Alan Menken stands out as a composer and lyricist whose melodies have defined Disney films since the close of the 1980s, among them the chart successes “Whole New World” from Aladdin and “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas. His early collaboration with lyricist Howard Ashman, which lasted until Ashman’s death in 1991, yielded the film-musical landmarks Little Shop of Horrors in 1986, The Little Mermaid in 1989, and Beauty and the Beast in 1991. The last of these brought Menken Academy Awards for both Best Original Score and Best Original Song, honors repeated for 1992’s Aladdin, begun with Ashman and finished alongside lyricist Tim Rice. A subsequent partnership with Stephen Schwartz produced further Oscar victories for best score and best song on 1995’s Pocahontas, followed by additional nominations for Disney’s animated The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1996 and the live-action Enchanted in 2007. Menken secured his eleventh Grammy for the song “I See the Light” from the 2010 Disney release Tangled, written with lyricist Glenn Slater. Meanwhile, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid reached new audiences on Broadway, where Menken earned his first Tony for the 2012 stage version of his 1992 film musical Newsies, again with Jack Feldman supplying lyrics. Completion of the EGOT came in 2020 when Menken received a Daytime Emmy for “Waiting in the Wings,” another Slater collaboration, featured in Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure. Fresh material arrived with the 2023 live-action The Little Mermaid, for which Menken composed additional songs together with Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Alan Irwin Menken entered the world in Manhattan on July 22, 1949, into a family already immersed in show business; his father practiced dentistry while playing piano, and his mother performed as an actress, wrote plays, and directed for the stage. Piano and violin instruction began in childhood, and by age nine Menken was submitting entries to composing contests aimed at young musicians. Following graduation from New Rochelle High School he attended New York University, finishing a musicology degree in 1971. Certainty about his vocation arrived only after he joined the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop led by Lehman Engel. Between 1974 and 1978 Menken presented pieces developed in that workshop while also serving as accompanist, arranger, jingle composer, vocal coach, musical director for club performers, and songwriter for Sesame Street. Several numbers reached off-Broadway revues, and his own revue Patch, Patch, Patch appeared at New York’s West Band Café in 1979.
Breakthrough arrived via the 1979 musical adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, whose book and lyrics came from Howard Ashman, music from Menken, and further lyrics from Dennis Green. The show opened at the WPA Theatre before running six weeks off-Broadway. Ashman and Menken kept writing together on unfinished projects and on Little Shop of Horrors, drawn from Roger Corman’s 1960 cult horror-comedy. The stage version, scored for nine performers plus a puppeteer, premiered at the WPA Theatre in 1982. After five years off-Broadway, during which it set the venue’s box-office record, the musical toured and then transferred to the screen; Frank Oz’s film adaptation reached theaters in late 1986. Menken and Ashman earned their first Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song with “Mean Green Mother from Outer Space,” the first Oscar-nominated song to include profanity.
A 1987 Philadelphia production of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, based on the 1959 Mordecai Richler novel and written by Menken with lyricist David Spencer, followed. With Ashman he then began work on songs for Disney’s The Little Mermaid, drawn from the Hans Christian Andersen tale and the studio’s first major animated musical in more than twenty years. The 1989 release proved a box-office triumph, and the songwriting pair took an Oscar for the calypso number “Under the Sea,” which prevailed over their own “Kiss the Girl.” Two Grammys also went to the duo: Best Recording for Children for the soundtrack and Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television for “Under the Sea.” Another Oscar arrived two years later for the title song of Beauty and the Beast; “Be Our Guest” and “Belle” likewise received Best Original Song nominations. Two more Grammys recognized the writing of “Beauty and the Beast” and the soundtrack album itself. Having received an AIDS diagnosis in 1988, Ashman died on March 14, 1991, after the pair had completed three songs for the 1992 Disney feature Aladdin. One of those, “Friend Like Me,” brought Ashman and Menken a seventh Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. Tim Rice joined to finish Aladdin, supplying lyrics that included those for “A Whole New World.” A radio duet by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle appeared in late 1992 and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1993.
Concurrently Menken worked with lyricist Jack Feldman on songs for the live-action Disney film Newsies, which appeared in 1992 alongside Aladdin, while the WPA Theatre staged the Menken musical Weird Romance with lyrics by David Spencer. Another Menken musical, A Christmas Carol adapted from Charles Dickens with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, opened at Madison Square Garden’s Paramount Theater in 1994 and became an annual Midtown holiday event. Broadway debut followed with the Disney-produced stage adaptation of Beauty and the Beast; the production opened in 1994 and ran thirteen years. Continued Disney projects paired Menken with Stephen Schwartz for 1995’s Pocahontas, whose writing team collected Oscars the next year for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score and Best Original Song for “Colors of the Wind.” One year later Menken and Schwartz were nominated for their score to Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and Menken with David Zippel earned an Oscar nomination for “Go the Distance” from 1997’s Hercules, his seventh Disney film musical.
In subsequent years Menken’s themes surfaced in Disney television spin-offs, video games, and sequels such as the 2000 direct-to-video The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. Menken and Slater reunited for six songs on the 2004 animated Home on the Range, for which Menken also supplied the score, and in 2007 he and Schwartz wrote songs for the Disney live-action Enchanted, earning three Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song—“Happy Working Song,” “So Close,” and “That’s How You Know.” A Broadway adaptation of The Little Mermaid opened in 2008 and brought a Tony nomination for best original score; that same year Menken entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The 2010 animated Tangled featured Menken’s score and songs written with Glenn Slater; its soundtrack album delivered Menken’s eleventh Grammy when he and Slater won Best Song Written for Visual Media for “I See the Light,” itself an Oscar nominee.
Menken’s 2006 stage version of Sister Act, again with Slater as lyricist, reached Broadway in 2011 and produced another Tony nomination for score. His first Tony Award arrived with the 2012 Broadway adaptation of Newsies, which closed after 1,004 performances in 2014 before embarking on a national tour. Outside Disney, Menken supplied songs with Tim Rice for the animated Jock in 2011 and composed the score for the live-action Mirror Mirror in 2012. A stage adaptation of Aladdin opened on Broadway in 2014, earning a Tony nomination for score credited to Menken, Howard Ashman, Tim Rice, and Chad Beguelin, who wrote the book and additional lyrics. The 2016 animated comedy Sausage Party paired Menken with Christopher Lennertz on the score and with Glenn Slater and others on the song “The Great Beyond.” That year a staged concert of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater took place at New York City Center, its cast—including Skylar Astin and James Earl Jones—issuing the musical’s first studio recording in 2017. Menken rejoined Rice to write three new songs for the 2017 live-action Beauty and the Beast. A live-action Aladdin followed in 2019, introducing the new song “Speechless” by Menken with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. The following year Menken completed the EGOT by winning an Emmy with Slater for “Waiting in the Wings” from an episode of Tangled: The Series.
Menken and Schwartz next contributed songs to the Enchanted sequel Disenchanted in 2022. In 2023 Menken remained active with the release of a filmed Aladdin: The Broadway Musical, a live-action The Little Mermaid that retained Menken-Ashman classics while adding new songs with Lin-Manuel Miranda, and the CGI fantasy Spellbound, whose score and songs were written by Menken with assistance from Slater.
