Howard – Disney Plus

Howard is a Disney+ documentary about American playwright and lyricist Howard Ashman.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

To the younger generation of theatregoers and lovers of Disney animations, Howard Ashman may be little more than a name on the credits of shows like Beauty and The Beast and The Little Shop of Horrors.

This full-length documentary fleshes out a legendary lyricist whose life was cruelly cut short in his prime. Ashman died from an AIDS-related illness in 1991 aged 40 during the shooting of Beauty and The Beast, the title song of which won him a posthumous Oscar.

He and composer-collaborator Alan Menken had earlier tasted Oscars glory with ‘Under the Sea’ from The Little Mermaid. Both Oscars came after Disney signed him up following the huge Off-Broadway success of The Little Shop of Horrors which ran for five years at the Orpheum Theatre having transferred from the hole-in-the-wall WPA, a tiny space above a doughnut shop, which he set up with his first serious boyfriend, Stuart ‘Snooze’ White.

The pair had met at university in Indiana and arrived in New York with their eyes firmly on taking Broadway by storm. But. ‘Snooze’, originally so full of energy and ideas, got disheartened by the competition in the Big Apple, didn’t want to work and drank too much. They split up and, with no money coming in, Ashman briefly thought of ditching his showbiz dream and going into publishing.

Luckily for him and us, The Little Shop of Horrors with its black comedy and hit song ‘Suddenly, Seymour’ was just around the corner as was the chance meeting in a New York bar with Bill Lauch, who was to become the lifetime partner Ashman had always wanted.

Lauch, an architect, designed the house they were to live in and became Ashman’s rock when he fell victim to “the gay cancer” in the early 1980s. That was before the world came up with a name for the epidemic which took so many lives before the right treatment was discovered.

Because he feared Disney, with its audience mainly of children, would no longer employ him if it became known he had AIDS, Ashman tried to keep it a secret. This documentary does not shy away from showing video of his last few years but when he died Ashman weighed only 80lb, was blind and could barely speak.

Thankfully, his legacy lives on. From small beginnings with God Bless You, Mr Rosewater in 1979 to the rock-style Little Shop three years later (“the first monster musical to be staged”) to such Disney classics Beauty and The Beast (Angela Lansbury, who played Mrs Potts, sang the title song), Aladdin and Smile (the collaboration with Marvin Hamlisch “never really clicked” said one observer).

Hamlisch, with his proven Broadway pedigree and Oscars to match, was the star and that didn’t suit Ashman, a man used to having his own way.

With deft use of black-and-white footage and interviews with fellow-creatives and his Baltimore family – Howard’s father worked in an ice-cream cone factory, mother a part-time singer – friends and fellow creatives, director Don Hahn has pieced together a 94-minute documentary about a man whose work meant everything to him.

He didn’t play a musical instrument, which was a surprise, and was a decent actor, singer and director, but it is for his songwriting, particularly in a long collaboration with Menken – they were the go-to team when Disney went into musical mode – that he is most remembered.

We saw how he coaxed the best out of Paige O’Hara, who voiced the heroine Belle in Beauty and The Beast at rehearsals, always respectful, never a shouter, and Jodi Benson, who spoke and sang for Ariel in The Little Mermaid.

But there were no clues as to his interests outside songwriting and a happy domestic life (the loyal Lauch graciously accepted the posthumous Oscar for Beauty and The Beast on behalf of his partner).

While it will only have limited appeal outside Disney aficionados and Shop of Horror addicts, Howard is worth viewing for what goes on behind the scenes and as a tribute to a formidable talent.

Jeremy Chapman