Howard Ashman

Howard Elliott Ashman (May 17, 1950 – March 14, 1991) was an American playwright, lyricist and stage director. He is most widely known for his work on feature films for Walt Disney Animation Studios, for which Ashman wrote the lyrics and Alan Menken composed the music. Ashman has been credited as being a main driving force behind the Disney Renaissance. His work included songs for Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Tim Rice took over to write the rest of the songs for the latter film after Ashman's death in 1991.

Early life and education
Ashman was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Shirley Thelma (née Glass) and Raymond Albert Ashman, an ice cream cone manufacturer. His family was Jewish. He started his theater experiences with the Children's Theater Association (CTA), playing roles such as Peter Pan. Ashman first studied at Boston University and Goddard College (with a stop at Tufts University's Summer Theater) and then went on to earn a master's degree in Fine Arts at Indiana University in 1974.

Career
After graduating from Indiana University in 1974, Ashman moved to New York and worked as an editor at Grosset & Dunlap. His first two plays, Cause Maggie's Afraid of the Dark and Dreamstuff, were met with mixed reviews. Ashman's play The Confirmation was produced in 1977 at Princeton's McCarter Theater and starred Herschel Bernardi. In 1977, he became the artistic director of the WPA Theater in New York. Ashman met future collaborator Alan Menken at the BMI Workshop, where he was classmates with Maury Yeston and Ed Kleban, among others. He first worked with Menken on the 1979 musical Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, adapted from Vonnegut's novel of the same name. They also collaborated on Little Shop of Horrors with Ashman as director, lyricist, and librettist, winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics and receiving a Grammy Award nomination. Ashman also directed the workshop of Nine by Yeston at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, and after asking why Guido's wife stays with him after she knows he has not been faithful, inspired Yeston to write "My Husband Makes Movies".

Ashman was director, lyricist, and book writer for the 1986 Broadway musical Smile (music by Marvin Hamlisch). This musical was generally not well received and closed with only 48 performances. However, Ashman received a nomination at the Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical. Also in 1986, Ashman wrote the screenplay for the Frank Oz–directed film adaptation of his musical Little Shop of Horrors, as well as contributing the lyrics for two new songs, "Some Fun Now" and "Mean Green Mother from Outer Space", the latter of which received an Academy Award nomination.

In 1986, Ashman was brought in to write lyrics for a song in Walt Disney Animation Studios' Oliver & Company. He then also worked with Tina Turner on a script which never came to fruition. While there, Ashman was offered several works which had been on the back burner and was told about another project that Disney had been working on for a couple years. The film was The Little Mermaid, Disney's first fairy tale in 30 years. Ashman, along with Menken, wrote all of the songs for the film. Ashman became a driving force during the early years of the "Disney Renaissance". He would hold story meetings and said the animation and musical styles were made for each other, which is why Disney needed to continue making musical movies. Ashman also made strong choices in casting actors with strong musical theater and acting backgrounds. The Little Mermaid was released in November 1989 and was an enormous success. Ashman and Menken received two nominations at the Golden Globe Awards and three nominations at the Academy Awards, including two Best Original Song nominations for "Kiss the Girl" and "Under The Sea" with Ashman and Menken winning for the latter.

In 1988, while working on The Little Mermaid, Ashman pitched the idea of an animated musical adaptation of Aladdin to Disney. After he wrote a group of songs with partner Alan Menken and a film treatment, a screenplay was written by Linda Woolverton, who had worked on Beauty and the Beast. Directors John Musker and Ron Clements then joined the production, and the story underwent many changes, with some elements of the original treatment being dropped. Out of the 16 songs written for Aladdin, three of Ashman's songs ended up in the finished film, which was released after his death.

During the early production of Aladdin, Ashman and Menken were approached to help reinvigorate and save the production of Beauty and the Beast, which was going nowhere as a non-musical. Ashman, wishing to focus on Aladdin and his health, reluctantly agreed. It was at this time that his health began to decline due to his illness. Regardless, he completed lyrical work on Beauty and the Beast before his death in March 1991. The film was released mere months after his death and is dedicated to him. In May 2020, Beauty and the Beast co-director Kirk Wise said, "If you had to point to one person responsible for the 'Disney Renaissance', I would say it was Howard."

