20 facts you might not know about 'The Little Mermaid'

Hans Christian Andersen probably didn’t figure that he would have such a lasting cultural impact. However, his fairytales have inspired many movies. Perhaps his most successful story was The Little Mermaid. There’s even a statue dedicated to his 1837 story in Copenhagen, Denmark, the city Andersen lived in when the story was published.

Andersen gave us a mermaid who wanted to walk on land and a sea witch, but do you remember the part of The Little Mermaid where it feels like she is walking on knives with every step she takes? Or when she is offered the chance to kill the prince she loves to return to the land? Or when she dies and turns into sea foam? No? That’s because none of that stuff from the original story made the Disney movie, for obvious reasons.

Walt Disney wanted to make a Little Mermaid film, which means he was still alive when the idea first came to fruition. Disney had plans for an anthology movie based on Andersen's fairytales after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came out in 1937. That never came to fruition, though.

Ron Clements, who had co-directed The Great Mouse Detective with John Musker for Disney, had stumbled upon The Little Mermaid in 1985 and started to think about adapting it. As recalled in a 2016 interview with Yahoo, Clements and Musker took the idea to Disney production head honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg at an all-hands-on-deck pitch meeting. Katzenberg passed because, at the time, there were plans for a sequel to Splash. Then, the next day, he had a change of heart and greenlit Clements’ idea.

The Little Mermaid was set aside at Disney for a bit so the studio could focus on two other films: Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Oliver & Company. Songwriter Howard Ashman, best known at the time for “Little Shop of Horrors,” was asked to contribute a song for the latter. This led to Ashman joining the production of The Little Mermaid in 1987, which helped turn the movie into a musical. Ashman got composer Alan Menken on board, who had worked with him on “Little Shop of Horrors."

Initially, there was a minor crab character in the Disney movie. We speak, of course, of Clarence, the British butler crab. Ashman suggested they turn Clarence into Sebastian and make him Jamaican. This also helped push the direction of the music in the film.

Ashman had an inspiration for the villainous Ursula, and that was Joan Collins as Alexis Carrington on Dynasty. This was probably more about her vibe and personality. Ultimately, the biggest inspiration for the sea witch was Divine, the drag queen character made famous in the works of John Waters.

Disney wanted Bea Arthur to voice Ursula, but she turned them down. After this, they were able to cast Elaine Stritch in the role. However, Stritch and Ashman didn’t get along, so she was booted from the role. At this point, Pat Carroll signed on to play Ursula, and she managed to stick in the role.

The Little Mermaid predates Robin Williams in Aladdin, which changed how voiceover roles were cast forever. You didn’t have to be famous to have a voice in a Disney movie, though some future stars auditioned for this film. Jim Carrey tried out to play Prince Eric, a role that went to Christopher Daniel Barnes. Bill Maher and Michael Richards both auditioned for Scuttle, a part played by veteran comedian Buddy Hackett.

Animator Glen Keane was one of the lead artists in charge of Ariel's character. He has said, such as in a 2018 interview with Brit + Co, that Ariel looks exactly like his wife but with fins. Meanwhile, the personality of the teenage mermaid was based on Alyssa Milano on Who’s the Boss? Her hair’s motion underwater was based on Sally Ride’s hair in space.

Ariel is the first Disney princess with biological siblings, and she has plenty of them. The sisters have tails that cover all seven traditional colors of the rainbow. Ariel is repping green on that front.

The Little Mermaid was the end of an era. This was the last feature film produced by Disney that was animated in the traditional method of hand-painting cels. Digital animation came into play starting with Disney’s next movie, The Rescuers Down Under.

An alternate version of Ursula’s big song “Poor Unfortunate Souls” would have let us in a little more on the story of the sea witch. This scene went into why Ursula had been banned from the kingdom by Triton. Ultimately, it was cut from the final film, leaving Ursula’s character arc a bit of a mystery.

“Part of Your World” was nearly nixed from The Little Mermaid. A test screening for some rowdy kids got Katzenberg worried that the song wasn’t working. However, as voice actress Jodi Benson relayed to Polygon in 2019, the directors and songwriters fought for it. Another test screening went well enough for the song to be kept, much to the relief of future moviegoers.

Katzenberg may have greenlit The Little Mermaid, but he was initially skeptical. He was worried that it was a “girls film” and predicted it would make less money than Oliver & Company. Then, he saw the film come together and came to believe in it. The film made $84.4 million domestically in 1989, making more money in its initial run than any prior animated movie. By the way, that was 64 percent more than Oliver & Company made.

The Little Mermaid picked up three Oscar nominations, making it the first Disney movie to get nominated since The Rescuers in 1977. It won two awards — Best Original Score and Best Original Song ("Under the Sea"). By the way, nobody was disappointed they didn’t win the third nomination. That was for Best Original Song for “Kiss the Girl.” Ashman and Menken beat themselves.

People have a weird preoccupation with the idea that “adult” things have been slipped into Disney movies. Of course, by doing two seconds of research, you find out most of them are dubious — if not provably wrong. (Not all of them, but that’s a story for another day.) 

In The Little Mermaid, a rumor surfaced that the priest performing the wedding is showing some, shall we say, excitement in his pants, but it’s actually just his knee. Some also noted that a part of the castle on the VHS cover for the movie was rather phallic, which spiraled into urban legends of aggrieved graphic designers putting one past Disney. There is zero evidence of that, though they did change the look of the cover for the movie's second VHS release.

In truth, Disney was not having much success with animated movies after the 1950s. They started focusing more on live-action films, and animation fell by the wayside. The Little Mermaid was the studio's first commercially and critically animated hit since The Rescuers in 1977. It also helped revitalize the Disney musical, which had fallen by the wayside.

Like most movies of the era, The Little Mermaid got a couple of direct-to-video sequels. These two were quite delayed, though. Return to the Sea came out in 2000 and focuses on Ariel’s daughter, Melody. In 2008, we got a prequel called Ariel’s Beginning. There was also, briefly, a cartoon on CBS in 1992.

Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but Disney is remaking The Little Mermaid as a live-action film. Halle Bailey is playing Ariel, and Melissa McCarthy was cast to bring Ursula to life. We’re also getting Daveed Diggs voicing Sebastian, Javier Bardem as King Triton, and Awkwafina as Scuttle. The film is scheduled to be released in May of 2023.