In this episode of Synergy Loves Company, host Eric takes listeners on a journey through the intertwined legacies of Whitney Houston and Disney. Starting with Whitney's iconic 1991 Super Bowl performance, Eric explores her rise to stardom and her transition to the silver screen with films like "The Bodyguard" and Disney's "The Preacher’s Wife." He delves into her work as a producer through Brown House Productions, highlighting projects such as Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" with Brandi and "The Princess Diaries." The episode also covers Whitney's influence on the Disney Channel with "The Cheetah Girls." The connection is made to modern Disney franchises with the continuation of Whitney's magical influence in projects like "The Descendants: The Rise of Red." Join Eric for this exploration of Whitney Houston's surprising and lasting impact on the world of Disney.
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00:03 --> 00:06 Synergy loves company.
00:10 --> 00:34 We have this coterie of rich franchises, the company now that people want to engage with. I came here to try and continue what Walt Disney and his associates set in motion 50 years ago, which is to experiment with every new and innovative kind of entertainment possible.
00:40 --> 28:32 It's what we hope to do here, to really develop something that's more than an entertainment enterprise. It's something that contributes to many other ways. January 27, 1991. The Buffalo Bills and the New York Giants were preparing to play the 25th NFL Super bowl in Tampa Bay. A New York super bowl in Florida. It would be the most watched super bowl yet, and everyone had been wondering if it would happen at all. Just 10 days earlier, the United States had led some 39 countries into the Gulf War against Iraq. Because of the conflict, people suspected that the game would be postponed or even canceled. But the war had an opposite effect. The game would be broadcast at the largest international scale it ever had. To that point, the whole world was watching. The war posed many questions to the American public. How long would it last? Would young men and women be drafted? During this time, tensions were high in the United States, but so was patriotism. Leading the most patriotic moment of the night was international superstar Whitney Houston. Whitney's Star Spangled Banner became the definitive version, the one artists would aspire to for years to come. Years later, ABC's David Muir would describe the moment. We were a nation on edge, even on a night when football is our escape. And one voice united us all. One voice. Whitney Houston's voice. The other performance of the night was pure Disney. The halftime show was the Disney produced new Kids on the Block performance. It's a Small world tribute to 25 years of the Super Bowl. Though game changing in its own right, the halftime show would be preempted to give an update on the Gulf War. Most people wouldn't even see the new kids in Disney until after the game. And those who tuned out during the final quarters didn't even see it at all. But everyone would remember the Star Spangled Banner that year. Whitney's performance had stolen the show, and her performance had overshadowed Disney's. Whitney the Voice. Houston was becoming more than an expert singer. She was redefining what it was to be a superstar. And her next move once again would make her even more of an entertainment juggernaut. She would turn her attention to the silver screen. Hey, this is Synergy Loves Company, where we explore how Disney connects to everything. Because you don't have to be in a theme park to feel connected. To Disney. There is plenty of magic all around us. I'm Eric and today we're taking a look at Whitney Houston and Disney. About a month ago I released a miniseries about what I call the holy trinity of 80s pop. On one of these episodes, I got a comment from a YouTube user, JS BD5KF. They said, I think 80s music was more of a quadrinity. Whitney must be included. Did she have a Disney connection? And it really got me thinking, what was Whitney Houston's Disney connection? But I couldn't think of as much as the other three, so I put the idea on the back burner. But then recently I was reading Ashley Spencer's brand new book, Disney the Untold Story of Disney Channel's Tween Empire and Whitney Houston and her connection jumped right out at me. That book is a 10 out of 10. Definitely would recommend, by the way. So let's get to it today. Whitney Houston and Disney. Born in 1963 in Newark, New Jersey, Whitney Houston was surrounded by music. Her cousin Dionne Warwick would have a substantial music career of her own, and Whitney's mother, Cissy Houston, was a big name in gospel music. Whitney grew up performing with her mother at New Hope Baptist Church. By the time Whitney was a teen, her family knew she was special and she began pursuing a music career as a young adult. Whitney was discovered by the legendary Clive Davis, who began working with her to produce an album. She was 22 years old when her debut self titled album Whitney Houston dropped in 1985. Immediately it was a sensation. It hit number one on the charts, as did its 1987 follow up, Whitney. Combined. Those two albums had a total of seven number one singles, saving all My Love for your How Will I Know the Greatest Love of All? I Want to Dance with Somebody who Loves Me didn't we Almost have it all? So emotional And Where Do Broken Hearts Go? I'm sure you heard all those songs in your head As I was telling you the titles. By her third album, I'm youm Baby Tonight, the momentum was fierce. She continued her streak of number one singles, and in the age of MTV, fans couldn't get enough of Whitney on screen. 