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Jerry Orbach & Angela Lansbury
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Jerry Orbach & Angela Lansbury · Jerry Orbach and Angela Lansbury were an American and a British actor who both also sang. In the 1991 Disney film Beauty and the Beast they voiced two enchanted household objects: Orbach was the candelabrum Lumière and Lansbury the teapot Mrs. Potts. Together they appear on the soundtrack with the song Be Our Guest, one of the great numbers of the film. The music was by Alan Menken, the lyrics by Howard Ashman.
Music and breakthrough
Orbach was familiar to Broadway audiences, where he played in Chicago among other shows, and later as a detective in the television series Law & Order. Lansbury was a versatile actress with a long career in film, theatre and television. She played the lead in the television series Murder, She Wrote, which ran from 1984 to 1996, lasted twelve seasons and became one of the most successful and longest-running television series ever. She received ten Golden Globe nominations for it, of which she won four. Earlier she appeared in film adaptations of Agatha Christie, including as Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd (1980).
Influence
For the history of popular music, Be Our Guest matters above all as an example of the new flowering of the Disney musical in the 1990s, in which the songs took on a full role in the story. The song is a showstopper in the style of revue theatre: full of pace, with chorus and large orchestration, and a singer who addresses the audience directly.
Listening
Be Our Guest · Jerry Orbach & Angela Lansbury, 1991