Where we left off last week, the earliest example of our current version of the curse was Robin McKinley’s Beauty, and for a long time, I couldn’t find anything else.
Did Robin McKinley singlehandedly change the story? Or, I guess, change it with the aid of Disney, taking the idea and running with it?
The late 1970s seems like much too late for a something that’s such a fundamental part of our understanding of the story now. And Robin McKinley’s mention of the Beast being rightfully punished is so casual—it doesn’t feel like she’s introducing an exciting new variation to a classic story. It doesn’t have enough importance to the overall story to make sense as a new element.
I found one other variant with a good fairy/bad prince—the picture book Beauty and the Beast, with text by Marianne Meyer and art by Mercer Meyer. This was originally published in the same year as Beauty—1978. It remains an extremely popular version even today, still in print, still spotted in bookstores. It’s possible that this was at least a significant influence on the current pop culture version of the story.
But Meyer's book came out 2 months before McKinley's—there's no way they influenced each other. McKinley's would have been completely finished long before she had access to Meyer's. Which means there must have been another, earlier source than influenced them both, unless they both came up with the same change independently, which seems unlikely. The odds of two independent writers making the same change to the same well-known story in the same year, with no outside influences are pretty low.
It took me several more weeks to find any promising potential sources. And when I did, it was on Wikipedia. But don’t worry, I only started there. The primary sources have been located, and the accuracy of the Wikipedia article has been confirmed.
Henri Pourrat published over 1000 French fairy tales in the 1940s and 1950s, which were translated into English in the 1950s. Which means his works could easily have been available to and influential for a young McKinley and a young Meyer, twenty years before they wrote their books.
Pourrat’s version is called Belle-Rose, or The Lovely Rose, depending on the translation. It doesn’t deviate enough from the standard Beauty and the Beast to warrant its own post, so I’m just gonna highlight some key differences. The mother is alive. The beast is described as having a muzzle like a mastiff, paws like a lizard, and a body and tail like a salamander, with skin as wrinkled as a turkey’s neck and as slimy as a frog’s. So, like, this dude is gross. Spell is broken when the daughter of a poor man touches him without being asked and without shuddering.
And the important part: the casting of the spell. As the Beast puts it, “All I could think of was revelry and battles; nothing did I know of pity and charity. Beggars disgusted me, with their rags and their sores. One day, when I mocked at a poor man who asked for bread at the door, I beheld myself changed into a Beast.” (translated by Mary Mian).
So. Here we have not just a very clear bad prince, but one whose curse will look very familiar to anyone who’s seen the Disney movie. Even if this didn’t influence McKinley and Meyer, I very much suspect it influenced Disney.
After I found this story, I was ready to give up. Nothing else had panned out. But there was one version of Beauty and the Beast I wasn't able to access.
Shirley Temple had a fairy tale TV show - Shirley Temple's Storybook - which ran from 1958-1961. The first episode featured a version of Beauty and the Beast starring Charlton Heston. This may or may not have once been released on VHS, but if so I can’t find it. It was never released on DVD. It doesn’t seem to be available online. I can’t find a script or detailed summary.
A book associated with the first season of the series came out in 1958. For a while it looked like I wasn't going to be able to access that, either. It was difficult to find a library willing to send it to me. I was ready to give up on the whole thing and just assume Shirley Temple's version wasn't noteworthy. But I just got the book today. And this is what it says about the spell:
"A magician cast a spell over me and condemned me to remain in that form...Because I was proud and thoughtless, vain and selfish, he made me look as I really was."
If the book features a good fairy and bad Beast, the TV show it's based on almost certainly does as well.
Things get a little weird when we try to work out who actually made the change; Shirley Temple wasn't writing her own scripts. The book attributes the story to Andrew Lang, but this is not Andrew Lang's version. I read Lang's version from multiple sources just to make sure there wasn't a fluke; Andrew Lang absolutely did not write the Shirley Temple version.
The IMBD page for the TV episode lists the writers as Lang, Beaumont, and Joseph Schrank. This element of the story certainly didn't come from Lang or Beaumont, so it looks like we can probably trace this whole thing back to Joseph Schrank.
Shirley Temple's Storybook is a much more likely source of the shift than Belle Rose, although I do still suspect it influenced Disney somewhat. I'm so glad I kept investigating the Shirley Temple thing. This was a very popular show at the time, and the book is a picture book published by Random House, with Shirley Temple's name on the cover, which means it was likely much more popular and more widely available than the Pourrat translation. This version was likely watched and read by children, was likely the first exposure to the story for many, which means it would easily be accepted and remembered as How The Story Was Supposed To Be. Robin McKinley would have been six when this came out. Mayer would have been 13.
So. If you've ever wondered, like me, why everyone keeps vilifying our completely innocent Beast, you can blame Shirley Temple.
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