The writers of “Part Of Your World” had to beg Disney to make The Little Mermaid

Now that Disney is essentially the only studio in Hollywood, owning four of the five highest-grossing movies ever (and eight of the top 10), it’s easy to assume it’s always been this way. But before the Mouse House acquired Star Wars, Marvel, and Avatar, things weren’t going well. Following the Disney renaissance of the 90s, the studio suffered a string of disappointments at the box office and largely relied on TV and theme parks to stay afloat.

It wasn’t the only fallow period in Disney’s history. The 1980s also sucked, particularly in animation, when Disney couldn’t produce a hit to save its life. Disney was so averse to making a good movie that Alan Menkin and Howard Ashman, Broadway songwriters who wrote Little Shop Of Horrors, had to beg the studio to make The Little Mermaid.

“A lot of people don’t realize that getting Little Mermaid produced was sheer guts from Alan and Howard, begging Disney to do it,” Paige O’Hara, who voiced Belle in Beauty And The Beast, told The Hollywood Reporter. “I mean, pleading with them, doing all the work themselves, even putting some of their own money into it.”

At the time, musicals were out, and Disney didn’t want to risk making a movie about a red-haired mermaid that Mattel said wouldn’t sell. Despite having the Broadway bonafides, the suits at Disney still didn’t trust Menkin, the film’s composer, to score The Little Mermaid. Eventually, after some more begging, they gave him a three-hour tryout.

“Disney did not trust Alan to actually do the score,” said Andy Hill, then Disney’s manager of music production. “They thought, OK, he’s fine as a songwriter, but what does he actually know about this?”

“They said, ‘We want you to record something that doesn’t have anything to do with any of the songs, because that’s cheating,’” Hill continued. “’Write a piece of action music or something like that.’ We chose for him to score this big storm scene that comes early in the film. And after he got a successful take, he was still very nervous and uncertain about how Disney was going to react. He said, ‘What do you think, Andy? Do you think I got the gig?’ And I said, ‘Alan, not only do I think you’ve got the gig, I think you’re gonna win an Oscar.’ And he did.”

Disney would rue the day it doubted Ashman and Menkin. The Little Mermaid went on to be one of the year’s highest-grossing films, winning two Oscars and kicking off a string of hits for Disney and its star songwriters. And thank heavens for that. If they didn’t make this animated classic, Disney would have no Little Mermaid to remake. Imagine a world where a live-action Little Mermaid wasn’t coming to theaters next year? Actually, don’t. The thought is too horrible for the holidays.