A yellow ballgown, a sweeping ballroom and a singing teapot helped make this Disney romance a favourite across generations. Its music still brings the memories back.
That ballroom scene still has the power to stop you mid-channel-surf. As Belle and the Beast begin their waltz, Angela Lansbury’s voice supplies the warmth that makes an extraordinary setting feel intimate.
On November 13, 1991, Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast opened in New York, ahead of its wider US release on November 22.
Paige O’Hara voiced the book-loving Belle, with Robby Benson as the Beast and Lansbury as Mrs Potts. The heroine wanted more than marriage to the village’s most eligible bachelor, Gaston. Her curiosity and courage drove the story.
For parents who took children to the cinema, or grandparents who later watched the video on repeat, the songs became part of family life. Alan Menken and Howard Ashman supplied Be Our Guest and the tender title song.
The film became the first animated feature nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. It also won for its original score and title song at the 1992 ceremon.
November 13 also belongs to another Disney experiment. Fantasia premiered at New York’s Broadway Theatre in 1940, pairing animation with classical music. Mickey Mouse’s disastrous attempt to control enchanted broomsticks in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice became its best-known sequence. The film used Fantasound, an early stereo system requiring specially equipped cinemas – an ambitious undertaking long before surround sound became familiar to moviegoers.
On November 13, 1956, the US Supreme Court affirmed a ruling that racial segregation on Montgomery’s buses was unconstitutional. The decision in Browder v. Gayle was a major victory during the bus boycott associated with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Implementation took longer: the boycott ended in December, and integrated bus services began on December 21.
Whoopi Goldberg turns 71. Her roles in Ghost and Sister Act remain audience favourites.
Garry Marshall would have turned 92. He created Happy Days and directed Pretty Woman.
Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island, would have turned 176.
Do you remember?
Did you first watch Beauty and the Beast at the cinema with your children, or at home with your grandchildren?
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