After the screening, David Geffen, Katzenberg, and Schneider rushed to St. Vincent’s Hospital to brief Ashman. The hospital, in New York’s Greenwich Village, had become the leading AIDS treatment center in the country. But treatment consisted mostly of trying to ease the collapse of the body’s immune system and the pain of debilitating afflictions. There was no cure and as yet no effective treatment. St. Vincent’s facilities were all but overwhelmed by the epidemic, which had filled its wards with gay men of all ages and from all walks of life. Ashman had entered the hospital the previous December, but had spent Christmas at his home with Lauch and family members. He had kept working even as his health deteriorated. He and Menken resumed work on the Aladdin project, and most of the score was finished. Now he had returned to the hospital.
Word that three powerful Hollywood executives had come to see Ashman rippled through the ward. Ashman lay in his bed, blind and frail. He had trouble breathing and could no longer speak. Geffen knelt by the bed and took Ashman’s hand. “You’re going to recover,” he said. “This is going to be cured. A miracle will happen. You have to believe, just as you have inspired so many people to believe in magical things. You must never give up. And I want you to know that you are surrounded by people who love you.” They couldn’t be sure that Ashman heard or understood the words, but his eyes filled with tears.
A week later, Ashman died. He never saw the finished print of Beauty and the Beast.
Lauch, Ashman’s partner, recalls that “It was such a satisfying time for Howard, working on those films. He felt like he’d lucked into a format that fit him best. He loved the theater but was sometimes frustrated by it, but here this film company indulged him. And the timing was perfect because he was just hitting his stride. He was really just getting started, and he was grateful.”
Katzenberg was devastated by Ashman’s death. Since discovering the Disney archives, he’d felt Walt’s presence, as though he were an angel watching over the rebirth of animation. He felt that Ashman had joined Walt as a guiding spirit. Katzenberg prayed that he’d find someone to replace him. He later arranged an auction at Sotheby’s of original art from Beauty and the Beast. Disney donated the proceeds to the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, in honor of Ashman.
Ashman’s spirit seemed to hover over the wrap party for Beauty and the Beast, held in October at The El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. Katzenberg made sure to invite Lauch and Ashman’s mother, though Lauch could not go. Everyone who’d worked on the film gathered at the historic theater, restored by Disney, for the first screening of the finished film. It had deliberately been kept under wraps during the previous weeks to prevent premature gossip and word of mouth. But after the still-unfinished Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film to open the prestigious New York Film Festival in September, and was greeted with thunderous applause from a sophisticated, adult audience, everyone at Disney believed they had a potential hit.
Before the film rolled, Roy and the director spoke, lavishing praise on the creative team, especially Ashman and Menken. Then Eisner took the stage to announce that “I decided today to build a new animation studio on the lot.” An older building would be torn down to make way for a lavish new building to be designed by Robert Stern. Wild cheering broke out among the animators. They were jubilant. Just a few years ago they’d feared for their jobs. Now they would be returning in triumph from their exile in Glendale.
Peter Schneider had been leading a search for new space for the animation division, and was close to leasing a building being vacated by Lawry’s restaurant chain about five miles down the freeway from Burbank. Or so he thought. Katzenberg looked stunned and angry. It was obvious to all that Eisner had told him nothing of any plans for a new building.
Once the excitement subsided, Beauty and the Beast unfolded on screen. Several of the musical numbers were interrupted by applause, and the movie earned a standing ovation. The mood was euphoric at the party afterward at the Sheraton hotel.
The Eisners and the Disneys had not stayed for the screening but left early to have dinner together at the Sheraton before the party, leaving Katzenberg behind. During the meal, Eisner gloated over how he’d upstaged Katzenberg with the announcement—or so reported two agents who overheard the conversation from the next table.
