Trivia for
Beauty and the Beast (1991) More at IMDbPro »

• Sherri Stoner was used as the model for Belle.
  
  
• "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.
  
  
• 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).
  
  
• The first animated movie to win the Annie Award for Best Animated Film.
  
  
• A song sung by the enchanted objects entitled "Human Again" was cut before production started. The song was later added to the Disney on Ice and theatrical productions and was recorded and animated for the 2001 Imax re-release. It was also added to the special edition released in October 8th 2002, making the movie a bit longer.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• While songwriters are writing the melody to a song they often use dummy lyrics to help with writing the melody. In the song "Gaston" the writers liked the dummy lyrics so much that they used those in the final production.
  
  
• Computer technology was considered for the rooftop fight and the forest chase, but the primitive state of the technology only allowed time to use it for the ballroom scene. Even for that scene, they had a fallback strategy: what they called the "Ice Capades" version, with just a spotlight on the two characters against a black background.
  
  
• In the French release, Cogsworth's name is Big Ben, after the famous clock in London (extra, completely irrelevant, detail for trivia fans: the landmark's real name is "The Clock Tower of the New Palace of Westminster", while Big Ben is actually the name of the large bell that strikes the hours - nevertheless, the clock is seldom referred to by any name other than Big Ben).
  
  
• 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 (1991) 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 second Disney animated feature to use their proprietary CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) system entirely, a digital ink, paint, animation and camera process. The Rescuers Down Under (1990) was the first Disney film to use the system.
  
  
• Angela Lansbury, the voice of Mrs. Potts, thought that another character would be better suited to sing the ballad "Beauty and the Beast". The director asked her to make at least one recording to have for a back up if nothing else worked, and that one recording ended up in the film.
  
  
• The first Disney animated feature to use fully rendered and textured 3-D CGI moving backgrounds in combination with the traditionally animated character animation, a technique that was expanded upon in the Disney short Off His Rockers (1992) and later in Aladdin (1992).
  
  
• The film was previewed at the New York Film Festival in September 1991 in a "Work-In-Progress" format. Approximately 70% of the footage was the final color animation. The other 30% consisted of storyboard reels, rough animation pencil tests, clean-up (final line) animation pencil tests, and computer animation tests of the ballroom sequence. This marked the first time that Disney had done a large-scale preview of an unfinished film.
  
  
• Julie Andrews was considered for the role of Mrs. Potts
  
  
• Among the trophy heads on Gaston's tavern is what appears to be a frog's head, visible in the scene where Gaston spits.
  
  
• 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 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).
  
  
• Linda Woolverton drew her inspiration for the screenplay, not from Jean Cocteau's La belle et la bête (1946), but from Little Women (1933), admitting that there's a lot of Katharine Hepburn in the characterization of Belle.
  
  
• Many of paintings on the walls of the castle are undetailed versions of famous paintings by such artists as Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Goya.
  
  
• Art directors working on the film traveled to the Loire valley in France for inspiration, and studied the great French romantic painters like Fragonard and Boucher to give their settings a European look.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• WILHELM SCREAM: During the raid on the castle, when a villager is thrown through the front doors. (For those looking for it, it's right after Chip's "You guys gotta try this.")
  
  
• Songs take up twenty-five minutes of the film and only five minutes were without any musical score at all.
  
  
• 370 men and women were involved in the film's production of whom, 43 were animators.
  
  
• The movie uses 1,295 painted backgrounds and 120,000 drawings.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• This was the first Disney animated feature to have a pop version of the film's main song play over the end credits.
  
  
• 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."
  
  
• Many scenes were storyboarded but never animated. Those include a scene where Gaston visits the Asylum and a scene where the Beast is seen dragging a carcass of an animal he killed. Both where considered too gruesome for the film and the ideas were dropped.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• Alan Menken composed two different musical scores for the Beast's death scene. The original (which is part of the Transformation piece on the original motion picture soundtrack) was considered too happy for the feeling needed so Alan Menken changed it to the version now heard in the film.
  
  
• Disney was originally going to have Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel in The Little Mermaid (1989) also provide the voice for Belle. However, it was decided that Belle needed a more "European" sounding voice. Howard Ashman remembered working with Paige O'Hara and suggested she try out for the part.
  
  
• All of the dialog spoken by Tony Jay (Monsieur D'Arque) heard in the film was recorded during his audition
  
  
• Schedueling conflicts with 'Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)' forced Patrick Stewart to turn down the role of Cogsworth.
  