1991 Super bowl performance proved that for a long time Hollywood was trying to hook Whitney for the silver screen. And she finally signed on to a project that would launch her career even further into the stratosphere, 1992's The Bodyguard. Though she basically played a fictionalized version of herself, a huge pop star, and she received some harsh criticism for her acting performances. Audiences loved her in the movie and the world now saw Whitney as a movie star. Her smash hit cover of Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love youe launched her music career even further. But what about the Disney? This show is about Disney, right? The Bodyguard was a Warner Brothers film, but all the other studios were jealous of the combo of box office and Billboard charts that Whitney garnered for the movie and its soundtrack, which was basically a Whitney Houston album. They all wanted their own Whitney Houston movie project. In 1995, 20th Century Fox got a turn with Waiting to exhale. And in 1996, Disney's Touchstone Pictures had the Preacher's Wife, which starred Whitney as the title character, Julia Coleman Biggs, the wife of Reverend Henry Biggs, played by Courtney B. Vance. The Preacher's Wife is a remake of the 1947 film The Bishop's Wife, but this one features a modern gospel music centered setting. In the story, Reverend Henry Biggs church, which is located in a poor New York neighborhood, is struggling. His marriage to his wife Julia is strained as he becomes consumed with church responsibilities. When Henry prays for help, an angel named Dudley, played by Denzel Washington is sent to guide him. However, Dudley soon finds himself drawn to Julia, which adds a complicated twist to his mission. Throughout the film, Dudley helps Henry rediscover his faith and reconnect with his wife and his community. Whitney Houston's memorable musical performances helped the movie explore the themes of love, faith, the importance of family and community. And it all takes place at Christmas time, making it a great pick for your holiday viewing. The Preacher's Wife allowed Whitney to connect with her gospel roots. The movie even had an appearance by Whitney's mother, gospel star Cissy Houston. And its hits I Believe in you and Me and Step by Step gave Disney and Whitney the synergistic movie and soundtrack success that the studios were searching for. Ever since the Bodyguard, Whitney connected with Disney on screen and in song. But the more important connection for Disney was actually Whitney Houston's connection to Denzel Washington or his production company. Anyway, Whitney had been producing her musical projects for a while, and with her becoming a movie star, she noticed big name actors often had production companies to produce the movies they starred in, and they could also support other projects they believed in with their production companies from behind the scenes. Denzel Washington's Mundy Lane Entertainment was a production company on the Preacher's Wife film. During the project, Whitney wanted to explore a production company of her own and she struck up a friendship with the head of Mundy Lane, Deborah Martin Chase. Deborah Martin Chase had always been a fan of movies. As a kid, she loved going to the movie theater any chance she got. She just couldn't get enough. But the young film buff didn't think she could pursue a career in Hollywood. There weren't many black and brown movie producers, and women were also few and far between. Instead, she pursued law, which actually led her to Hollywood as a lawyer for Columbia Pictures legal department. Because of her interest in the production side of things, she gravitated away from law and tried her hand at producing. By 1992, she was hired by Denzel Washington to run his production company, where she was responsible for for some pretty big movies like the Pelican Brief, Courage Under Fire and of course, the Preacher's Wife. When she met Whitney on the production of the Preacher's Wife, they became professionally close and Whitney was able to convince Deborah Martin Chase to leave Denzel and help her start her own production company. Chase would serve as the executive vice president of Whitney Houston's Brown House Productions. The name came from Bobby Brown, Whitney's husband and a star in