With Howard, Disney+ movingly honors the lyricist who gave the Little Mermaid her voice
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After an early test screening of The Little Mermaid, Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg had one big note. The kids in the audience were bored by Ariel’s ballad about wanting to be human. “Part Of Your World” should be cut. Lyricist Howard Ashman put his foot down. He told Katzenberg they’d lose the song over his dead body. It wasn’t a metaphor he used lightly. Ashman had recently been diagnosed with HIV at a time when that was very much a death sentence. He spent his final few years pouring his heart and soul into the early films of Disney’s 1990s renaissance. He died at the age of 40.
As time marches on, there’s concern about how to make the scope of the AIDS crisis understandable to a generation too young to remember it. One answer comes in the form of Don Hahn’s new Disney+ documentary, Howard, which centers on a gay, HIV-positive man who played a major role in so many Millennial and Gen Z childhoods, even if they don’t know him by name. Ashman and his songwriting partner, Alan Menken, penned iconic songs for The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty And The Beast, as well as the beloved cult musical Little Shop Of Horrors. In exploring Ashman’s phenomenal creative output, Howard inspires bittersweet reflections about just how much more he—and by extension, a whole generation of artists—could’ve accomplished had their lives not been cut short by AIDS.
Howard is a sort of sister project to Hahn’s 2009 documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty, which explored the broader creative and commercial background of the Disney renaissance—something Hahn experienced firsthand as the producer of Beauty And The Beast and The Lion King. Ashman featured in some of the most moving portions of that earlier doc (which is also streaming on Disney+), and Hahn has essentially expanded those segments into a feature about the artist’s life and legacy. The first half of Howard charts Ashman’s artistic youth and his rise through the ranks of the New York theater scene in the 1970s and early ’80s. The second zeroes in specifically on Ashman’s time at Disney in the late ’80s, which coincided with his HIV diagnosis.
Despite the clear affection Hahn feels for his subject—a lyricist who could dream up everything from the demented earnestness of “Somewhere That’s Green” to the verbal dexterity of a line like, “We’ll prepare and serve with flair a culinary cabaret”—there’s a book report-ish quality to the straightforward way Howard lays out Ashman’s biography. In place of on-camera interviews, Hahn plays audio commentary from Ashman’s friends, family, and colleagues over old photos and stock footage. It’s a stylistic choice that unfortunately proves distancing when it comes to making a connection to the regular players in Ashman’s life. Frequent Ken Burns-style zooms and pans call to mind a PowerPoint effect more than the master documentarian himself.
But if Hahn’s filmmaking struggles to replicate the whimsical creativity of his subject, Ashman’s genius shines through anyway. Howard makes the case that Ashman wasn’t just a lyricist but also a storyteller—one who got his start entertaining his kid sister, before going on to introduce Disney animation to the idea of using songs to advance plot and character. (A tribute at the end of Beauty And The Beast notes that Ashman “gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul.”) Howard’s most compelling moments come from Ashman himself in old interviews where he explains his creative process, like the way he approaches adaptation. Hahn has amassed an impressive amount of archival material from Ashman’s life, from old photos at the apartment he shared with his college boyfriend to work tapes of Ashman singing demos of his own biggest hits.
Hahn also roots Ashman’s story in the larger context of the AIDS crisis in New York City. Ashman saw friends die of the disease before it even had a name, and when he later started showing symptoms himself, he turned down his doctor’s suggestion of an HIV test because it could cause him to lose his insurance. (They did a T-cell count to confirm the diagnosis instead.) During the height of AIDS stigmatization, Ashman decided to keep his illness a secret for fear it could cost him his job at a family-focused company like Disney. Howard is full of heart-wrenching stories about how Ashman worked through his illness—secretly wearing a heart catheter during an eight-hour press junket for The Little Mermaid and later writing “Prince Ali” in his hospital bed with Menken on a portable keyboard.
Ashman died several months before Beauty And The Beast was released, and when he posthumously won an Oscar for Best Original Song, his partner Bill Lauch accepted the award on his behalf. In a landmark moment for LGBT visibility, Lauch explained that he and Ashman shared a home and a life together and that the win marked the first time the award was given to someone lost to AIDS. It’s a speech that still resonates, and interviews with Lauch add a welcome personal perspective to the story of a man whose life was so defined by his career.
Howard doesn’t shy away from Ashman’s demanding, perfectionistic streak—qualities that were potentially buoyed by anger about his illness. (Menken, who recorded a new score for this film, recounts a time Ashman smashed a tape recorder in frustration, causing Menken to leave the room in tears.) But the documentary mostly captures the soft-spoken, self-effacing sides of Ashman’s personality. While coaching Jodi Benson through the recording of “Part Of Your World,” Ashman pauses his lengthy list of notes to offhandedly reassure her, “By the way, your performance is fabulous.”
For both musical theater fans and Disney aficionados, Howard is a must-see. Hahn bookends the film with extensive footage from the recording session for Beauty And The Beast, in which Ashman watches with a critical eye as Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach perform “Be Our Guest.” But even for those outside of the Disney musical demographic, Howard is a moving portrait of an artist taken too soon during an era tragically marked by those kind of losses.
29 Comments
Ive been waiting for this documentary for years. I adore Waking Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast is my favorite animated film. Hell I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the voice of Belle several times. Howard Ashmen is in my opinion as great a lyricist as Stephen Sodoheim or Andrew Loyd Webber. I have spent many days pondering what would Pocahontas or Hunchback look like if Howard had written those songs.