  
• The first Disney animation movie to have Spanish dubbing. Until that, all Disney animation movies were sent to Spain with Puerto Rican dubbing.
  
  
• The signs that Maurice comes upon when going to the fair, according to movie commentary, read from top to bottom: Saugus, Newhall, Valencia and Anaheim, all towns in Southern California. The sign just above Saugus reads Ramona, another town in Southern California, although the commentary did not mention it specifically.
  
  
• 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 stained glass window that is seen at the very end of the movie was built in Disneyland after the film's release.
  
  
• The name of Gaston's sidekick, Lefou, pronounces just like the French words meaning "the idiot, "the fool" or "the insane".
  
  
• ‘Beauty and the Beast’ opened on Broadway in 1994 starring Terrence Mann, Susan Egan and Tom Bosley.
  
  
• Beauty and the Beast opened at the Palace Theater on April 18, 1994 and ran for 5461 performances closing on July 29, 2007.
  
  
• [June 2008] Ranked #7 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Animation".
  
  
• Jerry Orbach intended Lumiere's voice to be similar to Maurice Chevalier's, and even pays tribute to him in the middle of the "Be Our Guest" number (right as he says "course by course, one by one..")
  
  
• Almost the entire cast are stars of Broadway musicals (most notably Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach), and Disney intended it that way, hoping that a theatrical backer could finance a future stage version of the film.
  
  
• To date (2008), this is the only animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
  
  
• Disney's 30th animated feature.
  
  
• The stage version of 'Beauty and the Beast' opened at the Palace Theater on April 18, 1994 and ran for 5461 performances, making it the sixth longest running play on Broadway. The Broadway production is based on this film and was nominated for the 1994 Tony Award (New York City) for the Best Musical.
  
  
• Rupert Everett auditioned for the role of Gaston, but was told by the directors he didn't sound arrogant enough. He remembered this when he voiced Prince Charming in Shrek 2 (2004).
  
  
• During the song "Belle" when Belle goes to the bookshop and picks out another book. She describes this book as her favorite "with far off places, daring sword fights, magic spells, and a prince in disguise". The story she describes is Beauty and the Beast (1991).
  
  
• The sugar bowl in Mrs. Potts' tea set is the same sugar bowl from The Sword in the Stone (1963) but with a slight color change
  
  
• The character of Gaston was not in the original fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast. Rather, he was inspired by the antagonist of the 1946 French film, Avenant, who also was in love with Belle and tried to kill the Beast upon learning that she loved him, losing his life in the process. Reportedly, a direct-to-video sequel to the Disney movie was to feature a character named Avenant as the villain, this time as Gaston's revenge-seeking younger brother, but the project was scrapped in favour of "Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas".
  
  
• Though the Beast/Prince is never mentioned by name in the film, it is revealed by the CD-ROM game The D Show that his name is Adam.
  
  
• In the first song, where Belle sings in the town, she sits by a fountain. As she reads the book (described earlier, as an adventure with a prince in disguise. It sounds just like Beauty and the Beast), she flips to a page, with a picture. Look closely, and you will see see that she is in the bottom right, the beast in the middle left, and the prince's castle in the middle.
  
  
• One commercial for Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Lilo & Stitch (2002) started out with Lilo & Stitch flying and leaded into Stitch hanging onto the the chandelier during the famous shot of Belle and the Beast dancing. This does not make Belle very happy. After Belle stops to yell at Stitch the chandelier falls which doesn't make Belle any happier.
  
  

• SPOILER: 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. In the theatrical release, as Gaston plunged to his implied death and his face filled the screen, two frames showed skulls in his eyes. For the VHS and laserdisc release, these frames were altered to remove the skulls from his eyes. However, no such alteration was made for the DVD release. The Disney Company claims that the skulls determined Gaston's fate as fans were unsure whether he died or not at the end.
  
  
• SPOILER: Originally the Beast was supposed to be stabbed by Gaston twice: once in the leg and again in the side, followed by Gaston pushing himself off the tower and laughing maniacally while falling. The filmmakers changed it to just his side to avoid the already dramatic scene becoming too disturbing for children, but Gaston's edited suicide is a probable explanation for his choosing such a dangerous position to kill the Beast despite knowing that he would never win Belle's heart.
  
  

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