OAR on Beauty and the Beast? (1 Viewer)

[AaronMK]

The illiteracy of Le Fou has never been in any theatrical release of the movie. It only appears on the soundtrack (don't ask me why). I don't know about the WIP, but it was not there any of the four times I saw it during its original release.

 

[David Williams]

The illiteracy of Le Fou has never been in any theatrical release of the movie.

I must not be the only one to remember this, as the Alternate Versions section of the IMDB entry on the film has this little blurb:
"On the soundtrack and in the film that first was screened, there is a scene during the "Gaston" song in which Lefou tries to spell Gaston's name and then gives up. This scene is not in the video version."
Maybe it's a case of people hearing the soundtrack and having false memories of the part in the film or perhaps it's like Episode I where slightly different versions of Darth Maul's death were on different prints of the film. Maybe early prints of BatB had the part in it and later prints had already been edited. Who knows?

 

[AaronMK]

"On the soundtrack and in the film that first was screened, there is a scene during the "Gaston" song in which Lefou tries to spell Gaston's name and then gives up. This scene is not in the video version."

I always understood this to be refering to when an %80 complete version of the film that was first screened at the New York Film Festival (the Work in Progress).

If it was on some prints, but not others of the final release, that would explain the confusion and it being left on the soundtrack (still to this day).

 

[Marty Christion]

I'm really skeptical of the whole "film got edited after it's release" conspiracy theory, where people suggest 2,000+ prints of a film were shipped, and then a studio shipped 2,000+ replacement reels, and projectionists had to re-build the film with a swapped out reel (with the offending footage being archived with Biggs and the shot of the skull being opened in Hannibal).

This is hardly something that could be done quietly or cheaply. And it would probably only be done in response to public pressure or embarrassment. And in the case of Aladdin, there was public pressure (from an Arab group) objecting to the "they cut off your ear if they don't like your face, it's barbaric, but hey, it's home" line, and Disney did change it, but only in the video release. So unless proven otherwise (by a news article from the time, or something like that), I'm going to assume it was never in the film.