Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise Beauty and the Beast came along at a delicate time for Disney. With The Little Mermaid, the company had finally emerged from decades wandering the wilderness after Walt...

Linda WoolvertonUncle Walt had been trying to crack the code on Beauty and the Beast since the Snow White days, but the team found it challenging, and the arrival of a live-action version in 1946 (...

The Walt Disney StudiosThe Walt Disney Studios is maybe the best-known movie studio in the world, the kind even non-fans have heard of and which today pretty much owns pop culture. Marvel superhero...

35mm AnimationBeauty and the Beast stands at the cusp of a huge change in the world of animation: the point where traditional hand-drawn images were giving way to the almighty computer. Disney had...

Alan Menken and Howard AshmanBeauty and the Beast is a musical, which means the soundtrack has to do more than just give us some melodies to listen to in between dialogue. The songs basically tell...

Ah, yes. The Disney fans. Full disclosure: we at Shmoop count them among our ranks; we're here and we're not to be trifled with. Rock singers, movie stars, that "Gangnam Style" guy…their fans don...