Disney Legend Howard Ashman
Howard Ashman (1950-1991)
Playwright, producer and lyricist
I would be surprised if you knew who my LGBT Hero is, but I can guarantee that you will have heard some (or all) of his music, and seen his work before.
Inducted as a Disney Legend in 2001, producer and lyricist Howard Ashman co-produced The Little Mermaid with John Musker, bringing us the Oscar-winning ‘Under the Sea’ (co-written with composer Alan Menken). Disney extols the song as an ‘infectious Calypso-flavoured piece’, yet all I really remember doing at the time is dancing around like a cartoon-obsessed zombie, screaming apoplectically at the screen for Ariel’s voice to work so she could tell Eric how she really felt.
Before the multi-layered for-children-and-adults films we have now (see: Up or the Toy Story films, for beautiful examples), Ashman’s lyrics, as Menken recalled, ‘would wink at the adults and say something to the kids at exactly the same time’. Ashman wasn’t just about the notes on the page – his scores effortlessly captured the hearts of millions, again and again, and he continued to compose up until his death from AIDS complications on 14 March 1991, at the age of 40.
Within a deeply Christian company, I don’t think it is a stretch to imagine how difficult it was for Ashman to be gay. Yet, from Aladdin to Beauty and the Beast, he created and credited each character with his own sense of emotional self: the Oscar-nominated ‘Friend Like Me’ gave us Robin Williams’s unforgettably charismatic Genie; while ‘Be Our Guest’ had me secretly longing for our tea set (Angela Lansbury – a teapot!) to come alive after I had switched the kitchen light off. Sure, I didn’t grow up in a faraway castle surrounded by hungry-looking wolves, but I could dream. And why shouldn’t I dream? I wanted anthropomorphic clocks and candlesticks then, and I still want them now.
Back then, music was everything to me; a way of escaping the humdrum of a rural life that was, at times, marked with severe loneliness. I didn’t know it then, but Howard Ashman made me smile, every time I sneaked down at 6.00am on a Saturday morning to fire up the VCR, and sit cross-legged wrapped in a big blanket for another Disney film. If I could meet him, I couldn’t thank him enough for helping to create a world of characters to keep me company.
I was a child that didn’t want to grow up, and I often wish I had a friend like Ashman. In some ways, after all these years, I feel like I do.
Don’t believe me? Ask the dishes!
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