They can spin off TV series and direct-to-video sequels, they can move from the screen to the stage, they can persist in their live-action remake trend in the face of all artistic arguments against it, but the Walt Disney Company has yet to treat the offshoots of their animated library as more than that – offshoots. In toys and merchandising, in children’s books, in the theme park lands and cast costumes, you’re far more likely to encounter the stable of characters in their cartoon guises than any approximation of the live-action variant. And small wonder; it’s the original adaptations of these stories by Disney, in their signature medium, that produced movies of enough significance to make offshoots a tempting venture in the first place.
TakeAladdin, for example. The original fairy tale was well-known before 1992, and had seen several film adaptations over the years, but the images and sounds from Disney’s first take on the story have become definitive. The flowing line of the animation, inspired by the work ofAl Hirschfeld; the beginning ofGilbert Gottfried’ssecond career voicing birds; the love ballad that sweeps across the globe on a flying carpet; and the madcap energyRobin Williamsbrought to animation with his performance as the Genie. It all lingers long in our collective consciousness.
But imagine, if you can, anAladdinwith two genies, neither of them a comic in the Robin Williams vein, instead taking after the likes ofCab Calloway. AnAladdinwhere the princess’ big number isn’t a love ballad sung with the hero, but a comic character song boasting of how spoiled she is. This alternate version, tongue firmly in cheek, would give you a stuffy parrot named Sinbad in place of Gottfried’s Iago, offer four human sidekicks instead of Abu the monkey, and would have stressed a family bond more than Aladdin’s romances or magical responsibilities. Would thatAladdinhave made the same mark on American culture?
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The Disney vault is more than a marketing gimmick used to describe an outmoded re-release strategy. The archives of the Walt Disney Studios are a unique sort of cave of wonders, holding volumes of material from unproduced or alternative versions of film, television, games, and music. It’s in this home to the Disney that never was that you can find this alternateAladdin. But there’s far more to that tale than an initial story concept that went unused. TheAladdinthat could have been represents a passion project from one of the most talented and influential writers to ever work for Disney animation, and the history of Disney’sAladdinhas running through it an ongoing battle by friends and colleagues to bring as much of that passion project to the public as possible.
The writer in question isHoward Ashman. Animator and directorKirk Wisehas said “if you had to point to one person responsible for the Disney renaissance, I would say it was Howard,” and in the documentaryWaking Sleeping Beauty, no less a figure thanRoy E. Disneycompared Ashman to his uncleWaltin describing his pull over the animation department. It wasn’t the area of show business he had planned for; trained in musical theater, Ashman’s early successes were in writing and directing offbeat and off-Broadway musicals likeGod Bless You, Mr. RosewaterandLittle Shop of Horrors, written with composerAlan Menken. But a Broadway flop in the mid-1980s made an escape to California sound appealing, and Ashman already had Hollywood connections through producerDavid Geffen, who had put up the money for the stage and film productions ofLittle Shop. Geffen recommended Ashman’s talents toJeffrey Katzenberg, then executive in charge of production at Walt Disney Studios. Ashman went to work for Disney onOliver & Company, writing lyrics for just one of the songs in a patch-job soundtrack. But the effort impressed Katzenberg enough that he offered Ashman his choice of projects to take up next, and Ashman chose to work as the lyricist for another animated film Disney had in production:The Little Mermaid.
But he did far more than write lyrics. Ashman’s theatrical career had established him as a man with strong opinions and a preference for being in charge. Once attached to the animation department, he gave a crash course to the entire staff on story structure in musicals and its applications to classic and contemporary Disney projects. He would end up the co-producer onThe Little Mermaid, rewriting key scenes and reconceptualizing characters like Sebastian and Ursula. The film wasn’t his baby; it originated with directorsRon ClementsandJohn Musker; but Ashman left an indelible stamp on it, and he thoroughly enjoyed himself. “I just don’t think anything is quite as magical as a Disney cartoon fairy tale,” he said in an interview during production. “There is just nothing like that.” And beforeThe Little Mermaidwas even finished, Ashman decided to pitch Disney a fairy tale project all his own.
