Trivia: Beauty and the Beast

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  • "Be Our Guest" was originally animated with Maurice (not Belle) as the guest, but they decided not to waste such a wonderful song on a secondary character.

  • Chip originally had only one line, but the producers liked Bradley Pierce's voice so much that extra dialogue and business was written and storyboarded for the character.

  • When The Beast is getting his hair cut for Belle, the hair style he is given is the same as Lion's in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

  • The original "cute" character of the movie was a music box, which was supposed to be a musical version of Dopey. But when the character Chip's role was expanded, the music box idea was scrapped. However the music box can be seen for a brief moment on a table next to Lumière just before the fight between the enchanted objects and the villagers in the Beast's castle.

  • The last phrase of Cogsworth's line "Flowers, chocolates, promises you don't intend to keep... " was ad-libbed by David Ogden Stiers.

  • Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, losing to The Silence of the Lambs (1991). It was, however, the first full length animated feature to win the Golden Globe for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy).

  • Art director Brian McEntee color keyed Belle so that she is the only person in her town who wears blue. This is symbolic of how different she is from everyone else around. Later, she encounters the Beast, another misfit, also wearing blue.

  • The bimbo's hairstyles are supposed to be the hairstyles of three Disney princesses'. Belle, Jasmine and Ariel's.

  • In the French release, Cogsworth's name is Big Ben, after the famous clock in London.

  • When Beast and Gaston are having their life-or-death struggle on the castle, Gaston yells, "Belle is mine!" Originally he was supposed to say, "Time to die!" but the writer changed it to fit Belle back in the scene.

  • Chip is the only object in the movie to mention Belle by her name. All of the other objects refer to her as "mademoiselle," "she," her, "the girl," etc.

  • This was the first Disney animated movie to use a fully developed script prior to animation. In previous films, story was developed through the use of storyboards only, and was further developed during animation. Several previous films had gone way over budget when the animators spent time and effort animating scenes that, it was eventually decided, did not fit the movie, and producers realized that they could save money by having a script written first.

  • The dance between Belle and her Prince in the finale is actually reused animation of the dance between Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip in Sleeping Beauty (1959). The original Sleeping Beauty (1959) pair had been drawn over to become the new Beauty and the Beast (1991) pair, and this was done because they were running out of time during the production of the movie.

  • In the 1930s and again in the 1950s, Walt Disney attempted to adapt "Beauty and the Beast" into a feature but could not come up with a suitable treatment, so the project was shelved. It wasn't until The Little Mermaid (1989) became hugely successful that they decided to try it a third time.

  • The smoke seen during the transformation of the Beast to the Prince is actually real smoke, not animated. It was originally used in The Black Cauldron (1985) and was re-used for Beauty and the Beast (1991).

  • Many of paintings on the walls of the castle are undetailed versions of famous paintings by such artists as Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Goya.

  • It was lyricist Howard Ashman who came up with the idea of turning the enchanted objects into living creatures with unique personalities.

  • Glen Keane, the supervising animator on the Beast, created his own hybrid beast by combining the mane of a lion, the beard and head structure of a buffalo, the tusks and nose bridge of a wild boar, the heavily muscled brow of a gorilla, the legs and tail of a wolf, and the big and bulky body of a bear.

  • Songs take up twenty-five minutes of the film and only five minutes were without any musical score at all.

  • Caricatures of the directors, Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale, can be seen in the scene where Belle is given the book as a gift. As she is leaving the store three men are seen pretending to not look through the window and then they sing, "Look there she goes. The girl who's so peculiar. I wonder if she's feeling well." They are the two men on the outside of the large blonde man.

  • Robby Benson's voice was altered by the growls of real panthers and lions so that it is virtually unrecognizable. This is why near the end when the Beast transforms into the prince his voice changes. His voice is also not changed on the original motion picture soundtrack.

  • The film is dedicated to Howard Ashman, the lyricist, who died before the movie's completion. At the end of the final credits, you can read the dedication: "To our friend Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful."

  • The majority of the sculptures seen in the castle are different earlier versions of the Beast.

  • In the beginning the Beast is more monster than man. He walks on all fours, leaps across whole balconies, and his wardrobe is not complete. At the same time Gaston starts off as a man and slowly becomes more of a monster.

  • When Paige O'Hara was auditioning, a bit of her hair flew in her face and she tucked it back. The animators liked this so they put it in the movie.

  • Tony Jay's brief role as the asylum owner led to him being cast as Judge Claude Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996).

  • The name of Gaston's sidekick, Lefou, pronounces just like the French words meaning "the idiot, "the fool" or "the insane".

  • When Gaston is falling at the very end, there is close-up of his eyes. For a few frames a tiny skull flashes in each of his eyes.


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