#BornThisDay : Playwright / Lyricist, Howard Ashman

May 17, 1950 – Howard Ashman:

“I want adventure in the great wide somewhere.
I want it more than I can tell.
And for once it might be grand
To have someone understand
I want so much more than they’ve got planned…”

I spent my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood as grade A+ berserk Musical Theatre fanatic, living and breathing the musicals, collecting the original cast albums for even the most obscure shows, yet I mostly got off that Musical Theatre ride in the early 1990s. I was less than enchanted with the offerings. I didn’t move easily into the Cats–Miss Saigon–Phantom Of The Opera era of Broadway musicals. I found more enjoyment in appearing on stage in a musical than listening to one on my stereo. My own tastes moved towards Elvis Costello, The Police and The Clash.

The exception was Little Shop Of Horrors from 1982. I listened to this original cast album until the LP was worn through. I knew every song from the score, and I was convinced that I could play any of the roles. I always wanted to do the tune Somewhere That’s Green in my own act, but I never got the chance to work it up. It remains a favorite musical of mine, certainly in my Top Five.

Playwright, lyricist and director Howard Ashman first worked with creative partner Alan Menken on a 1979 musical adapted from Kurt Vonnegut‘s novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Menken had been working as an accompanist for singers and writing songs for Sesame Street when the two men met at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, where their classmates included Maury Yeston (Nine, Grand Hotel) and Ed Kleban (A Chorus Line).

Their second collaboration was Little Shop Of Horrors with Ashman as director, lyricist, and librettist. It was produced by Ashman’s own WPA Theatre. Ashman left the team only once, as director, lyricist and book writer for the 1986 Broadway musical, Smile, with music by the great Marvin Hamlisch.

At #BornThisDay, we honor lyricists and Ashman is one of the best. Ashman collaborated with his artistic partner Menken on three notable animated features for Disney Studios with Ashman writing the words and Menken composing the scores.

In early 1989, Disney Studios was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. New CEO Michael Eisner had threatened to shut down the famed animation unit unless The Little Mermaid, its autumn 1989 release, turned a profit. David Geffen, who had produced the original Off-Broadway run of Little Shop Of Horrors, had brought the Menken/Ashman team to Disney in hopes of making a hit musical out of The Little Mermaid, originally conceived as a non-musical. It proved to be a hit, thrilling little girls, and making $235 million worldwide on a $25 million budget.

The Little Mermaid saved the studio and brought new life into the art of Disney animated films, marking the start of the era the “Disney Renaissance. The film won two Academy Awards: Best Original Score and Best Original Song for Under The Sea.

Just days after he won the Oscar for Under The Sea, Ashman confided to Menken that he had HIV/AIDS. His illness made him weaker each day, but Ashman never stopped writing the tunes. He managed to produce the witty and warm lyrics for another Disney animated film Beauty And The Beast, and turned out even more songs for a third Disney animated musical, Aladdin.

Disney never leaves a property alone and The Little Mermaid‘s success led to a direct-to-video sequel in 2000, and a prequel in 2008. The first film was adapted into a stage musical in 2008, and there is an unnecessary live-action film adaptation, directed by Rob Marshall, scheduled for release in 2023.

Beauty And The Beast received widespread critical acclaim and became the first animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film was nominated for six Oscars, winning for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for its title song. The film grossed $331 million worldwide and became the first animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 1994, Beauty And The Beast became Disney’s first, but not the last, animated film to be adapted into a Broadway musical. It ran until 2007.

A live-action film of Beauty And The Beast (2017) offered something that the original animated film did not: Josh Gad’s fey portrayal of LeFou, the sidekick to the film’s bully character Gaston, played by gay actor Luke Evans. As soon as the trailer was released and some of the footage was released, film fans were abuzz with the notion that Disney was providing its first obviously gay main character. In the Spring 2018 issue of Attitude magazine, the film’s gay director Bill Condon confirmed that LeFou is, indeed, intended to be seen as gay. Condon suggested that Gad’s interpretation is an homage to Ashman.

Disney and the studio’s relationship with the LGBTQ community has been making news this year, with Right Wingers clutching their pearls over the studio’s reluctant response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation.

Disney already had a history of presenting ambiguously gay characters. The studio won the Oscar for Best Animated Short for Ferdinand The Bull (2017) about a bull who doesn’t conform to expectations of masculinity; The Reluctant Dragon (1941) with a sissy fire-breathing main character; Peter Pan (1953), portrayed Captain Hook as a prissy dandy who is obsessed with boys. And Shere Khan, the villain in The Jungle Book (1967) seems especially queer. The Lion King (1994) has the characters Timon and Pumba as an obviously a male couple, plus John Water‘s muse Divine served as the inspiration for Ursula in The Little Mermaid.

Condon said:

“LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston, and on another day wants to kiss Gaston. He’s confused about what he wants. It’s somebody who’s just realizing that he has these feelings. And Josh Gad makes something really subtle and delicious out of it.”

Ashman had decided that Disney’s version of Jean Cocteau’s film of Beauty And The Beast (1946) served as a parable for the virus that was ravaging his body as he and Menken started working on their film. Forces beyond his control turned the prince into a grotesque beast. Ashman’s lyrics: “We don’t like what we don’t understand / In fact it scares us / And this monster is mysterious at least” are a nod to paranoia surrounding HIV/AIDS during Ronald Reagan’s administration.

Menken:

“The period, from 1981 through 1995, was like living through a war, with unthinkable casualties and no end in sight. Something was wrong in the universe. I felt it strongly in my gut. It cropped up in dreams, before I knew what was to come. And then the avalanche hit. Directors, writers, producers, designers, choreographers, musicians. And those of us who knew and loved Howard said to ourselves ‘But, please, not Howard’ And he would reassure us all that he was fine, and we all happily believed him.”

Condon:

“Specifically, for Ashman, it was a metaphor for AIDS. He was cursed, and this curse had brought sorrow on all those people who loved him, and maybe there was a chance for a miracle—and a way for the curse to be lifted. It was a very concrete thing that he was doing.”

Ashman first fell in love with musicals because of Disney, when his grandmother took him to see Lady And The Tramp (1956). The financial success of The Little Mermaid ended up saving Disney Studios, but the plague had already found Ashman. Because of his failing health, Ashman decided to stay near his doctors in his hometown of Fishkill, 60 miles away from New York City, and the rest of the creative team had to be flown in to work. Don Hahn, Beauty And The Beast’s producer wrote:

“We weren’t quite sure why we were doing it. We thought, ‘Well maybe Howard’s just being a diva and he just won an Oscar, so let’s go out to work with him.’”

Ashman wrote so many of much-loved lyrics while he was dying in his home, attended by a private nurse paid for by Disney. The end credits of Beauty And The Beast pay homage to his legacy: