July 22 - Alan Menken

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On this day, in 1949, Alan Irwin Menken was born in New York, New York. The son of an actress and a piano playing dentist, Alan showed an aptitude for music at an early age. He learned to play the piano and the violin before moving right on into composing. By the age of nine, his original works were receiving Superior scores from the judges of the New York Federation of Music Clubs Junior Composers Contest. Alan graduated from New Rochelle High School in 1967 and moved on to New York University. He enrolled as a pre-med student, a nod to dear old dad, but graduated in 1971 with a degree in Musicology. From there, his plans went in one of two directions. He was either going to be a composer or a rock star. He got to have his cake and eat it too by becoming a rock star of composing.

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Shortly after his college graduation, Alan joined a musical theater workshop sponsored by Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI). He continued to participate in BMI workshops over the next several years, writing songs for potential musicals and then performing them around town in clubs like The Ballroom and Tramps. To make money during this period, he wrote jingles, accompanied ballet troupes, wrote songs for Sesame Street and was a vocal coach. In 1979, Alan would earn some modest success when he teamed up with an up an coming playwright, Howard Ashman, to create a musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. The show got great reviews but not so great box office receipts. It didn’t matter. The two men worked well together and were destined for bigger things.

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In 1982, Alan and Howard’s next collaboration opened just off-Broadway at the WPA Theater. Based on a 1960 dark comedy film by Roger Corman, Little Shop of Horrors got rave reviews and soon moved to the Orpheum Theater where it ran for five years, smashing the box office record for an off-Broadway production. In 1986, a hit movie version was released starring Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene, and earned Alan and Howard their first Oscar nomination. The success of Little Shop brought the duo the attention of producers at the Walt Disney Studios who were looking for the right people to turn their next animated film into a musical.

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The mission that Disney Alan and Howard in 1987 was a simple one: after years of the company’s animation product being subpar, they needed to help create a Disney musical that could stand up to comparison with Snow White or Cinderella. No pressure though. I’ve read stories about the song writing duo holing up with nothing more than a synthesizer, in one of those buildings in New York where every floor is just dozens of tiny recording studios lined up in a row. Every time the door to their studio opened, the music that spilled out into the hall caused other doors to other studios to open as everyone wanted to know what was going on in there. And that was before a full orchestra and talents of Jodi Benson, Pat Carroll and Samuel E. Wright were added. Needless to say, Alan and Howard did good. The Little Mermaid became the company’s first smash hit in years, due in no small part to its soundtrack. When awards time came around, the boys would earn an Oscar for Best Song (Under the Sea) while Alan picked up a second one for Best Score. The Disney Renaissance had begun and Alan was going to provide a pretty big chunk of the music for it.

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Alan and Howard rolled right on into their next project, another classic fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. You might have thought it would be hard for them to top their work in Mermaid, but they did. Their deft blending of romance and humor, spectacle and intimacy pushed Disney’s 30^th animated feature to a place cartoons had never been before: a nomination for the Best Picture Oscar. The boys also picked up not one but three nominations (and the win) for Best Song (Beauty and the Beast edged out Belle and Be Our Guest) while Alan again received the statue for Best Score. The ceremony would have been a magical evening of true celebration centering on Alan and Howard’s talents except for one thing. Howard wasn’t there to share in it.

During production on Mermaid, Howard had revealed to Alan that he’d been diagnosed as HIV+. As work progressed on Beast, so did Howard’s illness. Part way through production, meetings began to be held at Howard’s home and animators would be shocked as to how quickly AIDS was ravaging his body between sessions. Howard continued to work though, writing and rewriting songs and coaxing better performances out of Paige O’Hara and Robbie Benson, right up to the end of his life. Beast had its first screening for the press on March 10, 1991. Producer Don Hahn visited a barely alive Howard in the hospital to tell him about the incredibly enthusiastic reception. Four days later, he died.

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Work had already begun on the duo’s follow-up to Beast, Aladdin, when Howard passed away. Alan needed a new lyricist to work with (notes were his thing, not words) and he brought in the award winning Tim Rice to finish the songs for the film. Alan again picked up two Oscars that year, Best Song with Tim for A Whole New World and Best Score on his own. It should be noted that A Whole New World also won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year, the only time a Disney song has managed to do that.

