From the day it opened, Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" has been hailed as perhaps the greatest of the Disney animated classics, nominated for multiple Oscars, including best picture, upon its release in 1991.
As a new wave of ecstatic reviews greet every re-release ("the quintessential Disney masterpiece," according to Christianity Today), Paige O'Hara, who sang the role of Belle, the "Beauty" of the title, recalls first looking at the songs by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken for the film. They had scored hits with "Little Shop of Horrors" and then Disney's "Little Mermaid." But O'Hara saw in the sheet music "how they wanted to leave the pop music sound of 'Mermaid' behind and go for something more Jerome Kern/Rodgers & Hammerstein 'legit' with this score."
That connection to the Broadway tradition might explain why the film became a blockbuster Broadway musical, and why its every revival in movie theaters is an event. It's back again, newly converted to 3-D.
"The style of music is just another thing that makes it timeless," O'Hara said.
Do a Google search for "Paige O'Hara," and you stumble upon entry after entry discussing her performance as Belle. There are YouTube videos of her singing songs from the film, including the title tune. (Angela Lansbury sang it in the movie.) Whatever else she has accomplished in her life, Belle is what she's known for. That suits O'Hara just fine.
"Coming from the stage, where a lot of those performances are long forgotten, this movie is forever," she said. "Every few years, a new generation discovers it. Every time Disney puts a new edition of it, a new version of it in theaters or on video, I get a whole new fan base of kids."
O'Hara, 55, is a Las Vegas-based artist who does paintings from the film for Disney Fine Art. But for all she'd done before and all she's done since, the Broadway veteran ("Showboat"), is still known for that one big role in which she was heard, not seen.
"They started videotaping us while we were recording the soundtrack with this movie, and even now, I'm struck by the gestures they picked up -- the hair I used to pull out of my eyes, a bad habit I used to have," she said. "There are all these subtle things that are 'Paige' that I see, even now, that they copied with their paintbrushes. Brilliant."
