Beauty and the Beast (1991 film) servants' human forms. The Prince and Belle host a ball for the kingdom, where they dance happily. After the success of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in 1937, Walt Disney sought out other stories to adapt into feature films, with "Beauty and the Beast" being among the stories he considered. Attempts to develop the "Beauty and the Beast" story into a film were made in the 1930s and 1950s, but were ultimately given up because it "proved to be a challenge" for the story team. Peter M. Nichols states Disney may later have been discouraged by Jean Cocteau having
Beauty and the Beast Beauty and the Beast Beauty and the Beast () is a fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in "La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins" ("The Young American and Marine Tales"). Her lengthy version was abridged, rewritten, and published first by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756 in "Magasin des enfants" ("Children's Collection") and by Andrew Lang in the "Blue Fairy Book" of his "Fairy Book" series in 1889, to produce the version(s) most commonly retold. It was influenced by some earlier stories, such as "Cupid and Psyche", "The Golden Ass" written