This Day in Pop Culture for November 22

1985: The Successful, Yet Failed Attempt of an Indiana Jones Spoof

Produced by Cannon Films, J. Lee Thompson directed the infamous King Solomon’s Mines. It was an action movie based on H. Rider Haggard’s novel of the same name but was also intended to be a spoof of the Indiana Jones’ movies. It even starred John Rhys-Davies who played Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In King Solomon’s Mines, Jesse Huston (Sharon Stone) hires Allan Quatermain (Richard Chamberlain, complete with fedora) to find her long lost father, Professor Jediah Huston (Bernard Archard). It was believed that Jediah was on a mission to find King Solomon’s Mines and became captured.

Chamberlain was thrilled to make the movie. Kathleen Turner was first offered the role of Jesse, but she refused because the character was too similar to the one she played in Romancing the Stone, which has also been compared to Indian Jones’ movies. The movie’s eventual sequel, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, was filmed back-to-back.

King Solomon’s Mines opened as the #1 movie for its opening week and made a fairly good profit. However, the movie received terrible reviews. It currently holds an 8% “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for two Razzies. The sequel, which opened two years later, was a commercial flop.

As recently as 2011, a third movie, Allan Quatermain and the Jewel of the East, was proposed and again, Chamberlain was all for it. But alas, it was not meant to be. (Image: TVDB)

1995: Pixar’s First Full-Length Picture Opens

In the early days, Pixar’s reputation was much like Walt Disney’s. By the early 1990’s, Pixar was known for being masters of short films and TV commercials and that is when the “house of mouse” approached them to create a full-length feature film. Creating shorts was one thing, but creating a full-length animated production was something else – much like Disney branching out from short films to the iconic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Directed by John Lasseter, Toy Story was Pixar’s first computer-animated film and the one all of the others that have followed it are measured by. The film went through a number of plot and character revisions since Disney’s team (lead by Jeffrey Katzenberg) and Pixar’s team (Lead by Lassester) couldn’t see eye-to-eye.

Disney’s animators were resentful that “outsiders” came in to do their work. Rumor has it that Katzenberg wanted an edgier story with adult references and the character of Woody to be much more of a jerk.

In the end, Lassester was given the green light to produce the film that he wanted to make which also fit very nicely with Disney’s legacy of films. Toy Story went on to earn over $361 million, and the reviews were almost completely positive. It is considered to be one of the best animated films ever made which was followed by four sequels and a variety of shorts and TV specials.

1991: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Waltzes in Theaters

While Walt Disney wanted to create an adaptation of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s Beauty and the Beast story as early as the 1930s but the movie didn’t arrive in theaters until this day in 1991.

Originally, Walt Disney Pictures’ 30th animated feature wasn’t planned to be a musical, but after the success of The Little Mermaid, those plans were changed. The film was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, the screenplay was written by Linda Woolverton, Alan Menken wrote the songs, and Howard Ashman wrote the lyrics.

The story centers on a spoiled prince (voiced by Robby Benson) who was cursed to become an ugly beast who could only change back after he found true love. The “beauty” of the story was Belle (Paige O’Hara) who volunteered to be imprisoned by the Beast in exchange for her father’s freedom. Add a few animated household objects like a teapot, clock and candlestick (Angela Lansbury, David Ogden Stiers and Jerry Orbach) a happy ending, and a few songs and you got yourself a classic.

During the film’s first release, it made over $425 million on a $25 million budget. The film won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture that year and was nominated for an Oscar for the same category. Though it didn’t win the Academy Award for Best Picture, it did win for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.

In 1994, the movie was adapted into a Broadway stage musical, and the live-action remake of the film was released in March of 2017.