May 10 - Paige O'Hara

On this day, in 1956, Donna Paige Helmintoller was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She began taking acting classes at the ripe old age of four and performed in shows with the Fort Lauderdale Children's Theater throughout her childhood. Interestingly, it wasn't until she was almost twelve that she developed a need to add singing to her repertoire, choosing to go to Parkway Middle School of the Arts to further that goal. Paige also began drawing and painting at an early age. One of her first voice coaches, perhaps in an attempt to politely give their opinion of their new student, actually encouraged her to forget acting and take up painting. Luckily, Paige ignored that coach's advice and soldiered on as a performing artist. Not that she ever abandoned canvas and brushes, she just made visual arts her fallback position. She supported herself in the lean early years of her career by selling art pieces on the streets of New York.

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Paige's Broadway career (using the stage name Paige O'Hara, Helmintoller being a bit of a mouthful) began in 1983 in a revival of Jerome Kern’s classic musical, Showboat. She played Ellie May Chipley, a performer on the eponymous boat, under the watchful eye of Cap’n Andy, played in this production by the late, great Donald O’Connor. The revival lasted for 73 performances, but Paige’s relationship with Ellie continued on. She reprised the role for a 1989 production for Houston’s Grand Opera. At the same time, she was invited to sing Ellie for a 1988 studio cast album, which, for the first time, contained the show’s entire score and uncensored 1927 lyrics (the recording was nominated for a Grammy Award). After the Houston show closed, it travelled overseas to Cairo, Egypt and Paige went with it, becoming an international star in the process.

Shortly after returning the states, Paige read about a new animated film the Walt Disney Company was making based on the French fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. As a longtime fan of Disney movies, she decided to audition for it. Because of the success of The Little Mermaid and the full onslaught of the beginning of the Disney Renaissance, so did 500 other women. Paige credits her casting with the fact that lyricist Howard Ashman loved her in the recent Showboat recording. Beast co-director Kirk Wise says it was because she sounded a little like Judy Garland (whom they had loosely modeled Belle after) and would be able to make their heroine sound like a woman instead of a girl. Either way, Paige was chosen over everyone else (including Mermaid’s Jodi Benson, who was briefly considered) and began the role she would do almost continuously for the next two decades.

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With each passing year, Paige became more and more closely associated with the intelligent, quirky heroine who manages to tame a beast. She played Belle in several direct-to-video movies, including The Enchanted Christmas, which sold over 7.6 million copies when it was released. Add in at least five video games, all sorts of television shows, theme park attractions and parades and it’s no wonder Paige doesn’t mind the fact that so many fans only know her as the voice of Belle. In 2011, citing the fact that her voice had changed over the years more than the company would have liked, Disney replaced Paige as the woman behind the Beauty. They did soften the blow by declaring her an official Disney Legend at the same time, but it isn’t a pain free process to lose out on a role like Belle to someone twenty years your junior, no matter how talented they may be. The good news is that Paige doesn’t harbor any grudges. Not only has she joined the Disney Fine Art group, creating a series of paintings known as Belles by Belle, but she got to reprise the role itself for last year’s Ralph Breaks the Internet. There has also been exactly one time that you might have actually seen Paige in a Disney movie. She is one of three Disney Princesses (Mermaid’s Jodi Benson and Pocahontas’ Judy Kuhn are the other two) who make cameo’s in 2007’s Enchanted. Paige is the overly dramatic actress on a soap opera Prince Edward watches in his hotel room when he first gets to New York City.

Image courtesy lvwomanmagazine.com

Outside of Disney and Showboat, Paige has made all sorts of appearances. She replaced Donna Murphy as Miss Alice Nutmeg in the 1985 Broadway production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood and played Alice in the 1988 touring company. She played Ado Annie in a 1986 tour of Oklahoma!, did another stint on Broadway as Fantine in Les Miserables in 1995 and wowed audiences in Las Vegas in Menopause the Musical. She again went international as Nellie in an Australian production of South Pacific. In 2011, her career came full circle (so to speak) when she actually played Judy Garland in a biographical musical of the late legend in Tempe, Arizona. And she was reunited with Robby Benson, her Beast co-star, when she fell in love with him again during the second season of the animated series The Legend of Prince Valiant, which ran on the Family Channel in the early Nineties (prior to being owned by Disney).

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These days, Paige travels around the world making appearances that sometimes showcase her art (she was at the Epcot Festival of the Arts for several days recently), sometimes showcase her singing (she’s done concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl), and sometimes are just to meet her fans (she’ll be at GALAXYCON in Richmond, Virginia in a couple of weeks). No matter what she’s doing, we’re glad she developed all of her talents and look forward to seeing where she’ll pop up as our favorite braniac Princess next. Happy 63^rd birthday, Paige!