Following Aladdin, Alan has collaborated with a number of lyricists, none of whom can hold a candle to Howard in my opinion but all successful none the less. He teamed with Jack Feldman for Newsies, Stephen Schwartz for Pocahontas (picking up two more Oscars), Stephen again for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, David Zippel for Hercules, which was a bit of a throwback to his Little Shop days (not only musically but because he and David had worked together back then, too), Glen Slater for Home on the Range and Tangled and Stephen once again for Enchanted. Alan has also scored some non musical films for Disney as well including Touchstone Pictures' Life With Mikey and the 2006 remake of The Shaggy Dog.

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In recent years, Alan has been quite busy revisiting old projects and adding new material to them. For the Broadway stage he's helped bolster Beauty and the Beast, Newsies, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. A stage version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame became the longest running show ever in Berlin, Germany. Alan has also been (for better or worse; don't get me started) part of the teams that have been turning classic Disney animated films into live action movies. He revised old songs and wrote new ones for the live versions of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.

Outside of Disney (does that even exist anymore?), Alan has written music for a number of shows, several of which have had Broadway runs. His version of A Christmas Carol premiered in 1994 and became an annual event at Madison Square Garden for a decade. He's also written adaptations of Sister Act, A Bronx Tale and Leap of Faith. He is reportedly working on a stage version of Corrina, Corrina and had a reading of a new piece in collaboration with Jack Feldman and Harvey Fierstein called Greetings from Niagra Falls, but that production seems to have stalled.

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For basically writing everything everyone wants to put on their modern Disney playlist, Alan was declared an official Disney Legend in 2001. Not that he's done composing for the company by a long shot. He's currently working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on new music for the live action version of The Little Mermaid. And there's persistent rumors about a sequel to Enchanted (but don't hold your breath on that one). Alan is already at the top of the list of Living People with the Most Oscars with eight, but he's tied for third on the list of all time winners. I wouldn't be surprised if he pulls a couple more out of his little hat as time goes on here. Until then, we send good vibes Alan's way and wish him a happy 70th Birthday!

April 10 - Newsies

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On this day, in 1992, Walt Disney Pictures released a brand new musical, Newsies. Staring a young Christian Bale (and established actors such as Bill Pullman, Ann Margret and Robert Duvall), Newsies is loosely based on the New York City newsboy strike of 1899. With over a dozen songs written by the incomparable Alan Menken and Jack Feldman, this movie, 64 years into the company’s history, would be the first completely live action musical ever filmed by Disney. The film also marked the directorial debut of Kenny Ortega, who, up to this point, had choreographed films like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Dirty Dancing and would later helm Hocus Pocus and the High School Musical series. With its peppy songs and highly talented cast, I’d like to be able to report that Newsies took the box office by storm. It did not. It only had a budget of $15 million and couldn’t even scrape that together. After barely grossing $2.8 million, Newsies limped off the big screen to languish on the dust heap of Hollywood with the rest of the failures. Except that turned out to be another thing it did not do.

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The home video market was a boon to movies in more ways than one. Not only could studios gain extra income on a picture long after theaters were no longer showing it, but films that might not have gotten the attention they deserved the first time around received a second chance at life. Don’t get me wrong, here, a terrible movie on the big screen generally remained terrible at home and people who had the misfortune of renting it said “Well, now we know why it came and went so fast. That’s two bucks we’ll never get back.” But every once in a while, a quirky movie like Clue or an underappreciated historical musical like Newsies came along and home video gave viewers the chance to find plenty to love. A small but rabid cult following began to grow around Newsies (and Clue too, but this post doesn’t concern that gem), looking for a way to honor the object of their affection. It didn’t take them long to figure out what they wanted.

