The Beast

"Do you think you could grow a beard?" Glen Keane had the time of his life animating the transformation of The Beast but still wished that The Beast would have stayed The Beast. As his idea couldn't be, Keane proposed Belle would say the beard line at the end of the movie. Maybe too much for kids but it would have gave the movie a spicy hint.

The Beauty and the Beast had already been on Walt Disney's radar but, apparently, it was a tricky and difficult thing to adapt as Joe Grant (strong man at Disney) said years later when doing the new version.

The team went to the Loire Valley in France to surround themselves of fairytale vibes and take inspiration from its villages and castles being the winner the castle of Chambord as the home of our dear Beast.

For The Beast Glen Keane did some research at the zoo to study different animals and looked back to the 19th century fairytale illustration for what to do and what not. The Beast had born as a result of the energies and aesthetics of all these wild animals with human eyes and gorilla brows to give him the mirror of his tormented soul and mane of a lion, wolf legs and tail, boar tusks, bear body and... did they really draw him with a mandril rainbow butt?!?

"Beast actually has a rainbow bum but nobody knows that but Belle." Glen Keane, The Beast Animator

It was worth the effort, the oscarized musical movie captivated kids and grown ups and still does.

But it wouldn't be fair to close this post without a deserved mention to Howard Elliot Ashman, "the man who gave a Mermaid her voice and a beast his soul". He wove the story forever through his songs and was a fundamental pilar in this movie and some others. Sadly he died of Aids after The Beauty and The Beast but at least he passed away knowing the enormous success of the movie in which he he had put so effort and probably presaging that his songs would be sung forever.

by The Barbiest