Linda Woolverton and Belle of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast go way back. You could refer to them as besties. They share a special bond, one that extends from the page to the screen to the stage.
A bit of an explanation. Woolverton, an author, playwright, and screenwriter, wrote the book for the animated film, Beauty and the Beast, and for the musical, which opens at Altria Theatre on March 3 and runs through March 8.
Now in its 30th anniversary production, the timeless and magical tale of Beauty and the Beast is as loved today as it was when the original team — Woolverton, composer Alan Menken, and lyricist Tim Rice created the Tony Award®-winning musical.
When Woolverton first took on the task of writing the animated film in the late 1980’s, she searched for themes that are universal and timeless.
“I looked for what appeals to us today,” says Woolverton who lives in Los Angeles and grew up during the women’s movement.
Her goal was to make Belle proactive instead of passive and use the fairytale to depict a Disney heroine neatly packaged in a princess.
“Belle broke through the Cinderella mold,” she says. “Being strong is about your spirit and yourself.”
Belle “doesn’t change,” for a prince or anything else, Woolverton adds, noting that Belle changes the people around her.
Kyra Johnson who plays Belle in the touring production says she identifies not only with Belle’s intelligence and kindness “but also her determination and strength. She’s what I aspire to be,” she says.
The way that Linda wrote the musical crosses generations, she adds. “The romance, the friendship, the magic. There’s humor and love, and I’m just addicted to this story. It’s so iconic. I can’t wait to do it every night.”
The story is about love, forgiveness, and understanding.
“It’s about how not to judge a book by its cover,” Johnson says. “This resonates with everyone, especially younger patrons.”
Feeling the Disney Love Early On
The character’s strength reflects Woolverton’s love of Disney, as well as her own grit and determination.
When she was young, her family lived in Long Beach, California, which was only 30 minutes from Disneyland.
“Disneyland was huge in my life,” she says, adding that working with Disney was fitting based on her background and the admiration she had for company.
After forming a children’s touring company and then working for CBS, Woolverton started writing and working with Saturday morning cartoons as a freelance venture. She also authored two young adult novels.
During that time, she decided to go see a Disney animated feature, and to her surprise, “didn’t think it was great,” she says. “I thought I could do better.”
She asked her agent to get her in to see Disney, and her agent turned her down, noting that Disney wasn’t looking at Saturday morning TV writers for assignments. They wanted authors.
So, Woolverton picked out one of her YA novels and carried it to Disney’s offices, a building that was not on the main lot and didn’t have a guard. She left it in the reception area.
“I put it on a desk thinking ‘maybe someone wants to read this.’ That was on a Friday,” she says.
On Sunday, an executive at Disney picked up the book and called her.
“He said ‘you have to write for Disney,’” she recalls.
She was asked to write the book for a Winnie the Pool movie, which she did, but the studio didn’t make the film.
“Then, they asked me to look at the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast,” she says.
She then became the first woman to write an animated feature for Disney.
Woolverton wrote the book for the animated film, which debuted in November 1991 and became the first animated film to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. It also set another first by receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.
From Screen to Stage
Three years later, she was asked to write the book for the Broadway musical.
The difficulty in adapting it from film she discovered is adding people’s movements into the scenario. Another puzzler — how to make actors become objects and objects become actors who sing.
“It was a huge issue,” she says. “That is, until we realized that they were transforming like the Beast. They could be more human. That was the biggest breakthrough, the biggest challenge taking it from animated to stage musical.”
In order to make it into a musical, she had to add to the script and more music was needed. That’s when Disney brought in Tim Rice.
“More music required more scenes,” Woolverton says. “I feel the musical is so much more fleshed out and more adult. I think the musical is better.”
Feeling Overwhelmed but Excited
Looking back on her life, Woolverton says she sometimes doesn’t know how she did it all. Her daughter was born the same as the animated film Beauty and the Beast premiered.
“Those were two huge events. It was a lot. It was overwhelming,” she says.
Her husband supported her doing the musical. “It was hard on all of us. There was a lot of separation. We make a lot of sacrifices,” she says. “It took an enormous amount of courage.”
Even though she is not writing for Disney now, Woolverton has had a long career with the company. She co-wrote the screenplay for the live-action film Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey and the animated film The Lion King. She also wrote the the screenplay for Alice in Wonderland and its sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass, Maleficent, and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.
“That was a good long period of my life,” she says of working with Disney. “I am really proud of myself.”
While she is still working in the industry, she’s happy that the stage version of Beauty and the Beast continues to live on, as does her work on it.
“The musical is fluid. It’s alive,” she says. “I have been allowed to change it, update it, and add this and that to make it better. Now, I’m working on translating it to German.”
“Of all the things I have ever done, Beauty is still around. It is my first-born child, career wise,” she says. “It’s not a past thing for me. It’s very present.”
