Howard Ashman

The songwriting team of lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken earned their greatest renown scoring Disney’s latter-day animated classics THE TINY Mermaid and Beauty as well as the Beast. Blessed in Baltimore on, may 17, 1950, Ashman examined at Boston School before gaining his master’s level from Indiana School in 1974. Then relocated to NEW YORK, accepting a submitting work while moonlighting being a playwright. Dreamstuff, his musical version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, was shortly produced on the WPA Theater, where Ashman offered as artistic movie director from 1976 to 1982. For 1979’s musical version of Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, he initial teamed with Menken, also his collaborator on 1982’s Small Store of Horrors. In line with the 1960 Roger Corman B-movie cult traditional, Little Shop demonstrated an unprecedented achievement; the highest-grossing creation in off-Broadway background, it earned the brand new York Theatre Critics Award as well as the Theatre Table Award. The 1986 film edition also gained Ashman and Menken an Academy Honor nomination for the recently added music “Mean Green Mom From SPACE.” With 1989’s Disney launch THE TINY Mermaid, the duo obtained an Oscar for “Beneath the Ocean,” repeating the secret two years later on with the name song through the traditional Beauty as well as the Beast. Unfortunately, Ashman succumbed to Helps on March 14, 1991; ahead of his loss of life, he and Menken finished three tracks for the 1992 Disney feature Aladdin, notching their last joint Academy Honor nomination for “Friend Like Me.”