The Disney prince who gave the Little Mermaid a voice
A new film salutes Howard Ashman, whose early death cut short a brilliant career. By Adam White
Howard Ashman is the Disney prince few have heard of. A man whose fingerprints were all over the classic animated films that formed the Mouse House’s early-nineties renaissance, he was immortalised in a single on-screen dedication. It is one that fades in at the climax to 1991’s Beauty and the Beast, and lands with a bittersweet thud. “To our friend, Howard,” it read, “who gave a mermaid her voice, and a beast his soul.”
Ashman was one of Disney’s most prolific songwriters, the lyricist behind Under the Sea, Be Our Guest and Prince Ali, and its first gay hero, . This week, he is the subject of a Disney+ documentary, Howard, that salutes his legacy. Through archive footage, unearthed demo tapes and interviews, it presents him as a staggering talent with an ability to craft gorgeous melodies and playful, tongue-twisting lyrics. The Aids crisis, which claimed him along with so many others, serves as its backdrop. Ashman was just one of a generation of gay artists producing work until the very end of their lives.
Ashman’s earliest high-profile work involved writing the book and lyrics for the original off-offbroadway run of Little Shop of Horrors, which he also directed. His good friend Alan Menken composed the music – it was a division of labour between both men that would last for the rest of Ashman’s life.
In the wake of Little Shop, Ashman and Menken were invited to collaborate with Disney on their forthcoming musicals. One was The Little Mermaid, with Ashman tasked with shaping the world surrounding plucky heroine Ariel. Ashman infused the film with colour and camp, modelling the flamboyant villain Ursula first on Joan Collins’s
Dynasty alter ego Alexis Carrington, and then the drag artist Divine.
While Ashman’s professional career flourished, he would experience personal tragedy. Like many gay men, he had spent the Eighties watching friends and loved ones succumbing to Aids. Just as he found love with an architect named Bill Lauch, he was himself diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. The pair made the choice to keep the diagnosis a secret, terrified that he would spark concern among friends or lose work. “Howard said to me, ‘I didn’t want to tell you, because I didn’t know how Disney would react’,” recalls Peter Schneider, the former president of Disney Animation, in the new documentary. “‘Here I am, a gay man, and I’m working on this movie for kids, and I didn’t want to be fired.’”
The Little Mermaid was released in 1989 to raves, with Under the Sea winning the Oscar for Best Original Song. After collecting their trophies, Ashman confided in Menken that they needed to have a serious talk upon their return to New York. “I went to his house and I had this impending feeling of dread,” Menken said in 1991. “Then the world kind of crumbled.”
Despite his diagnosis, Ashman threw himself into music. He began writing lyrics for Aladdin, a project he had first brought to Disney in the late Eighties, including Arabian Nights and Friend Like Me (Tim Rice would finish them off, including those for A Whole New World, following Ashman’s death). He was also commissioned to work on Beauty and the Beast, which had previously undergone years of creative turmoil.
In Howard, different voices argue for and against the idea that Ashman’s worsening health contributed to his musical vision, or that his output in his final months reflected his diagnosis. His sister, for one, calls such claims “a bunch of hooey”.
Producer Thomas Schumacher argues differently. A popular reading of Beauty and the Beast is that it serves as an Aids allegory, with the Beast a metaphor for the ravages of the disease: he is a cursed hero, gradually weakened in tandem with an increasingly wilting rose, and shunned by a society that fails to understand his plight. “You can never take Beauty and the Beast away from the Aids epidemic because it’s a movie that speaks to its time,” Schumacher says in the film. “This is an Aids metaphor done at a time when I don’t know if the creators were aware they were doing it.”
Ashman died in March 1991, eight months before the film’s release, aged just 40. He never got to see his work in its completed form, but the film went on to receive universal acclaim – it was the first animated film to ever receive a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Ashman also won his second Oscar, for co-writing the film’s main theme. Lauch collected it on his behalf.
“This is the first Academy Award given to someone we’ve lost to Aids,” Lauch said. “For Howard, I thank you.”