Hmmm, I don't know if an 50's Beauty and the Beast would be better. The technology used in B&B gave the movie a very special effect, and if it were made in the 50's, dialogue wouldn't be so great. Jokes would be totally different. No, I'm going for the final-version-from-the-90's-would-have-been-the-best approach.

Ditto to empoor.  B&B was more of an homage to 1960's musicals (consider the scene where Belle sings her reprise and spins overlooking a mountain- straight out of the "Sound of Music") than to Disney fairy tale animated features.  I always found the pre-Little Mermaid Disney fairytales a little stilted and hard to connect with.  

Kind of ironic that I literally JUST finished the chapter in Gabler's biography of Walt where he talks about making Sleeping Beauty. Most of the animators involved blamed Walt for its failures, because they claimed he wasn't involved enough in the film, yet meddled just enough to muddy up the direction they were taking. Walt had them so focused on how the film was supposed to LOOK, that they sort of forgot about the story ...

Anyhoo ... I'm kind of glad they left BatB for later. I'm kind of afraid what an earlier version would have turned out like, given the environment they were working in at WDFA around that time period.

After seeing that artwork for Don Quixote, it is inevitable I am hoping that the movie will be put into production.  The designs look fantastic and the movie would certainly do justice to the original story.  Give John Cleese the part of the voice of Don Quixote and Cheech Marin perhaps the voice of Sancho and it would be magic.  I would love to see this come to the screen.  I am hoping that Disney finally dusts this ff and gives it a shot.

"Give John Cleese the part of the voice of Don Quixote and Cheech Marin perhaps the voice of Sancho and it would be magic."

Hahaha, seconded!

I'm glad, however, that the production teams put Beauty and the Beast on hold - not just because of technological advancements, but because I'm so fond of how the younger team developed the characters in the movie.  To place that movie in a different time period would have warped it so far from what it is now - I highly doubt we'd have the "social outcasts in love" story we have now, nor would the fabuloud voice actors be ready to play the parts.  Sometimes, things just have to wait. :D

Shot in the Dark but I'm going to say that Ed Wynn would have played Don Quixote.

"I'm serious, folks. In a 1965 interview with columnist Peter Bart, Disney actually said that he'd "never again" allow WDFA to make an animated film that was based on a well-known children's classic or fairy tale..."

I think I'm going to be sick... :X

But seriously, this kinda makes me wonder what would've happened if they waited a while to finish The Black Cauldron. It seemed ill-advised that they insisted on finishing such an ambitious story when they weren't doing much to keep old and new animators interested.

As for Sleeping Beauty, if Walt had given more attention to the story development, I imagine that the enivornment for their animation department would've fared better thru the 1960's. The failure of Sleeping Beuaty nearly coincided with what was the beginning of a professional decline in the animation industry at the time.

It's been years since I've seen Sleeping Beauty, but I know the flick has its fans, so I have to say...

After all of the stories about box office disappointments over the last year, isn't it fairly amusing that at least a few of the classics (Sleeping Beuaty, Fantasia) took numerous rereleases to break even?

Interestingly, just before Disney announced their production of "B&B", Don Bluth had a featured article in his quarterly magazine, "Exposure Sheet", announcing  that would be his next film. (I still have my copy). This was before "American Tale".

It depends on who you listen to as to which studio actually had the idea first.

"But "Sleeping Beauty" (due to its enormous production & promotional costs) remained in the red for nearly another twenty years. Even what this animated feature earned during its 1970 re-release wasn't enough to move SB into the black. Only in 1979, after the film's second re-release, did "Sleeping Beauty" finally officially recover all of its original production & promotional costs and then begin earning a profit for the Mouse."

Wow! Even CARS wasn't that bad. When do we get to read the story about how much of a failure SLEEPING BEAUTY was and is? I mean it HAS to be a failure, right? Cuz' I'm sure that taking around 20 years to get out of the red was below just about everyone's expectations.

Just asking.  ;o)

excuse my english. german is my first langige.

sleepings beauty may haves failed but its one of disney most beautiful film. very very european.

in Ukraine it one of favorite disney cartoons.

it is bettered only by disney's own pebble and the penguin.

that film will be bettered perhaps onlys by disney themselves.