That project wasAladdin, a story he had long ties to. Ashman’s earliest work on the stage was as a child actor, and he had starred in a production ofAladdin. His treatment followed the basic skeleton of the original tale fromOne Thousand and One Nightsfairly closely: Aladdin, a ne’er-do-well youth, is tricked by a wicked sorcerer masquerading as his uncle into entering a cave in search of the Genie of the Lamp. Aladdin obtains not only the lamp, but the Genie of the Ring as well. The more powerful Genie of the Lamp fulfills Aladdin’s every wish and raises him into the sultan’s good graces, but when the jealous sorcerer steals away the lamp, Aladdin resorts to the Genie of the Ring and his own wits to save the day.
The original tale also has as a prominent character Aladdin’s mother. Close to his own mother, Ashman envisioned that the primary motivation for Aladdin in his film would be to make his mother proud. This introduced an emotional core not present in the fairy tale, which plays out as the magical equivalent of winning the lottery. Besides centering the mother/son relationship, Ashman also decided to go in an anti-materialistic direction with the story’s resolution: Aladdin would reject the fame and riches his adventures brought him in favor of a simple, honest living.
Which isn’t to say it was a saccharine pitch that Ashman brought to Disney. His original treatment, at 40 pages and loaded with character breakdowns, seven songs (with three reprises and accompanying demos), and design suggestions, made it clear from the first page that this would not be a “straight” adaptation ofAladdin. The overall approach was to be tongue-in-cheek, taking cues from the Hope/Crosby “Road” series of the 1940s. Musically, the primary influence was the swing of Cab Calloway andFats Waller, while also drawing on barbershop quartets, beguines, andthe Andrews Sisters. And there was another, rather audacious influence: non-Disney animated films. Even more, the urban, jazzy, surrealist, and sexual films of the Fleischer Brothers Studios, the one-time chief rivals to Walt Disney himself.
The Fleischers beat Disney to the punch on adapting anything fromOne Thousand and One Nightsby several decades. They released a trilogy of Technicolor Popeye cartoons done on Arabian motifs, the final one beingAladdin and His Wonderful Lampin 1939. If Ashman took any deliberate choices from this film, it went unmentioned in his treatment, and besides sharing an irreverent tone and the idea of a frame story, they bear little resemblance to one another. The Fleischer influence was expressed in a broader way. Portraying the Genie of the Lamp as a Cab Calloway type called back to Calloway’s appearances in several Betty Boop cartoons by the Fleischers. The musical number “Friend Like Me” was openly patterned after the numbers Calloway sang in those films. Aladdin’s sidekicks in Ashman’s treatment, a trio of oddly proportioned humans named Babkak, Omar, and Kasim, share a New York street sensibility common to the Fleischers’ work. And Ashman’s Princess Jasmine was a comic figure, a spoiled brat with a Betty Boop style voice that took pride in her pampered lifestyle (another female character, the tomboy Abbi, would be the real love interest).
Ashman submitted his treatment to Disney in January of 1988. Seldom is anyone guaranteed a green light in Hollywood, and none was forthcoming then. Despite positive reception by animation development and two screenplays derived from the treatment, Disney passed on the project. Disappointed, Ashman mused to his family thathe might produceAladdinon his own, but per his contract, Disney retained the rights to the treatment and the songs he had submitted. Disney had also acquired the remake rights toAlexander Korda’sThe Thief of Baghdad, and at some point following the release and success ofThe Little Mermaid,they commissioned screenwriterLinda Woolvertonto develop anAladdinscriptusing elements of the Korda film. There wasn’t room in this version for Ashman’s breezy comedy adventure, or for his songs; Woolverton’s script was nonmusical. But whenMermaiddirectors Clements and Musker became attached toAladdin, they reviewed the development work on the project and decided that they liked what Ashman had done. A hybrid approach began to take shape: the human sidekicks were replaced with Abu the monkey, Abbi was cut and Jasmine radically reconceived, and the genies were reduced to one, but most of Ashman’s songs were reinstated, the comedic tone was back, and the mother character remained.
