ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 9, 1996 TAG: 9609100094
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
SOURCE: JOHN WOOLARD KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Linda Woolverton lives in a palace.
She has a profession that puts her among entertainment royalty.
She has a rewarding family life, centering around her 5-year-old daughter and a husband she says is a prince of a guy.
She even has two beautiful dogs.
No wonder she's so good at writing fairy tales.
So good that she has written two of the most successful animated films in history, Disney's ``Beauty and the Beast'' and ``The Lion King,'' works that have placed her among the most sought-after scriptwriters in the performance world.
``Looking at my career, I'd have to say that I've been charmed professionally,'' says Woolverton, speaking from the study of her more-than-fashionable home in a more-than-swank section of Los Angeles' Hancock Park, where she lives with her husband, producer Lee Flicker, and her daughter, Keaton, and their two rare, blue merle collies. ``When I was a kid, I didn't set becoming a screenwriter as a goal. It just happened that way.
``But,'' the Long Beach, Calif., native adds, ``It happened that way because I made it happen. I worked at it and I definitely paid my dues.''
Dues such as years of staging children's plays in shopping malls, which led to her opening her own children's theater and the writing of her first play, ``Princess Maggie.''
Dues such as working as a secretary at CBS, where she eventually became a programming executive and where she wrote the first of two children's novels, ``Star Wind,'' during her lunch breaks.
Dues such as quitting CBS and taking a job as a substitute teacher while she penned her second novel, ``Running Before the Wind'' and writing a trial script that placed her on the ``Muppet Babies'' cartoon show staff. This combination landed her smack in the middle of ``Beauty and the Beast.''
``I wanted to work for Disney, but my agent at the time kept discouraging me, telling me I wasn't ready for them,'' Woolverton says. ``But I thought I was and I just went over to Disney and dropped off a copy of my book (``Running Before the Wind'') and asked the secretary there to please give it to somebody to read.
``I did that on a Friday, and on that Sunday afternoon I got a call from a Disney executive, asking me to come in for an interview. In Hollywood, when you write a book, it opens a lot of doors. They say `Ooh, you must know how to write a sentence.' It's that subject-predicate thing.''
Soon afterward, Woolverton was hired to write the screenplay for ``Beauty and the Beast,'' a four-year endeavor that eventually won three Golden Globes and became the first animated film to receive an Academy Award Best Picture nomination.
```Beauty and the Beast' was my big break,'' says Woolverton, the first woman to write an animated screenplay for Disney. ``The ironic thing is the agent who tried to discourage me from approaching Disney then got to negotiate my first contract with them. She said, `I always knew you could do it,' and I thought, `Oh, really?'''
The success of ``Beauty and the Beast'' led to Woolverton's co-writing involvement with Disney's leonine-sized animation hit, ``The Lion King,'' and two other Disney movies, 1993's ``Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey'' and the soon-to-be-released ``Dinotopia.''
Woolverton also has found her way into live theater.
She was the playwright for the stage production of ``Beauty and the Beast,'' which earned her a Tony award nomination and is playing in eight locations worldwide, including Broadway.
She recently finished a collaboration with Elton John and lyricist Tim Rice on the musical ``Aida,'' a forthcoming new musical version of the story that spawned the Verdi opera.
``I think of myself as a late bloomer,'' says Woolverton, currently working on ``Wicked,'' a joint effort with her husband to produce a film based on author Gregory Maguire's best-selling fictional biography on the Land of Oz's Wicked Witch of the West.
``I was a hippie in high school and I didn't do anything in college that might lead someone to believe I'd distinguish myself.''
Woolverton says she can't give anybody an outline to follow on how to break into the movie business. ``The way I did it was definitely not how somebody else might do it. There is no `how-to' manual for this.''
Woolverton pays more attention to the roles her characters play, and the images they portray.
For example, Belle, the heroine of ``Beauty and the Beast,'' is more assertive than she is in the original tale, taking the initiative to save her father and the prince trapped in the body of the Beast, whose evil eventually is defeated by the strength of her good.
In ``The Lion King,'' Simba, the main character, gets help from a strong female counterpart, Nala, and a bevy of other unlikely supporters to subdue a sense of isolation and guilt and conquer his villainous uncle and save the kingdom from ruin.
In ``Homeward Bound,'' two dogs and a cat join together to overcome the obstacles of deprivation, the elements and distance to battle their way back to their lost family.
``I like stories that reward courage and standing up for what is right and show the redemptive power of love,'' Woolverton says. ``Those are two of the best messages I can think of. My work has an impact on children and I take that pretty seriously.''
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: KRT. Linda Woolverton's success with "Beauty and theby CNBBeast" and "The Lion King" has put her in an elite class. color.