his own right. With the production company getting its start from a connection made on a Disney Touchstone movie, Whitney and Deborah actually stayed with Disney for their first Brown House production. As early as 1993, Whitney Houston was trying to get an updated version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella off the ground as an event TV movie. It would hopefully air on CBS with Whitney in the title role. But the project was delayed and then shelved. That is, until Whitney had a producer like Deborah on her side and a connection to the Walt Disney Company who had recently purchased abc. CEO Michael Eisner wanted to relaunch its On Again, Off Again anthology series, now dubbed the Wonderful World of Disney. So Eisner, of course, needed a big television event for its launch and he loved star power, which Whitney Houston had plenty of at this point. Whitney felt that she had aged out of the role of Cinderella, so she would take on the role of the fairy godmother. Not being the main star would also give Whitney more time to be in that producer role. Rodgers and Hammerstein. Cinderella was originally conceived as a TV movie in the 1950s starring Disney legend Julie Andrews as Cinderella and helped launch her career. For the 1997 adaptation with Whitney Houston as the fairy godmother, they would need a young star who could sing and act like a younger Whitney Houston. Brandi Norwood idolized Whitney Houston as a young girl, and she wanted to be a performer herself. She started acting and singing professionally at the age of 11. And by the time she turned 17, she had released a hit album and had landed her own sitcom, Moesha. Brandy would make the perfect Cinderella and she and Whitney would be joined on screen by some pretty heavy hitting stars like Bernadette Peters, Whoopi Goldberg, Jason Alexander and another young actor, Paulo Montalban as Prince Charming. To expand the story, songs from other Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals were added to the list. Michael Eisner and Disney wanted a big event and that's what they got. Over 60 million viewers tuned into the special and gave ABC the best Sunday night ratings it had had in over 10 years. That ABC acquisition was looking pretty good to Disney right then. Cinderella was a success and a great testing ground for Brown House Productions, thanks to Deborah Martin Chase. Whitney Houston had really gotten bit by the producer bug and for their next project, Whitney wanted to focus on just producing and being behind the scenes. Let's take a quick break from Disney though to talk about something so Disney that Whitney did in 1998. Wait, take a break from Disney to talk about something so Disney. During the 1990s, the Disney decade, the company had improved upon the Disney animated musical success model that was introduced in the Little Mermaid. Stories would be both epic and classic familiar. The voice cast would recruit some Hollywood A listers to give the project some clout. Broadway songwriting teams would tackle the music and then Disney would enlist a pop star to do a radio friendly pop version of one of the songs to be played all over top 40 and adult contemporary radio. It worked on Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Hercules, Pocahontas. I actually did an episode on these pop versions of Disney songs with performer Tammy Tuckey a couple years back. Go check it out. One of the brains behind this model at Disney was chairman of the studios, Jeffrey Katzenberg. Katzenberg had done so much for Disney's movie productions in the 80s and 90s, especially animation, that he was seeking a higher position in the company. CEO Michael Eisner, though he withheld the job upgrade and Katzenberg left to create DreamWorks SKG. He's the K in SKG. The other two are Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. For DreamWorks, Katzenberg would bring both the Disney hand drawn animation movie musical and the Pixar computer animated movie making models and hit the ground running to make some DreamWorks animated features. The Pixar model resulted in Ants with a Z to go head to head with Pixar's A Bug's Life. And the hand drawn epic musical was the Prince of Egypt, an idea that Katzenberg had carried with him from the Disney cutting room floor. Based on the Bible story of Moses, the movie had an all star cast. Stephen Schwartz wrote the music just like he had for Pocahontas and the Hunchback of Notre Dame for Disney. And the radio friendly pop version of the movie's ballad when youn Believe was recorded by two powerhouse hit making vocalists Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. See what I mean about Whitney doing something so Disney? Just not for Disney. Let's get back to Disney. Young adult literature author Meg Cabot's agent had been one of the over 60 million watching Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella on ABC. The wonderful world of Disney's Cinderella was a classic yet fresh retelling of the princess story. And Meg