Biography

Ilene Woods

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Born
May 5, 1929 · Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA
Died
July 1, 2010 · Los Angeles, California, USA (complications from Alzheimer's disease)
Birth name
Jacqueline Ruth Woods
Height
5′ (1.52 m)

Ilene Woods was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the daughter of a backstage mom who was responsible for Ilene getting her show biz start on the stage at 2. At 14, she received an offer to top-line her own radio show once she became available at the end of that school year during a vacation in New York City. The Ilene Woods Show soon started its run on the Blue Network as a 3-nights-a-week, 15-minute musical series. She then did radio work in Chicago before moving to California, where she landed her first & only on-screen movie role (On Stage Everybody (1945)) as well as a stint on the Jack Carson-starring radio series Sealtest Village Store. Her songwriter-friends Mack David & Jerry Livingston asked her to record 2 of their newest songs, not telling her that they were for the upcoming Disney film Cinderella (1950). When Walt Disney heard her voice on the recordings, he chose her to voice that film's title role.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tom Weaver

She revealed in a 1995 interview for Cinderella that when the film was released in 1950 she took her daughter Stephanie who was 3 at the time to the premiere and when the movie came on Stephanie screamed in the theater My mommy is Cinderella! And two old ladies sitting behind them turned to each other and said Isn't that sweet! She thinks her mother is Cinderella!.
Gave birth to her 3rd child at age 39, a son Daniel Shaughnessy on September 24, 1968. Child's father was her 2nd husband, Ed Shaughnessy.
Gave birth to her 1st child at age 18, a daughter Stephanie Joan Steck on May 14, 1947. Child's father was her 1st [now ex] husband, Stephen Steck.
She was cremated and her ashes given to her family.
Her son James died in a car accident in San Bernardino, California on April 13, 1984 at age 18.

[on singing the Oh Sing Sweet Nightingale music number for the Cinderella film] 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!’
I learned a very good lesson, never pass up doing a good deed for friends!
[on being praised by Walt Disney for voicing Cinderella] Once I went into his[Walt Disney’s] 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, of course, then I didn’t know how many times Walt had risked it all to realize his dreams.

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