Ursula (The Little Mermaid) from the sea. Ursula's appearance was also based on that of the character Norma Desmond, who appears in the film "Sunset Boulevard" (1950). Divine never lived to see his own likeness appear in "The Little Mermaid"; the actor died in 1988, one year before the film's release. However, his cohorts agree that Divine would have greatly enjoyed Ursula. Documentarian Jeffrey Schwartz joked that the actor would have wanted to play Ursula himself had he known about the character, having once told Waters "When I was young, all I wanted to be was a Disney villain". About.com's David Nusair observed that
The Flounder brilliant writing in "The Flounder". For a writer justly famous for extended humorous and grotesque scenes, Grass also has a flair for one-liners. Herbert Mitgang of the "New York Times" noted that the novel was about "women, men and the state of the world" and since all are controversial, so was the reaction to Grass' novel. It defies an easy summary, as the narrator tells of his many lives as a husband, including as a lover to 11 women cooks. The Flounder The Flounder () is a 1977 novel by the German writer Günter Grass. It is loosely based on