Cabot had been writing a modern Cinderella like princess story. They liked what they saw in the TV movie and they sought out Deborah Martin Chase with an advanced copy of Meg Cabot's latest work. It hadn't even been published yet, but it really felt like it had that film potential. When Deborah and Whitney read Meg Cabot's the Princess Diaries, they agreed that it should be a movie and they wanted to be the ones that would make it. Disney had been looking to revitalize their live action family films. It was still the Disney decade and live action films were still in need of a refresh. They had a remake of the Parent Trap starring a young Lindsay Lohan in the pipeline. And the Princess Diaries would be a great next step. Something original but with the feel of a classic Disney story. Whitney Houston and Deborah Martin Chase along with Disney worked to procure the film rights and got to work planning to turn the Princess Diaries into a movie. Brown House Productions was ready for the big screen. The Princess Diaries starred an up and comer Anne Hathaway as Emilia Mignonette Thermopolis Rinaldi, Princess of Genovia, or Mia as her friends called her. Mia didn't even know she was a princess until she met her long lost paternal grandmother, the Queen of Genovia. Played by the original Rodgers and HAMMERSTEIN Cinderella from 1957. Disney legend Julie Andrews. In the movie, Mia is just trying to navigate her awkward teen years. When she gets her royal news, then she has to start add in other stuff to worry about, like international diplomacy. You've seen this one, right? If you haven't, go fix it now. It is a classic. Well after this episode go to Disney plus and watch it like for real. I really love Whitney's role in this movie and she's not even in it at all. She really was a producer. I have found some pictures online with her and the cast of the film behind the scenes. And there's an especially great one of Whitney having a one on one conversation with Anne Hathaway while on set. The movie turned out to be great and Whitney got to be a hands on producer. She was ready to go about producing on her own. Without Deborah Martin Chase. Well, kind of. Deborah Martin Chase actually left Brown House just after the Princess Diaries in 2000 and she created her own production company, Martin Chase Productions. But she didn't go too far. Her company joined Whitney's Brown House on their next project together. So they were still working together on producing things, even though they were just using two separate banners. And their next project would be working together with Disney again, but this time on cable tv, the Disney Channel. It's kind of strange that brownhouse Productions would go from a made for network TV movie to a big Hollywood theatrical release and then to cable tv. But when the project is right, it's right. And Disney Channel original movies were becoming a force to be reckoned with. And the dcom, the Cheetah Girls had Whitney Houston written all over it. The Cheetah Girls was the first time that music would be at the center of a Disney Channel original movie. There was an opportunity to release a soundtrack for the movie. Another first for a dcom. You see, the Cheetah Girls is the story of a fictional girl group who would become an actual real touring girl group with albums and everything beyond the movie itself. To make the band, Disney picked a star from their sitcom that's so Raven. Raven Symone. And to fill out the group, they added members from a real life girl group. Adrienne Bailon and Keely Williams from 3Lw, as well as performer Sabrina Bryant. The story was once again adapted from a young adult novel. And just like the Princess Diaries, it was an uplifting story of female empowerment. These were the stories Whitney wanted to tell in the movies that she produced. Whitney Houston and Deborah Martin Chase continued on together with sequels for both the Princess Diaries and the Cheetah Girls and even crossed over the pool of stars. Cheetah Girls Raven Symone landed a prominent role in Princess Diaries 2. In addition to these two film franchises, Deborah Martin Chase split off of Whitney's productions to do some other Disney work on her own. She did go on to produce some more for Disney with Martin Chase productions like Disney Channel's Lemonade Mouth. Whitney Houston's impact on movies from behind the scenes is often not known by Disney fans. Like I said in the intro. I wasn't aware of her work with the Princess Diaries and the Cheetah Girls until I read about it in Ashley Spencer's Disney High. And as I did research for the episode, I kept finding social media posts online where people were shocked by the same revelation. Whitney stayed behind the scenes and she really did become a great producer. She had started her career when she was young and she wanted to empower young actresses to tell stories on the screen that would in turn inspire young audiences. This was Whitney using her fame and talent to shine the light back on others, not