A month later, Beauty and the Beast opened in theaters to rapturous reviews. Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times, “Two years ago Walt Disney Pictures reinvented the animated feature, not only with an eye towards pleasing children but also with an older, savvier audience in mind. Disney truly bridged the generation gap with ‘The Little Mermaid,’ bringing the genre new sophistication without sacrificing any of the delight…. Lightning has definitely struck twice. With ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ a tender, seamless and even more ambitious film than its predecessor, Disney has done something no one has done before: combine the latest computer animation techniques with the best of Broadway. Here, in the guise of furthering a children’s fable, is the brand of witty, soaring musical score that is now virtually extinct on the stage…. By far the songwriters’ biggest triumph is the title song, which becomes even more impressive in view of the not-very-promising assignment to create a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ theme song. But the result is a glorious ballad, as both a top-40 style duet heard over the closing credits and a sweet, lilting solo sung by Miss [Angela] Lansbury during the film’s most meltingly lovely scene. For the latter, which also shows off the film’s dynamic use of computer-generated animation, the viewer would be well advised to bring a hanky. And Mr. Menken should make room on the shelf where he keeps his Oscars.”
Times critic Frank Rich, subsequently reviewing the year in arts, added that “The best Broadway musical score of 1991 was that written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman for the Disney animated movie ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ Mr. Ashman, who died of AIDS this year, and Mr. Menken were frequent collaborators off-Broadway but had never worked as a team on a Broadway musical.” Eisner himself, in his 1991 letter to shareholders, wrote that “It is amazing how a single creative act can change everything…. I know ‘Snow White’ did it for Walt. Well, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is doing it for us…. ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is one of the great movies of all time (he said shamelessly). And it will be around forever.”
Beauty and the Beast earned $145 million at the box office, making it the third-highest grossing film of the year (Terminator 2: Judgment Day was the leader). The Times reported that at some screenings adults outnumbered children by a ratio of ten to one. It sold more than 22 million videocassettes, more than doubling the sales of Little Mermaid. Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture, and it won two Academy Awards—for Best Original Song and Best Original Score. Katzenberg had arranged with the Academy for Lauch to accept the award on Ashman’s behalf. (The creepy thriller The Silence of the Lambs won for Best Picture.)
Beauty and the Beast also won a special award for technical achievement, and in their acceptance speech, engineers Lem Davis, Mark Kimball, Randy Cartwright, and Dave Wolf thanked Roy Disney, who had supported their early conviction that technology could transform animation.
Galvanized in part by Frank Rich’s comment in the Times, Katzenberg urged Eisner to capitalize on Beauty and the Beast’s commercial success and remarkable score to mount it as a Broadway musical. Katzenberg had been badgering Eisner to produce something on Broadway, and the company had made a few modest investments in other shows. But Eisner had resisted. “We don’t need to soothe our vanity by becoming Broadway producers,” he told Katzenberg, suggesting that it was mostly Katzenberg’s ego that was driving the idea.
As he did so often, Katzenberg made his case to Wells, who got Eisner to reconsider, on several conditions: The show had to be done by Disney alone, so it retained full creative control, and Eisner wanted to use people already associated with Disney, steeped in the Disney culture. As Eisner liked to point out, the theme parks already produced more live shows than all of
Broadway.
And there was another condition: Eisner himself had to be involved. “I’ll only do this if we do this together,” he insisted to Katzenberg. Katzenberg didn’t understand why he couldn’t just go ahead on his own. The Broadway show was budgeted at just $34 million, which included the cost of renovating the theater, no more than the cost of a typical feature film. But as the production evolved, Eisner went to absurd lengths, in Katzenberg’s view. Rehearsals for the show were being held in Houston, and Katzenberg flew down almost every week. But Eisner forbade Katzenberg to deliver his production notes directly to the cast, insisting he review them first. Katzenberg largely ignored the edict.
As the show developed, Katzenberg made sure to include Ashman’s partner in the planning. Lauch met the director, Robert Jess Roth, and he was especially pleased that Katzenberg restored “Human Again,” the Ashman/ Menken waltz that had been cut from the film version. He knew Ashman would have been thrilled.
