The Hello and welcome to Disney Story Origins, episode 6A, The Little Mermaid Part 1. The I'm going to. The The Oh, Oh, The story of the Little Mermaid is a very special fairy tale.

Both Disney's and the original are touching and romantic,

and both stories worked wonders for the tellers of her tale.

Not only did the Little Mermaid rescue a drowning prince,

but she saved Hans Christian Anderson

from sinking into obscurity.

And 152 years later, Disney's adaptation of her story pulled the Disney

animation studios out of the mire of poor box office returns and general unpopularity.

By the mid-1980s the fabled unpopularity.

By the mid-1980s, the fabled animation studios of Walt Disney had fallen on hard times.

The artists were polarized between newcomers, hungry to innovate, and old-timers not yet ready to relinquish control.

These conditions produced a series of box office flops and pessimistic forecasts that maybe the best days of Disney animation were over.

Disney's The Little Mermaid marked the beginning of an era that we Disney fans call

the Disney Renaissance. It was the first of a staggering output of hit films that

helped Disney regain their magic. The original story, The Little Mermaid, or Den Lil

Hafru, was written by Hans Christian Anderson in 1836 and first published in

Copenhagen on April 7, 1837 in Fairy Tales Told for Children, Third Booklet.

The tales were published in a series of three installments

and represent Anderson's first venture into the Fairy Tale genre.

The first installment was published on May 8th, 1835, and contained the

tenderbox, Little Claws, and Big Claws, the Princess and the Pea, and Little Ida's Flowers.

The first three tales were based on folk tales Anderson had heard in his childhood,

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