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When Beauty and the Beast made the leap from the big screen to the Broadway stage in 1995, most of the theater world was unprepared for the onslaught of adaptations that was to come. Once The Lion King and Mary Poppins had cemented that kind of move as a solid thing, Disney began looking around for other properties to make the transition. Fansies (as followers of Newsies have become known) had long been campaigning for their beloved movie to join the ranks of the Broadway bound. Finally, Disney agreed to resurrect what they considered to be a flop. They hired Alan Menken and Jack Feldman to write more songs and got Harvey Fierstein to write the book. The talented trio worked their magic and by the time Newsies: The Musical was in previews at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey in 2011, it was already a Tony contender (even though it wouldn’t open on Broadway for several more months.

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Newsies: The Musical ran for three years on Broadway, logging in just over 1,000 performances. It was nominated for eight Tony Awards (winning two) and six Drama Desk Awards (again, winning two). Following the close of the Broadway run, Newsies: The Musical then toured North America, playing another 784 times in 65 cities over two years. A performance in Los Angeles was filmed and shown in theaters for one weekend only in February 2017. Over the four days of limited theatrical release, Newsies: The Musical grossed almost $3.5 million. For those of you that are counting, that’s several hundred thousand more than the original film grossed in its entire run. It’s safe to say that Disney no longer considers their little David and Goliath story a flop (and it only took 25 years to prove them wrong).

March 6 - Stephen Schwartz

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On this day, in 1948, Stephen Lawrence Schwartz was born in New York, New York. Stephen studied piano and composition at Juilliard while taking regular classes at Mineola High School on Long Island. While a student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, he wrote an early version of Pippin that was performed by the school's student run theater group, Scotch'n'Soda. He graduated in 1968, returned to New York City and began a career as a producer for RCA Records. It turned out to not be a terribly long career.

In 1970, Stephen was asked to be the musical director for America's first rock opera, The Survival of St. Joan (it's also America's first medieval rock opera if you're keeping track of that sort of thing and, before you ask, Tommy was British). Starring F. Murray Abraham and the band Smoke Rise, St. Joan had 16 off-Broadway performances before releasing an album, which Steven produced. The following year, he was hired to write new music and lyrics for the quirky retelling of the life of Jesus, Godspell, which had started life as the thesis of another Carnegie Mellon student, John-Michael Tebelak. In 1972, a new version of Pippin made it's Broadway debut, with the same concept as his college version but entirely different songs. Two years later, Stephen wrote the music and lyrics for The Magic Show. At the age of 26, he had three hit shows running simultaneously on Broadway. Not bad for a kid from Long Island (or anywhere else) if you ask me.

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In 1978, Stephen added director to the hats he wears with the musical Working, based on the book by Studs Terkel. His efforts earned him a Drama Desk award and the position of co-director for the television version. Stephen then took a break during the Eighties. He only wrote a children's book called The Perfect Peach, the music and lyrics for the one act children's musical Captain Louie, music for the revue Personals and lyrics for the musical Rags. He clearly wasn't applying himself during the me decade.

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Stephen became part of the Disney family in 1995 when he wrote the lyrics to Alan Menken's music for Pocahontas. It was the first Disney movie that Alan would work on without any input from his long time collaborator Howard Ashman. It worked out. Colors of the Wind won the pair an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Grammy. Stephan and Alan paired together again for The Hunchback of Notre Dame a year later.

In 2000, Stephan was tapped as composer and lyricist for a musical version of Pinocchio called Geppetto that aired on The Wonderful World of Disney. A stage version of Geppetto was then created (and given a new cumbersome name, Disney's My Son Pinocchio: Geppetto's Musical Tale) which of course comes with a Jr. version. Stephen re-teamed with Alan for 2007's Enchanted, three songs of which earned Oscar nominations. His last contribution (so far) to Disneyana is the theme song for the television show Johnny and the Sprites, which aired on the Disney Channel starting in 2005.

Outside of Disney, Stephen wrote music and lyrics for the Dreamwork's production The Prince of Egypt, picking up another Oscar for When You Believe. He also was composer and lyricist on another Broadway show you might have heard of, Wicked, which won three Tony Awards, six Drama Desk Awards and a Grammy. Wicked also pushed Stephen into an elite group: he is one of only two composers to have three Broadway shows run for more than 1,500 performances (the other is Jerry Herman of Hello, Dolly! fame).