On one of his flights to Houston, Katzenberg was reading a script when he suddenly stopped and turned to Thomas Schumacher, his deputy in animation, who had been enlisted to watch a preview. “Why doesn’t Roy like me?” Katzenberg asked. Schumacher wondered what to say. He knew that neither Roy nor most of the animators liked Katzenberg. He decided to speak candidly.
“You dominate,” he said. “You showboat. You take all the credit.”
Later, Katzenberg asked Schumacher to write down a list of Roy’s problems with him. Schumacher’s list included rudeness, arrogance, ignoring the artists’ concerns, being dismissive of Roy’s suggestions, showing no interest in Fantasia. When Katzenberg read it, he nodded. “I get that,” he said.
Just a year after the spectacular success of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin opened to even greater commercial success. At David Geffen’s suggestion, Katzenberg had dispatched Schneider to recruit Tim Rice (lyricist for Jesus Christ Superstar) to pick up where Ashman had left off. He and Menken had completed the score, and Robin Williams, grateful for the career boost he’d gotten from Dead Poets, portrayed the genie for a scale wage of less than $500 a day in a deal brokered by Michael Ovitz. Critics loved Williams as the genie: “Williams and animation were born for one another” (Roger Ebert); a “dizzying, elastic miracle” (Janet Maslin). The film grossed an astounding $502 million worldwide, the highest grossing film of the year. Aladdin again won Academy Awards for Best Song and Best Score, as well as five Grammys, including Song of the Year for Ashman and Menken’s “A Whole New World.”
Thanks in large part to animation, the Walt Disney Company reported record profit of $1.4 billion in 1992, a 31 percent increase from the prior year. Filmed entertainment had revenues of $3.1 billion and an operating income of more than $500 million, a 60 percent rise. The lustrous financial results obscured the fact that for the first time since taking the helm eight years earlier, Eisner’s and Wells’s judgment had faltered. All of the profit in filmed entertainment came from animation, since the live-action studios actually lost money. In his annual letter to shareholders, Eisner glossed over mounting problems at Euro Disney. “Disneyland was too expensive,” he wrote. “Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom opened and the company’s stock fell by half (it recovered quickly, I might add). Tokyo Disneyland threatened the very existence of the Oriental Land Company. And Epcot Center was the mother of all expensive parks. But, like all good fairy tales, the company not only survived, but it is living happily ever after.”
Disney’s annual report that year also disclosed that Eisner and Wells had exercised stock options on 6.6 million shares and then sold 5.1 million of them. The company attributed the sales to proposed tax legislation that would have eliminated corporate tax breaks on compensation over $1 million; Disney said the company saved $90 million in corporate taxes by having the executives exercise their options before the end of 1992. Of course, the timing was fortuitous, since Eisner and Wells were aware of the dire state of the live-action slate, and the mounting problems at Euro Disney. Eisner realized $197 million on the sale, Wells $60.3 million. Combined with his annual compensation, Eisner earned well over $200 million, again placing him far ahead of any other corporate executive in America. (Sandy Weill, then chairman of Travelers Group, was a distant second at $52.8 million.) Although Eisner vaulted that year onto the Forbes magazine list of the four hundred richest Americans, criticism was muted. After all, Disney’s market capitalization—and its stock price—had jumped more than tenfold, from $2 billion in 1984 to $22 billion just eight years later.
Nor was Disney’s and Eisner’s achievement simply financial. In Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, Disney seemed to have conjured up the magic it so often talked about, producing deeply moving, critically acclaimed yet accessible films likely to become enduring classics. As Eisner had written while still at Paramount, “if we make entertaining movies, at times we will reliably make history, art, a statement, or all three. We may even win awards.” With Roy as vice chairman in charge of animation, Katzenberg the de facto chief executive, and a remarkable team of talented producers, composers, lyricists, and artists, Disney animation had become something like a symphony orchestra, finely tuned, perfectly balanced, and playing at the peak of its virtuosity.
