<P> Originally, Beauty and the Beast, under the direction of Richard Purdum, was not intended to be a musical . Then - studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg made the decision to turn the film into a Broadway - style musical similar to The Little Mermaid (1989), Disney's previous animated film, after he, displeased with the film's initial story reel, ordered the film scrapped and restarted from scratch . As a result, Purdum resigned, and first - time feature film directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale replaced him . </P> <P> Following the Academy Award - winning success of The Little Mermaid, Katzenberg asked The Little Mermaid songwriting duo of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken to write the songs for and score Beauty and the Beast . At first Ashman, who was at the time writing songs with Menken for a recently pitched idea for another Disney film called Aladdin (1992), was reluctant to join the struggling film project, but eventually agreed . </P> <P> Musically, "Be Our Guest" is based on a simple melody that was composed by Menken, who initially had little intention of using it as anything more than just a "dummy ." Upon singing the tune and presenting it to co-writer Ashman, Menken discovered that he was unable to come up with a melody capable of surpassing "that dumb piece of music that I wrote initially because it was just right ." Subsequently, Ashman wrote the song's lyrics . </P> <P> Originally, the filmmakers had initially intended for "Be Our Guest" to be performed by Lumiere to Belle's disoriented father Maurice when the character first discovers the Beast's castle . According to co-director Gary Trousdale, "The song had already been recorded and the sequence partially animated when we decided that it would be more meaningful if it was directed towards Belle" because "she is one of the two main characters and the story revolves around her coming to the castle ." Consequently, the song had to be re-written and the entire scene re-animated . Trousdale explained, "We had to bring Jerry Orbach and all the other vocal talents back into the studio to change all references to gender that appeared in the original recording ." </P>

Beauty and the beast song be our guest