In recent years, Stephen has managed to keep himself busy. He's created a stage version of The Prince of Egypt, composed three original shows for Princess Cruise Lines and was rumored to be writing songs for a sequel to Enchanted. His next definite project, slated to come out in 2021, is a film version of Wicked.

November 13 - Beauty and the Beast

On this day, in 1991, Walt Disney Picture's 30th animated feature, Beauty and the Beast, was released at the El Capitan Theatre. The movie had kind of had a premier a month and a half earlier at the New York Film Festival, it just wasn't finished yet. Even the roughly animated sequences were pretty impressive, though. Based on a French fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (try saying that five times fast), Beast is the third film of the Disney Renaissance and considered by some to be the pinnacle of modern Disney animation (I'm biased towards The Lion King for that title, but I do think Beast is a very close second).

When Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs successfully proved that audiences were willing to sit through a feature length cartoon, Walt began looking around for other stories to animate. One of the ones that looked promising was the tale of Beauty and the Beast. The Disney writers wrestled with the story throughout the Thirties and even into the Fifties before deciding it was too difficult to adapt. To complicate matters, French director Jean Cocteau released a now classic version of the story in 1946. Plans for a Disney version ended up being shelved, where they gathered dust for decades.

In the late Eighties, after the making of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Disney had a new animation group in England that needed a new project to work on. Beauty and the Beast was dusted off and put into production as a non-musical. When Jeffrey Katzenberg, then chairman of the studio, saw an early storyboard treatment in 1989, the kindest thing he could say was throw it all away and let's start over. With the success of The Little Mermaid, Jeffrey declared that the new Beast would be a musical and put Alan Menken and Howard Ashman on the job. He wanted the directors of Mermaid, Ron Clements and John Musker, to lead the group again but they were too worn out to accept. Believe it or not, the studio then turned to two guys who had never directed a feature film before, Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. What Kirk and Gary had done was direct a little attraction for Epcot called Cranium Command.

Initially, the studio considered casting Jodi Benson, who helped make The Little Mermaid such a success, as Belle. They quickly decided, however, that this Disney heroine needed to sound more like a grown woman than a teenager and looked at over 500 actresses for the role. Howard Ashman, who was also an executive producer on the film, favored an actress featured on the cast recording of Show Boat and Broadway stalwart Paige O'Hara was given the part. To add some tragedy to the proceedings, Howard learned that he was dying from AIDS and so the pre-production hub moved from London to New York to accommodate his failing health. He would never get to see a finished film as he passed away eight months before Beast's release.

Most of the animation was done at the main studio in California although some was produced at the Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, specifically the "Be Our Guest" scene. Beast is the second movie, after The Rescuers Down Under, that was done using the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS), a digital process of scanning and inking drawings that allowed for greater depth and a more colorful finished product then the xerography technique the studio had used since the early Sixties. The music was mostly recorded with the actors singing at the same the orchestra played, instead of the usual practice of having the voice talent sing to a recording, thus giving Alan and Howard's songs a big boost of energy. And talk about voice talent. In addition to Paige, the cast includes Robby Benson, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, Jo Anne Worley, Tony Jay, Richard White and Disney Legend Angela Lansbury.

Upon its release, Beauty and the Beast was a massive success. It was the first animated film to gross 100 million dollars in North America and grossed over 350 million worldwide. Beast was universally acclaimed by critics and still boasts a rare A+ rating from audiences today. It became the first animated film to win the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy. When Oscar time rolled around, Beast garnered six nominations: three for Best Song ("Beauty and the Beast" would win), Best Original Score (also a win), Best Sound and, another first for an animated movie, Best Picture. It would also win several Grammy Awards, including one for Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson's pop version of "Beauty and the Beast." Beast was added to the National Film Registry in 2002.

Since 1991, Beauty and the Beast has spawned all manner of offspring. A hit Broadway musical opened in 1994 and ran for 13 years. Some version of that show is still running somewhere in the world. There have been several direct-to-video sequels, the most successful of which was The Enchanted Christmas. Multiple shows have appeared over the years in Disney's theme parks, the Florida ones in particular, and there might have been a live action version released at some point. All of which just goes to prove that when you have a tale as old as time, and you give it the respect it deserves, fans will love it for all of time.

