His music was often beauty to Disney’s beast.
Eight-time Academy Award winning composer Alan Menken turns 75 today.
Menken is best-recognized as the unmistakable sound of the Disney animation renaissance that began with “The Little Mermaid” in 1989. The film earned him two Academy Awards (for Best Original Score and Best Original Song, “Under the Sea”). He went on to repeat the success with his song-driven scores for “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), “Aladdin” (1992), and “Pocahontas” (1995).
More than anybody else, Menken was responsible for introducing the Broadway idiom that’s become so indelibly linked in moviegoers’ minds with animated features. His frequent collaborator was Howard Ashman, who, following him from the musical theater, provided lyrics for the first three mentioned films, as well as for Menken’s stage-and-screen musical “Little Shop of Horrors,” among others. With Ashman’s untimely death at the age of 40, Tim Rice stepped up to complete “Aladdin.” Stephen Schwartz was Menken’s lyricist for “Pocahontas.”
For Disney, Menken also provided music for “Newsies” (1992), “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1996), “Hercules” (1997), “Home on the Range” (2004), “Enchanted” (2007), “Tangled” (2010), and “Disenchanted” (2022).
He is the second most-prolific Oscar winner in the history of film scoring, after Alfred Newman (who won nine). John Williams, of course, is the most nominated (with 54!).
Menken’s success has extended well beyond the big screen. He’s garnered a Tony, eleven Grammy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Daytime Emmy (making him an EGOT: an Emmy-Grammy-Oscar-Tony winner). Richard Rodgers and Marvin Hamlisch also won the Pulitzer (making them PEGOTs).
However, Menken has the further distinction of having won a Razzie for Worst Original Song for “High Times, Hard Times,” from “Newsies” (making him a REGOT?). He was a good sport to collect the award in person. I’m sure he cried all the way to the bank.
Incidentally, it was for the stage adaptation of “Newsies” that Menken won the Tony in 2012.
Happy birthday, Alan Menken!
This is from a fun little project in which a number of notable Disney tunes were arranged in the styles of the great classical composers. Here’s Menken’s “Beauty and the Beast,” rendered in the style of Rachmaninoff.
