Alumna amazed by her success

Former CSULB student details her job as screenwriter for Disney

 

By Wes Woods, On-Line Forty-Niner

Monday, November 23, 1998

Linda Woolverton wrote the screenplay for the Disney box-office smash "Beauty and the Beast" and co-wrote "The Lion King." Woolverton is also an alumna of Cal State Long Beach.

"The reason I'm here, I suppose, is the local girl makes good," Woolverton said Wednesday during her presentation in the Gerald R. Daniel Recital Hall.

Just recently, while standing in the lobby of the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta with lyricist Tim Rice and musician Elton John, Woolverton said she remembers thinking "How did I get from Long Beach to here?"

"I'm still amazed. Every day," Woolverton said.

Woolverton grew up in Naples, graduated in 1974 from CSULB with a bachelor's degree in theatre arts and followed that with a master's degree, also in theatre arts, from Cal State Fullerton.

After graduating, and with an extensive background in performing and directing for children's theater, Woolverton, uncertain of what to do next, said she moved to Los Angeles.

In 1980, she said she became a secretary in CBS's children's programming division, which she hoped would lead to a break into the programming business. However, that was not the case.

After writing the books "Starwind" and "Running Before The Wind" during her lunch breaks and after work, Woolverton said she was finally convinced she was a writer.

Woolverton said she wrote scripts for the animated series "The Berenstein Bears" for four years before arriving announced at Disney's Glendale lot and handing a secretary her books and phone number.

She said the package ended up in the right hands and she was called back.

The call led to her writing "Beauty and The Beast" and "Homeward Bound," and co-writing "The Lion King." Woolverton said "The Lion King" was sprung from "a weird lion character with a script that was not working."

She ended spicing up the script using Shakespeare's "Hamlet" as an inspiration.