Marni Nixon

Marni Nixon, born Margaret Nixon McEathron on February 22, 1930, in Altadena, California, was an American soprano whose career spanned Broadway, opera, film, television, and concert performance. She died on July 24, 2016. The daughter of Charles Nixon and Margaret Elsa (née Wittke) McEathron, she was a child film actress who also played violin and sang in choruses from an early age, including solo work with the Roger Wagner Chorale. She studied singing and opera with Vera Schwarz, Carl Ebert, Boris Goldovsky, and Sarah Caldwell. In 1947, under the stage name Marni Nixon, she made her Hollywood Bowl solo debut performing Carmina Burana with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

Nixon's film career began in 1948 when she sang the voices of angels heard by Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc. That same year she provided Margaret O'Brien's singing voice in Big City, followed by The Secret Garden in 1949. She dubbed Jeanne Crain in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), supplied Marilyn Monroe's high notes in "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and sang for Ida Lupino in Jennifer that same year. Her Broadway debut came in 1954 in The Girl in Pink Tights. In 1956 she worked closely with Deborah Kerr to provide her singing voice for the film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I, with Kerr publicly crediting Nixon's contribution, breaking with Hollywood convention. Nixon again dubbed Kerr in An Affair to Remember (1957) and that year also sang for Sophia Loren in Boy on a Dolphin.

For the 1961 film West Side Story, Nixon provided the singing voice of Natalie Wood's character Maria, a role kept secret from Wood by the studio, and also dubbed Rita Moreno's singing in the "Tonight" quintet. She sought direct royalties from the film's producers but did not receive them; however, Leonard Bernstein contractually granted her one quarter of one percent of his personal royalties from the production. Following a court case, Nixon received royalties from sales of the soundtrack album and subsequently advocated for the rights of ghost singers. In 1962 she sang Wood's high notes in Gypsy. For My Fair Lady (1964), Nixon worked with Audrey Hepburn to perform the songs of Hepburn's character Eliza. Several songs she dubbed appeared on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs list. Time magazine referred to her as "The Ghostess with the Mostest." Prior to My Fair Lady's theatrical release, Nixon played Eliza in a revival of the musical at New York City Center. Her first on-screen appearance came in 1965 as Sister Sophia in The Sound of Music, in which director Robert Wise noted in the DVD commentary that audiences could finally see the woman whose voice they had long known. In 1967 she voiced Princess Serena in an NBC live-action and animated production of Jack and the Beanstalk, and in 1998 she was the singing voice of Grandmother Fa in Disney's Mulan.

Nixon made guest appearances on Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, including a 1960 performance of "Improvisation sur Mallarmé I" from Pierre Boulez's Pli selon pli and an April 9, 1961 program titled "Folk Music in the Concert Hall," in which she sang three Songs of the Auvergne by Joseph Canteloube. As a concert soloist she appeared with the New York Philharmonic under Bernstein, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, among others. She gave recitals at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Town Hall in New York City, specializing in contemporary music. In 1983 she was a soloist with the Naumburg Orchestral Concerts in Central Park. She also toured with Liberace and Victor Borge and later performed in her own cabaret shows.

Her opera repertory included Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro, both Blonde and Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Violetta in La traviata, the title role in La Périchole, and Philine in Mignon. She performed at the Los Angeles Opera, Seattle Opera, San Francisco Opera, and the Tanglewood Music Festival, among other venues. Nixon taught at the California Institute of the Arts in Montecito from 1969 to 1971 and joined the faculty of the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara in 1980. In the late 1970s and early 1980s she hosted a children's television program in Seattle on KOMO-TV called Boomerang, winning four Emmy Awards as best actress. Beginning in the 1980s she recorded songs by Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, and various classical composers under her own name, and received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Classical Performance, Vocal Soloist — one for a Schönberg album and one for a Copland album.

Nixon's stage work extended well beyond her film dubbing career. In 1984 she originated the role of Edna in the Off-Broadway production Taking My Turn, composed by Gary William Friedman, earning a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical. She originated the role of Sadie McKibben in Opal in 1992. In 1997–1998 she toured the United States as Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret. In 1999 she originated the role of Mrs. Wilson in the world premiere of Richard Wargo's opera Ballymore at Skylight Opera Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a production taped for PBS. In regional theatre and Off-Broadway she also appeared as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet and in productions of The King and I and The Sound of Music.

Nixon returned to Broadway in 2000, after nearly fifty years, playing Aunt Kate in James Joyce's The Dead. In 2001 she replaced Joan Roberts as Heidi Schiller in the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies. She played Eunice Miller in a 2002 Los Angeles production of 70, Girls, 70, and in 2003 joined the Broadway revival of Nine as a replacement in the role of Guido's mother. She appeared in the 2008 North American Tour of Cameron Mackintosh's UK revival of My Fair Lady as Mrs. Higgins, and in 2009 played Frau Direktor Kirschner in the Encores! production of Music in the Air at New York City Center. Nixon also appeared in the Broadway production My Fair Ladies. Her autobiography, I Could Have Sung All Night, was published in 2006. Over the course of her career she sang on more than fifty film soundtracks.