‘Beauty and the Beast’s‘ Alan Menken takes pride in carrying the vision of his songwriting partner Howard Ashman

Howard Ash­man and Alan Men­ken were the dy­nam­ic duo be­hind the hit songs fea­tured in a string of Dis­ney an­im­ated mu­sic­als, in­clud­ing 1989’s “The Little Mer­maid,” 1991’s “Beauty and the Beast” and 1992’s “Alad­din.” After Ash­man passed away in 1991, Men­ken con­tin­ued to pen songs for the stu­dio, and has most re­cently re­worked their ori­gin­al com­pos­i­tions for Dis­ney’s new live-ac­tion ver­sion of “Beauty and the Beast.”