Along with Menken, Ashman was the co-recipient of two Grammy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Academy Awards.

Personal life
Ashman met Stuart White, one of his first partners, at a summer university program in 1969. Originally close friends, the two formed a bond which led to a relationship. They both completed master's degrees at Indiana University and then moved to New York. Ashman and White re-opened the Workshop of Players Art Foundation (WPA) together as artistic directors. The two fell out in 1980, but reunited briefly in 1983.

Ashman then met Bill Lauch in 1984, who worked as an architect. Lauch accepted Ashman's posthumous Oscar for Beauty and the Beast in 1992, after Ashman's death.

Death
Ashman was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in January 1988 during production of The Little Mermaid, as he continued to write songs. Peter Kunze noted that Ashman was supported by Jeffrey Katzenberg; Disney created a production unit near his home in Beacon, New York, allowing him to continue working on Beauty and the Beast, while undergoing treatment at the Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers in New York City. Ashman died at Saint Vincent's on March 14, 1991, at the age of 40, prior to the film's completion. Beauty and the Beast was dedicated to his memory, featuring the message after the end credits: ''To our friend, Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful. Howard Ashman 1950-1991''. He was buried in the Ohev Shalom Cemetery in Reisterstown, Maryland.

Awards and nominations
Over the course of his career, Ashman won two Academy Awards (one posthumous) out of seven nominations. Of these nominations, four are posthumous nominations, the most in Academy Awards history. He also won a posthumous Laurence Olivier Award and five Grammy Awards (three of them posthumous), among other accolades.

Special recognitions

 * 1990 – Special Award for outstanding contribution to the success of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' anti-drug special for children, for the song "Wonderful Ways to Say No" from the TV special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue
 * 2001 – Disney Legend Award (POSTHUMOUS)

Tributes
On the 2002 Special Edition DVD of Beauty and the Beast, the Disney animators teamed up again and added a new song called "Human Again", which Ashman and Menken had written for the film but had been cut from the finished product. On Disc 2, there is a short documentary entitled Howard Ashman: In Memoriam that features many people who worked on Beauty and the Beast who talk about Ashman's involvement on the film and how his death was truly a loss for them.

Jeffrey Katzenberg claims there are two angels watching down on them that put their magic touch on every film they made. Those two angels are Ashman and Walt Disney himself.

An album of Ashman singing his own work entitled Howard Sings Ashman was released on November 11, 2008, by PS Classics as part of the Library of Congress "Songwriter Series".

The 2009 documentary, Waking Sleeping Beauty, which centers around Disney's animation renaissance, is dedicated to him, as well as Frank Wells, Joe Ranft, and Roy E. Disney.

In March 2017, Don Hahn confirmed he was working on a documentary biographical film about Howard Ashman. The documentary film titled Howard premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 22, 2018, before having a limited theatrical run on December 18, 2018. It was released on Disney+ on August 7, 2020, and was initially slated for removal on May 26, 2023. However, Disney reversed course in response to fan outcry.

Like with the original Beauty and the Beast, the 2023 live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid was also dedicated to his memory.

Credits

 * The Confirmation (1977) (writer)
 * God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1979) (lyricist, librettist and director)
 * Little Shop of Horrors (1982) (lyricist, librettist and director)
 * Smile (1986) (lyricist, librettist and director)
 * Little Shop of Horrors (1986) (lyricist and screenwriter)
 * Oliver & Company (1988) (lyricist for "Once Upon a Time in New York City")
 * The Little Mermaid (1989) (lyricist, producer, additional dialogue)
 * Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (1990) (lyricist for "Wonderful Way to Say No")
 * Beauty and the Beast (1991) (lyricist, executive producer) (dedicated)
 * Aladdin (1992) (lyricist for "Arabian Nights", "Friend Like Me", and "Prince Ali").
 * What's Love Got to Do with It (1993) (uncredited story draft)