced a character impressed the filmmakers so much but they decided to extend his part and cut the role of a mute music box.
He was cheerful and curious, and we are not quite sure what the film would have been without him, so we are extremely glad that Bradley Pierce was so good at his job.
1 The 1991 Release Date Could Have Been A Lot Different On Multiple Occasions
It is well known that Walt Disney likes to take his time when it comes to his movies, and while he was pondering over Beauty and the Beast, a live-action version of the movie was released by French filmmaker Jean Cocteau. So after two attempts to release the film in the 1930s and the 1950s, almost 30 years later Disney secured the services of Roger Purdum, a British animator, to create a more traditional version of Beauty and the Beast without any musical numbers.
After making a pretty depressing and dark storyboard and after the release of The Little Mermaid, things changed and Disney decided to make a musical version of the film, and that is the Beauty and the Beast we have all grown to love today.
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