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 age two! At 14, during a vacation in New York City, she received an offer to top-line her own radio show once she became available at the end of that school year. “The Ilene Woods Show,” a three-nights-a-week, 15-minute musical series, soon started its run on the Blue Network with the teenager as its star. Radio work in Chicago preceded a move to California, her first and only on-screen movie role (On Stage Everybody (1945)) and a stint on the Jack Carson-starring radio series “Sealtest Village Store.” Her songwriter-friends Mack David and Jerry Livingston asked her, as a favor, to record two of their newest songs, not telling her that they were for the upcoming Disney animated feature Cinderella (1950). When Walt Disney heard her voice on the recordings, he chose her to voice that film’s title role. Woods, married at age 17, had three children, a girl and two boys; when the third was born, she “re-cast” herself in the role of full-time wife and mother.