Eisner made that year’s letter to shareholders a tribute to animation. “Your company has nothing less than the most talented, inventive, creative, original, resourceful and brilliant people working in animation,” he wrote. “I probably sound like the proud parent who indulgently shows off his children, even if they are decidedly not perfect. But ‘The Little Mermaid’in 1990 and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ in 1992 were perfect children, conceived in love, four years in gestation, birthed comfortably and getting better with age.” Noting that June 1993 would mark the hundredth birthday of Roy’s father, Roy O., Eisner continued that “With all that Roy Sr. gave to this company, perhaps his number one legacy to our company is his son, our Roy, who did nothing less than save the company in 1984—with the help of Stanley Gold, Roy’s partner and friend, from the outside, and Ray Watson, the chairman of the company, from the inside.”
Roy, Eisner insisted, deserved the lion’s share of credit for the astounding success of animation. “The common wisdom was that drawing a movie frame was archaic and too expensive. But Roy bought none of that,” which shows “how insightful and downright gutsy Roy was to insist way back in 1984 that we pour major resources into what most people thought was a moribund, money-losing enterprise that would only be relegated to kids’ matinees. Roy understood that animation, done right, was magic. And magic is the essence of Disney.” Katzenberg warranted only fleeting mention: “One of his major responsibilities was to work with Roy to restore Disney’s lost luster in animation.
“We should always remember that we have Roy to thank,” Eisner concluded.
Five
One afternoon in late 1991, Eisner called Steve Burke, the young head of the Disney stores. “I’m going to St. Louis. Come along, and we’ll visit some stores.” Once on the Disney plane, Eisner asked Burke what he’d like to do next.
“I’m really happy doing the stores,” Burke said. But Eisner persisted.
“After the Disney stores what do you want to do?”
“Gosh,” Burke said. “My dream job would be to run a theme park.”
Eisner grabbed the phone and called Wells. “He said ‘theme parks,’ ” Eisner said. “I told you he’d say theme parks.”
Eisner hung up and turned to Burke. “We want you to run Disneyland.”
Burke was thrilled. He started haunting the park with his wife and kids, developing ideas. But months passed, and nothing happened. Finally Wells called to tell him that Dick Nunis had been cool to the idea of naming someone from outside the parks division with no theme park experience. Instead, they wanted him to help run Euro Disney, which was scheduled to open in April 1992, working closely with the French resort’s new head, Philippe Bourguignon. Burke didn’t really want to move his family to France, but he agreed.
Wells promised to bring him back to the United States in a few years.
When Burke met with Bourguignon, he said, “Steve, we’re about to lose $500 million.” Burke was stunned. Neither Eisner nor Wells had given him any hint. He couldn’t believe it. “Let me look at the numbers over the weekend,” he said. By Monday morning, he conceded, “You’re right.”
The costs of building Euro Disney had soared, and even though Eisner always insisted the project was within its budget, that was only because the budget was constantly revised upward. By his own reckoning, Eisner had attended over fifty meetings with the Imagineers, and pored over the design of every aspect of the new park, starting with the Magic Kingdom’s centerpiece castle. In both Disneyland and Disney World, the castles had been made of molded fiberglass. Tony Baxter, an Imagineer who’d bonded with Eisner after designing the captivating, albeit expensive, “Splash Mountain” attraction, pointed out that in France, Disney could hardly use fiberglass when the countryside already boasted real castles made of stone. “We can’t just do a kitschy rendition of French history right in their own backyard,” he argued, and Eisner had agreed.
Instead of using the kind of actual European castles that had inspired the ones in the American theme parks, the Imagineers turned to the fantasy castles in Disney’s animated classics, especially the one in Sleeping Beauty. The Euro Disney version was built of pink stone, with handcrafted stained-glass windows picturing scenes from Sleeping Beauty and a dungeon with a fire-breathing dragon. While undeniably more spectacular than the American castles, it also cost millions more.
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