The ultimatum that saved The Little Mermaid’s iconic ‘Part of Your World’

By 1989, Disney Animation was desperate for a smash.

Following Walt Disney and his brother/co-founder Roy O. Disney’s deaths, the company saw a string of commercial failures in the 1970s and ’80s. With the future of Disney’s animation department up in the air following the failure of The Black Cauldron in 1985, it was clear that Disney had to do something different. The gamble would be a full-fledged, Broadway-style animated musical, adapting a source material thrown around by the studio since the 1930s: The Little Mermaid.

To execute this vision, Disney recruited Broadway composers Howard Ashman and Alan Menken to bring the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale to musical life. Ashman, in particular, had a clear sense of what musical theater elements he would bring to the animated feature. When it came down to key decisions, the composer’s choices — including one major defense — saved The Little Mermaid, which in turn paved the way for the Disney Renaissance.

No one knows the effects of Ashman’s decisions morso than Jodi Benson, who Ashman sought out to voice the role of Ariel. On the occasion of The Little Mermaid’s 30th anniversary, and a new Blu-ray release of the film, Benson spoke to Polygon about The Little Mermaid, her last days with composer, and the lasting legacy of “Part of Your World.”

Polygon: You provided the singing and speaking voice for Ariel, which wasn’t super common in voice acting at the time. How did that happen?

Jodi Benson: I was doing a Broadway show called Smile with Howard Ashman and Marvin Hamlisch and my character Doria was one of the leads. They wrote a song for me called “Disneyland.” At the time while we were doing that, Howard had been hired by Disney to start work on The Little Mermaid and he brought Alan Menken along as his composer.

When our Broadway show, sadly, closed very quickly, Howard felt bad for us and he invited the girls to audition for The Little Mermaid. I’d never been behind a mic or done anything like that. I went to the audition, ran into the ladies room, grabbed the two pages of script that they had given me, a cassette tape of Howard singing “Part of Your World.” I waited until the restroom was empty. I looked in the mirror and I started talking to myself in the mirror, figuring out what she would sound like as a 16-year-old, ran in and recorded on a big old reel-to reel with Albert Tavares, Disney’s casting associate. They sent that off to Disney. They listened to about three or four hundred tapes without our names or pictures attached.

About a year later I got the call that my tape was selected. It was absolutely incredible. I started flying back and forth between New York and L.A., but animation was not a good job back then in the mid eighties. So I didn’t really tell people about it because it was kind of ... not such a great job to have, doing voice-overs. We just thought we’d disappear and go right back to Broadway, where I was doing a show at the time with Sam Wright who played Sebastian. But Disney has another plan and I started going on press tours and all of a sudden Mermaid was this huge hit, bringing back animation to the Disney studio and our second golden age in animation. Here we are 30 years later, still talking about this great film.

Was there any challenge to recording “Part of Your World”?

For “Part of Your World,” I was in the recording studio with Howard Ashman, since I had just done Smile with him. Ron and John, our directors of the film, were so kind to let Howard stay in the booth with me and direct me. We just had the best time recording that song. It was hard for me because I kept over-singing it. On a Broadway stage, I need to sing really loudly and project. It was a little different for me to try to tone everything down and make things really simple, a little bit more realistic. But Howard was so great. He just kind of spoon fed me all the lines and got me into the zone and we turned off the lights and kind of created the grotto. My best way of doing the film was to approach it like a Broadway show, as if I were doing it in front of people. I acted everything out physically as though I were on stage. That really, really helped me to convey everything with just my voice.

Howard was a genius way ahead of his time, [though] very humble, very quiet, and soft-spoken. But when there was something that he believed in, he’d step up and be pretty firm about it. Everybody at Disney might not have been a little bit used to that, having somebody speak up and be strong about that. They were smart to listen to him because he knew best how to make this formula work for a Broadway musical.

Jeffrey Katzenberg almost cut “Part of Your World” from the movie. What prompted him to change his mind?

Howard Ashman basically said “You’re not cutting the song, because I’ll walk.” Jeffrey Katzenberg was going to cut it because of the screenings. There were some children that dropped their popcorn and seem to be distracted during the three minutes and 43 seconds. He said they can’t hold their attention. It’s not going to hold the kids’ attention. Howard said, “You can’t cut the song. It’s an ‘I want’ song. And if you cut it, they’re not going to fall in love with Ariel and root for her for the rest of the film. There’s not going to be any heart in it whatsoever. You can’t cut the song.”

He really caused quite a stir with that defiance. Jeffrey will tell you today if he had cut, that would have been one of the biggest decisions and mistakes of his career, because he knew that he had to trust Howard, that Howard was right.

Appreciation of “Part of Your World” goes beyond a love for Disney animation. Many call it an anthem for the LGBTQ community. Since Howard passed away in 1991 from complications from AIDS, how do you think he would feel about that legacy?

Howard has always been an underdog and always saw himself as an underdog in some ways. He was so humbled to the fault of not really believing in himself, trying to please his parents, and trying to make them proud of him. That’s how he wrote that song “Proud of your Boy” from Aladdin, which was cut from the movie. It’s one of the last songs that he wrote before he died. It’s one of the songs I listened to when he was in the hospital the day before he died. I saw him and he was blind at the time. We’d been listening to the cassette track auditions of the boys for Aladdin singing “Proud of Your Boy.” But that song can tell you a lot about Howard, that he really wanted to please people.

I think if he were with us today in 2019, he would be so humbled and probably embarrassed by the fact that he has made such a huge influence for all communities, because he was all inclusive. That’s the other thing about Howard. He never did the label thing. Everything was — we’re all together, we’re all kind of the same people. And I love that about him. It broke my heart that he could not be real with what he was going through in the agony of illness with AIDS, that he had to keep that so hidden for so very long. That was heartbreaking to me. My brother is alive and is HIV positive and he has survived. It’s just so unbelievable to me that we’ve lost Howard with where we are medically today.

It’s heartbreaking. But I think that if he were with us today, he would be, of course, so proud to be part of anything that could let people speak freely and be who they are and have the freedom to be all inclusive and to love one another. But in some ways knowing him, because he’s so behind the scenes, he would not want any kind of attention brought to him. He didn’t really like to speak publicly. He didn’t really like the fanfare. We had to drag him to the Golden Globes and the Oscars. He was kind of like “That’s okay. I’ll just stay behind the scenes. You guys just do your thing.” He was always very quiet and very humble. Kind of keeping his head down like is anybody looking at me? But then he could speak publicly when it came to Disney. If he was gonna put his foot down about something, he had no problem speaking out then, because it’s about his project and what he’s passionate about. He would very, very, very thrilled with the support and the fact that he is a small part of people being able to being able to stand forward and be true to themselves.