October 10 - Jodi Benson

On this day, in 1961, Jodi Marie Marzorati was born in Rockford, Illinois. In 1984, she married actor/singer Ray Benson to become Jodi Benson (no she isn't related to the voice of the Beast, Robbie Benson; that's not his real name). In 1989, she dove under the sea and became a Disney legend.

Like many great talents, Jodi's career began on Broadway. She played Virginia in Marilyn: An American Musical, supposedly the only authorized musical about Marilyn Monroe. Jodi then originated the role of Doria Hudson in 1986's Smile, a musical that takes a look behind the scenes of a fictional beauty pageant. Smile's book and lyrics were written by Howard Ashman, who would go on to write the lyrics for a certain mermaid as well. Another funny thing about Smile, at least for Jodi, is that Doria's big number is called "Disneyland." Of course that wouldn't be funny for a few more years, but you get it.

In 1989, Jodi was part of the cast of Welcome to the Club, a musical about guys in jail for being delinquent on their alimony payments and the wives who wanted their money. You heard that right. And, as you might have guessed, it was a colossal flop. The significance to our story is that Samuel E. Wright was also in that cast and he played Sebastian the Crab in The Little Mermaid. And Jodi was in that movie, too.

In an interview I saw once, Jodi remembered that after she got the part of Ariel in The Little Mermaid, most of her friends kind of ridiculed her for doing a Disney movie. You have to remember that Disney's animation department had been in a dark, dark period for a couple of decades. It hit bottom with The Black Cauldron and, even though it was on the upswing, wasn't yet in a position of being a desirable gig. But Jodi was excited. Reports were coming in from the little studio Howard Ashman and Alan Menken were writing songs in that every time the door opened and their fantastic music would spill out into the hall, doors to other studios would start opening and people were asking "Where is that music coming from?" She probably didn't know that she was involved in her life defining role, but she knew that something special was happening.

When Mermaid premiered in 1989, the world went bonkers for its redheaded heroine. The film won Academy Awards, Golden Globes and Grammys and ushered in a Renaissance for Disney animation. No longer would anyone be ridiculed for wanting to do it. Jodi would work almost exclusively for Disney for years, making appearances at trade shows, theme park attraction openings, basically anywhere the company could get mileage out of having Ariel there. She would continue to voice Ariel in two sequels to Mermaid, a television series, video games, episodes of various other shows (like House of Mouse), and the attraction Mickey's PhilharMagic at the Magic Kingdom. You will be able to hear her as Ariel once again later this year in Ralph Breaks the Internet.

Ariel is the role you probably knew Jodi did. What you may not know is that she is also the voice of Barbie in the Toy Story films. Barbie wasn't in the first Toy Story because Mattel wasn't willing to give Pixar the rights to her. By the second film, Mattel was falling all over themselves to get her in. Jodi provided her perky voice for Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, various shorts and will be doing it again next year in Toy Story 4. She's also been Lady in Lady and the Tramp II , Anita in 101 Dalmations II and Weebo, the robot in Flubber. Jodi made a rare live action appearance in the 2007 movie Enchanted as Sam, the assistant to Patrick Dempsey's character (she was actually one of three actresses who played Disney princesses to appear in that film).

As if all that work for Disney wasn't enough, Jodi has done all sorts of other roles over the years as well. On Broadway, she earned a Tony nomination in 1992 for Crazy For You and was the narrator in a 1998 production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Jodi has performed as a soloist all over the world with orchestras including the Boston Pops and the Tokyo Symphony. Her voice has been heard in Don Bluth's Thumbelina, Dreamworks Joseph: King of Dreams and Universal's Balto series.

In 2011, Jodi, who was already legendary in the Disney universe, was named an official Disney Legend. What will we see from her in the future? I'm sure it will include more Ariel and more Barbie, but hopefully it will also include new and exciting roles we can't even dream of at the moment.

Also on this day, in American history: Earle Dickson