Singer and actress Ilene Woods, the voice of Cinderella, has passed away at age 81.
Ilene was born on May 5, 1929 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and later planned to become a schoolteacher. Her mother, however, guided her toward a singing and radio career, and by age 11 she starred in her own show which aired in her hometown. By 1944, she had her own weekly radio show at the ABC Network in New York City. During World War II, she toured with the United States Air Force Orchestra and many Hollywood stars, promoting war bonds. Because of her appearances for the USO, as well as at army and navy hospitals, she was invited to sing for President Franklin D. Roosevelt at his Hyde Park home Christmas party and for President Harry S. Truman at the White House the following year. By the time she was 18, Ilene had worked with Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, and Paul Whiteman.
In 1948, as a favor for songwriter friends Mack David and Jerry Livingston, Ilene Woods recorded “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo,” “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” and “So This is Love.” She didn’t know that Walt Disney would hear the demo recordings and hire her as the title voice of his upcoming animated feature Cinderella. “I learned a very good lesson,” she later recalled.
“Never pass up doing a good deed for friends!”
She was selected for the role from a field of nearly 400 hopefuls to voice Cinderella. During recording sessions, Walt would drop by to offer suggestions, including asking Ilene if she could harmonize with herself on “Oh Sing Sweet Nightingale.” She later recalled, “It was such a beautiful sequence — Cinderella scrubbing the floor and each time a soap bubble would rise with another image of Cinderella, so would another voice. When we heard the finished product, Walt kidded, ‘How about that? All of these years I’ve been paying three salaries for the Andrews Sisters, when I could have only paid one for you!” Later, Walt admitted to Ilene she was his favorite of the Disney heroines. She recalls, “Once I went into his office and he said to me, ‘You’re my favorite heroine, you know.’ I said, ‘You mean Cinderella?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there’s something about that story I associate with.’ “I think it was the rags-to-riches tale,” she says. “Of course, then I didn’t know how many times Walt had risked it all to realize his dreams.”
After Cinderella, Ilene moved into television appearing on The Steve Allen Show, The Gary Moore Show and Arthur Godfrey and His Friends. During The Gary Moore Show, Ilene met her husband-to-be, Ed Shaughnessy, Johnny Carson’s drummer on The Tonight Show and raised two sons with him. “Those were the happiest years of my life,” she later said.
Andreas Deja, one of Disney’s top animators and the hand behind such memorable characters as Scar, Jafar, Lilo, Hercules, etc., recalled, “When I think of Ilene Woods’ voice in Cinderella, I think of the perfect contrast between her and Eleanor Audley, the overbearing and powerful voice of the Stepmother. Ilene’s voice was so vulnerable, sincere, and showed a great range of emotion. For me, Ilene’s voice was the ultimate Fairy Tale princess voice because she always whispered throughout the film. She had this unique soft-spoken quality, which made the character very distinct and likeable. It was a wonderful voice to animate because it was so different from the others.”
“Ilene Woods’ lovely voice had a wide range, not operatic but an ease in hitting high notes and a chest voice, too, that sounded like she could belt if needs be,” said John Canemaker, the renowned animation historian and Academy Award® filmmaker. “Overall, though, her singing and speaking voice had enormous charm and an ineffable warmth. She gave voice to Cinderella’s soul and helped make the character one of Disney’s most unforgettable personalities.”