Country Estates at Valley Senior Living

A wonderful place to call home. Combine the freedom of independence and community with all the amenities of Town Square.

DISNEY PRINCESSES (continued):

• After a 30-year drought of princesses, “The Little Mermaid” premiered in 1989, introducing the red-haired Ariel. The film’s animation was a monumental task, and due to a shortage of manpower at Disney, the company hired a Chinese animation studio to draw over a million bubbles by hand. And so marked the end of an era in which Disney films were created in the traditional method of hand-painting frames. After “The Little Mermaid,” digital animation became the practice. Of all the Disney characters, Ariel was the one who has sung more songs than any other. She was voiced by actress Jodi Benson, who also voiced the film’s character Vanessa, who was Ursula the Sea Witch in disguise. The film collected $84 million for its debut, and another $27 million at its theater re-release eight years later. Its lifetime gross worldwide is $235 million on a budget of $40 million. Two Oscars were awarded for the film’s musical score and best song.

• Disney’s 1991 story of “Beauty and the Beast” was loosely based on a French fairy tale, “La Belle et la Bete.” Screenwriter for the film, Linda Woolverton, says that her interpretation of Belle was inspired by Katharine Hepburn’s performance as Jo March in the 1933 film “Little Women.” The idea for Belle’s yellow ball gown was borrowed from Audrey Hepburn’s gown in the 1953 movie “Roman Holiday.” Careful viewers will notice that Belle is the only person in her village to wear the color blue, symbolic of her being an outsider among the townspeople. When production of the animated feature ran behind schedule, the studio re-used the animation from the dance between Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip in “Sleeping Beauty” for Belle’s dance with Prince Adam.