I agree completely, except one note — Webber isn’t a lyricist. He most frequently worked with Tim Rice.
Shit I couldn’t remember. I’m not a big Rice fan personally.
With Hunchback, I still give massive props to Stephen Schwartz for “Hellfire”- it’s a spectacular showpiece in what is otherwise a very uneven film.But God yes Ashman would have probably worked his magic on that film, probably saving the story in the process.
Hellfire is brilliant and Schwartz is very talented. But I wonder what Howard would have done differently.
Basically a ripoff of Judge Turpin’s “Johanna” from Sweeney Todd, though
Yeah, I think that the main improvement that would have happened is to story structure and character work. Ashman was a fantastic lyricist, but the issues with Hunchback and Pocahontas were mainly tone and structural (and historical and racial sensitivity in Pocahontas’ case, but that’s a different issue), not with the lyrics of the songs, which were mostly fine or even spectacular in some cases. Ashman’s most underrated artistic strength is that he knew how to structure and pace a story with characters that we care about. Things like his push to keep in “Part of Your World,” which is integral to understanding Ariel as a character, shows that he knows how to economically tell a story that the audience would care about, as that song is the emotional linchpin that the whole movie is built around. While he didn’t invent them, his coining of the I Want Song idea showed how much he thought about and understood storytelling in musicals.While there were some great later films in the Disney Renaissance that he had little to no involvement in, I feel like Disney’s artistic decline in the late 90s and early 2000s wouldn’t have happened if he was still around. It’s a shame that such a kind, talented man had to die so senselessly so young.
Because I can’t edit my comment I’ll add this. The woman in the headline image is Paige O’Hara. She’s the woman I mentioned meeting many times. She is the nicest person I’ve ever met and supremely talented. I’d talk all day about her, christ I made a video about her career once.
That’s Jodie Benson [Ariel from ‘The Little Mermaid’] in the header pic.Are you sure you’ve been meeting Paige all those times?
No that is without question Paige O’Hara. I know few things in life, but forgetting the face of the woman who in a way saved my life is not one of them.
Also not to be a dick but I found the exact photo. Guess who it credits. I remember this clip from one of the BATB behind the scenes docs. Howard is coaching her on saying its a quiet village from the Belle song. I like Jodi Benson, she is very talented. But personality wise she has a few hang ups that Paige doesn’t have. She’s also less approachable. As I said, I could talk about Paige for hours. About her Broadway career, her many personal albums, her painting career, eveything!
Multiple articles and other comments with his name spelled correctly I’ve seen you respond to, you profess to love him, but can’t bother to spell his name right? AshMAN!
Appolgies. I love his music but I always mix up a and e. Its not out of disrespect.
I see. I was probably being too harsh anyways.
I’m a huge fan of LIttle Shop of Horrors; I saw it live on stage in the West End in London. So you can imagine how excited I was to learn that Ashman and Menken would be writing the songs for The Little Mermaid. And The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast were great! And then AIDS took him, and Disney animation was never quite the same. Aladdin was okay, I didn’t like The Lion King, and pretty much gave up on them after that. Such a shame.
If you ever see the Aladdin Broadway show you might like it. They put most of Howard’s old songs back and it has an emotional quality not present in the film.
But when is Disney+ giving us a new “Howard The Duck”?
Do NOT speak this into existence.
Marvel Phase 7, shortly after the cranial implants make all Marvel movies instantly available on Disney Brain+
Disney Schmisney.The whole thing should have been about their musical adaption of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s God Bless You. Mister Rosewater….
You joke, but God Bless You, Mister Rosewater is actually prominently featured in the doc! Including a great story about Vonnegut coming to see a rehearsal.
My children’s childhoods would have been a touch poorer without Ashman and Menkan’s collaborations. Their joy was our joy.
Yeah I know what you mean. He only wrote three Disney musicals, and Aladdin only features like two songs of his. But goddamn was he brilliant and I weep for all the projects we lost because of AIDS. This man rhymed least, east and beast. Goddamn what a man!
“The Mob Song” is the most underrated song in the whole Disney canon. It’s incredibly tense and filled with great lines and clever rhymes. I also really like “knives” with “wives” and “lives” and “night” and “appetite.”
I agree. Is it a villain song? An action song? Whatever it is, its bloody brilliant and it annoyed me to no end that the remake added unnecessary lyrics to it. That and they removed every last inch of me is covered in hair from Gaston. Whyyyyy.
The remake may be the most aggravating movie that I have ever seen. I’ve seen worse movies, but none more pointless. It’s identical to the original except they made everything longer and worse. I kept thinking as I watched it, “Why am I not watching the original one?” I can’t think of a movie that justifies its existence less. (Although I have not seen The Lion King Remake, which I heard has that problem even worse).
I know right? I actually took notes while watching. 73 notes and by the end it was just obscenities. The pacing was fuuucked. Both too slow and too fast which is impressive. The singing made my ears bleed, the changing to the songs insulting. I wrote an entire paper once on how shitty it was. There are worse movies but few genuinely anger me this much.
Does the flick talk about how Disney’s dealt with queerness during and since Ashman’s death? Because a lot of that stuff isn’t great, and it’d be awful if they pretended it wasn’t, and equally weird (in the wake of the Love Victor fiasco and stories from Disney Channel creators) if they pretended things are getting better at a reasonable click.