Ashman was brought back into development onAladdinat this point by Clements and Musker. He slowly came around to their notion of the Genie as a stand-up comic in the vein of Robin Williams, and he began work on new songs with Menken for the new take on the story. But two factors complicated moving forward. The first was the troubled production ofBeauty and the Beast. Jeffrey Katzenberg pressed a reluctant Ashman into service as lyricist and executive producer onBeautywhen an earlier, nonmusical treatment came apart, and a tight schedule made that film a priority. The second was that Ashman, at 39, was dying of AIDS. He became too weak to travel to California for meetings, and eventually, too weak to perform demos or attend recording sessions in New York. Howard Ashman passed away in March of 1991.
The hybrid version ofAladdinthat he had renewed work on would face its own death that spring. Katzenberg rejected a story reel presentation and demanded major changes. These would mean exorcising all but three of the songs Ashman had written, and cutting the mother from the film entirely. The documentaries on the 2004 DVD release ofAladdinare filled with accounts by the creative team of how difficult a decision that was without Ashman to bless it, and how even more difficult it was to cut one of Ashman’s favorite songs, “Proud of Your Boy,” when it became clear that the mother had to go.
Without Howard Ashman, Disney would never have made anyAladdin. The film that they did make is a wild comedy adventure, broadly in line with the light tone Ashman envisioned. The Cab Calloway influence over “Friend Like Me” is still in place, and the finale of the film still rejects the easy winnings of the original fairy tale for a more heartfelt resolution, in this case the freeing of the Genie.Aladdinis a well-loved classic of the Disney stable, and among my personal favorites. But theAladdinthat Howard Ashman envisioned was such a personal, idiosyncratic take on the story. Given Ashman’s prominence in the Disney renaissance of the 1990s, and the impact his work has had and continues to have on the studio, it feels much more of a loss that his vision was never made than a matter of a handful of scenes or songs getting trimmed in production.
His collaborators have tried to bring something of that vision to light. Beyond what material of Ashman’s remained in the 1992 film, the direct-to-video sequels forAladdindusted off reprises of the song “Arabian Nights.” The 2004 DVD release featured a fully orchestrated performance of “Proud of Your Boy,” sung by Clay Aiken. And whenAladdinbecame the next animated film to move to Broadway, Alan Menken had one goal: “get as much of Howard’s work back in the show.” Abu was out, and Babkak, Omar, and Kasim were back in. Jasmine’s comic number “Call Me a Princess” briefly came back for pre-Broadway tryouts, but wouldn’t last. The score took on a jazzier feel overall, emphasized in the Genie’s numbers in a way that helped free any performer from the burden of having to imitate Robin Williams. And while the mother couldn’t find her way back into the show, “Proud of Your Boy” did.
But no stage production can capture the surrealism of Fleischer Brothers’ animation, or the sinuous line quality of Al Hirschfeld that inspired the finishedAladdin. And the Broadway play, for all of Menken’s intentions, is an adaptation of the movie we all know first, and a restoration of Ashman’s work second. It’s another hybrid, and many more hands have touched the material over the years; the Broadway show has three credited lyricists, with a book written by a man adapting a screenplay with four credited writers inspired by development work stemming back to, but not limited to, Ashman’s treatment. It would be impossible at this point for Ashman’s initial treatment to become a fully-fledged production that reflected his original vision; it’s become too entwined with what is to be more than a “what if.” But of all the “what ifs” that lie in the Disney vault, it’s among the most fascinating, and heartbreaking, for not having been more than a lost Arabian night.
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