The 1989 Disney movie musical may have saved the Disney corporation, but it also sent important messages about identity to its young audiences
A drag show? Gay rights? Body image issues? Hardly the stuff of Disney animation, but 30 years ago, Disney’s The Little Mermaid tackled these topics and made a courageous statement about identity in Reagan-era America. Moreover, the movie not only saved the company from almost certain death, but allowed Disney to become the international corporate juggernaut we know today.
Without the brave storytellers and desperate animators of The Little Mermaid, moviegoers would have missed out on the new classics of Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994). And without the profits from those films, Disney would not have had the capital to build new parks and resorts, invest in new media ventures, or expand its urban planning program, let alone gobble up Pixar, Marvel, Fox, the Star Wars universe, National Geographic, ESPN, A&E and Hulu—moves entirely unthinkable back in the 1980s, when the corporation was in its darkest hour.
When Walt Disney died suddenly in 1966, his company was left aimless. “The creative atmosphere for which the Company has so long been famous and on which it prides itself has, in my opinion, become stagnant,” wrote Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney in his 1977 resignation letter from Walt Disney Productions (though he retained his seat on the board). “Uncle Walt” had personally overseen almost every project, and without his direction, production slowed and revenue declined. The animation studio kept cranking out films, but they were expensive to make, spent years in production, and lacked the inspiration of earlier “classics.” Features like The Aristocats (1970), Robin Hood (1973) and Pete’s Dragon (1977) failed at the box office and seemed out of place in a new era of gritty Hollywood film noir. Movies were the lifeblood of Disney, and the company was suffering. To make matters worse, Walt Disney World opened in central Florida in 1971 (followed by EPCOT in 1982), costing a fortune but yielding little profit.
By 1984, stock prices sagged, wages were cut, layoffs ensued, and corporate raiders circled. To prevent a hostile takeover, Disney’s Board of Directors, led by Roy E. Disney, brought in a brash young executive from ABC and Paramount: Michael Eisner. Though he had no experience with animation and no personal connection to Disney (according to journalist James Stewart’s searing exposé Disney War, Eisner had not seen a Disney film until adulthood and had never even visited Disneyland), the new CEO was confident he could save the company by cutting costs, eliminating Walt-era traditions, and focusing on television and live-action films. “Eisner was fanatical at keeping costs low to earn a profit,” wrote Stewart.
Disney traditionalists were aghast, but the plan seemed to work. With Eisner at the helm, the studio produced inexpensive hits like Three Men and a Baby (1987), as well as several popular tv shows, including “The Golden Girls” (1985). Eisner also realized the untapped profit potential of the Disney parks, so he authorized new top-tier attractions (like Splash Mountain), created new luxury hotels, and opened Disney-MGM Studios (now Disney’s Hollywood Studios) and Typhoon Lagoon in 1989.
The cash flow returned, and the company became financially viable again. Eisner’s achievement seemed to prove that Disney no longer needed animation. (1989’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, though featuring classic animated characters, was truly more of a live-action film.) Sure, Disney animators produced a couple of modest successes, such as The Great Mouse Detective (1986) and Oliver & Co (1988), but they were far too expensive for the cost-conscious Eisner. Animation, according to the CEO, simply wasn’t worth the money, time, and risk. Thus, he put animation on notice: Find a way to be quick and profitable, or you’re dead. To emphasize the point, Stewart reported, Eisner “banished” animators from their beloved historic Burbank studio (where Walt had once roamed the halls) to a warehouse in Glendale on the other side of Los Angeles. “This might be the beginning of the end,” lamented animator Andreas Deja in a bonus “making of” feature on The Little Mermaid DVD. “The writing is on the wall, we’ve got to prove ourselves,” added animator Glen Keane.
It was time for a Hail Mary pass. Animators knew they had to do something dramatically different to save Walt’s studio from the suits, so they turned to Broadway’s most innovative team: writer-producer-lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken. Fresh off the success of their smash hit Little Shop of Horrors (with its satirical songs and gruesome humor), Ashman and Menken were skeptical about working for Disney, which to many young artists was a conservative old company stuck in the 1950s, symbolic of an intolerant past rather than an expansive future. Nevertheless, the duo agreed to sign on as long as they had complete artistic control and the freedom to explore taboo topics.
At the suggestion of director Ron Clements, studio chiefs decided to pursue the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Little Mermaid,” except with a happy ending and a central villain. (In the original story, the mermaid does not get the prince. Instead, she faces a variety of antagonists and ends up committing suicide.) Ashman got right to work, transforming the depressing 19th-century yarn into a dynamic Broadway spectacle.
In classic Disney animated features of old, plot was advanced through dialogue, and songs were incidental. For instance, in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the song “Whistle While you Work” does nothing to move the plot forward. Ashman and Menken approached the film’s book as they would a Broadway musical, using songs to impart critical plot points and character development. Music tells the audience everything they need to know about Ariel: The song “Part of Your World,” for instance, is a classic example of the “I Want” trope of American musical theater. “They approached it like a Broadway musical,” recalled Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel, in the DVD documentary. “It is something totally different. The characters actually run out of words, can’t express themselves anymore, and it has to come out in song.”
Jeffrey Katzenberg, former chairman of the studio, added, “I don’t know where the knowledge came from, [and] I don’t know how it came to be, but man, [Ashman] just understood it.”
Ashman, like young Walt Disney, oversaw every aspect of the creative process. He invented the characters, defined their personalities, and coached the voice actors on their performances. “He was brilliant,” remembered Pat Carroll (the voice of Ursula), in the documentary, of the time when Ashman enacted “Poor Unfortunate Souls.” “I watched every body move of his, I watched everything, I watched his face, I watched his hands, I ate him up!”