Report: Cinderella's 50th Anniversary Royal Celebration
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Ilene Woods promoting Cinderella 50 years ago

Finally Tim O’Day turned to Ilene Woods, the voice of Cinderella herself, and asked her how she became involved in the film. Woods explained she was simply doing a favor for her friends. They had completed some music for Disney’s upcoming film and needed someone to record the numbers. She was asked to perform So This Is Love and A Dream is A Wish Your Heart Makes. Walt not only bought the songs but “he bought the singer”.

Ilene Woods at the event

Woods described "Mr. Disney" as charming and her time working at the Studio as a joy. Walt was very hands-on with the project. Woods said that often the dialogue directors and artists would argue about how to perform a certain scene. Near the end of the day Walt would come in, listen to the argument, and then present a solution that resolved the conflict. Finally Woods approached Walt and said “Mr. Disney, you really should come in earlier and save the company money.” Woods recalled Marc Davis would come often and watch their recording sessions. When the film was presented in theaters Woods' father was amazed to see his daughter on screen even though he knew they were pencil sketches. He felt they captured her walk, some little physical habits she had and a bit of her personality, too. Woods sees herself as a woman who gets her mind set on something and does it. She sees this same attitude exhibited in Cinderella. Cinderella, she feels, teaches young girls to work very hard for their dream no matter the consequences because your dream will come true.

Marc Davis and Ilene Woods work on Cinderella

One of the more inventive sequences in the film involves Cinderella singing Sing, Sweet Nightingale as she scrubs the floors. As each bubble rises and reflects Cinderella scrubbing away her voice, first a solo, becomes duet, then trio and on and on. Walt first approached Ilene for this sequence by asking her if she could sing harmony with herself. Ilene’s response was “I can’t hum and sing but if you tell me what you have in mind I’ll try.” They multi-tracked her voice until she sounded like “the Mormon Tabernacle choir.” Upon hearing the successfully completed recording Walt exclaimed, “All this time I’ve been paying the Andrews sisters three salaries when I could’ve paid one.”

Tim O' Day and Ilene Woods

Cinderella has been released and re-released around seven times throughout the years and has been released on video twice. For the second video release the Disney Studios asked Ilene Woods to record a song that had been cut from the film. It was entitled the Middle of a Muddle and was the precursor to the Cinderelly work song. The video screens displayed simple storyboard images as the song played. In the song Cinderella sang about the work she had to do and how she wished she were twins. Then she’d sing another chorus about all the work and wish she were four, then eight and so on.

    
Storyboards from Middle of the Muddle

When O'Day asked Woods what was the most rewarding part of working on Cinderella she replied, “knowing how timeless it is and that even after I’m gone to know my voice will be heard.” She also remarked how nice it is to receive admiration “even at my age.” Woods continued by discussing the joy it was to work on Cinderella and that they recorded with a full orchestra and with the other character voices from the film. With today’s technology singing artists often sing along to a pre-recorded track and she remarked that having a full orchestra who followed her tempo was exciting and motivated her to perform strongly.

When asked if it felt like 50 years ago nearly all the panel replied no. Although Williams said when she looked at her grown children she realized it must have occurred that long ago. She continued by telling a story about her youngest son. During one of the Cinderella releases in the theaters his sisters dragged him off to see it. When he exited the theater Williams (voice of Drizella) asked him if he liked to which he replied, “sounded just like home.”

O'Day asked for any more Walt memories. Williams replied, “It was all Walt. Nothing came out of the studio that wasn’t Walt.”