just try to produce movies with the spotlight for herself. I think that's a testament to her character as a celebrity. Up to this point, Whitney's Brown House Productions had done all of its films with Disney under ABC, Walt Disney Pictures and the Disney Channel. Brownhouse, and Whitney only produced one more film in 2012, Deborah Martin Chase once again joined Whitney Houston in the remake of the movie Sparkle. It starred Jordan Sparks as the title character and Whitney took on the role of her mother, but this would be Whitney Houston's final role while the movie was in post production. Whitney Houston tragically passed away on February 11, 2012 at the age of 48. She was found unresponsive in her hotel room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills just before she was scheduled to attend a pre Grammy Awards party. The world was shocked. Fans were devastated and when Sparkle was released to theaters In August of 2012, Deborah Martin Chase described the event as tough. She expressed that they were really happy with how the movie turned out, but it would be difficult to see Whitney on screen one last time. The film was dedicated to Whitney and fans everywhere mourned her loss and remembered her extreme talent and in the way that Whitney Houston's subtle behind the scenes touch influenced Disney fans in a way that not many of us fully realized. Disney took the opportunity to subtly nod to Whitney Houston's influence in the summer of 2024, after Whitney's brown House helped Disney Channel original movies showcase music in a big way with the Cheetah Girls franchise, they kept getting bigger, like high school musicals, Zombies and the Descendants, which takes place in the kingdom of Auradon, where Disney princesses and princes live their lives together beyond their individual movies. In the fourth installment of the Descendants series, the Rise of Red, they cast Brandy and Paulo Montalban as Cinderella and Prince Charming, reprising the roles they had in 1997's Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. In my mind, this pulled Whitney's fairy godmother into the world of the Descendants. As far as I'm concerned, it's canon and I really think that Whitney would have loved the Descendants. It mixes the themes from all of her Disney produced projects. Fairy tales, empowering stories and music in a more contemporary setting. The Descendants Rise of Red to me is one last, final secret tribute to Whitney Houston and her impact on the Walt Disney Company. I had a lot of fun looking at Whitney and Disney together and I can't stay away from these musical projects. I just keep doing stuff with music and I have a feeling there's gonna be more music in our future. But a few months back I did do that miniseries about Disney's connections to Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince and if you didn't check those out, you should do that right now. I'm really proud of them and like I said, I've always got more great Disney connections coming right up. Probably some more music ones. So if you want to make sure that you don't miss them, go ahead and subscribe or follow wherever you're enjoying Synergy Loves company right now. YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Go to synergylovescompany.com and you'll find a link to all of them. Click Follow or Subscribe and you'll know exactly when a new episode drops. And if you've been listening for a while, let's take this to the next level. I would love to connect with you, so why don't you reach out and follow me on Facebook, Instagram and threads in all of those places. I'm Ennergy lovescompany. You could also find me on bluesky, erichsynergy and don't stop there. Could you please share this show with a friend of yours who would enjoy Synergy Love's company? Maybe they're a Disney fan too. Tell them about this episode or maybe another one that was your favorite. Send them a link on social media. You can tag me in it too so I can say hi. I'd love to say hi. Or just tell them to visit synergylovescompany.com and remember, this show is listener supported. There's no sponsors. It's just you and me. And if you feel like you get something out of this podcast and you want to help me produce the show, you don't even need to have your own production company like Whitney Houston. You can give back by supporting the show on Ko Fi. You can buy me a cup of coffee and keep me caffeinated to have the energy to make another episode. I thank you. In advance, no matter how you decide to support the show. I really appreciate you and the time that you spent with me today. Without you, this would be boring. I would just be talking to myself, and that's not very fun. I'm happy to know you're out there listening. So thanks for joining me on this adventure through Disney's connections. And remember, Disney magic isn't just in the parks. It's all around us. You'll probably think of Disney the next time you hear Whitney Houston. And until next time, keep discovering the magic in everything.