Marni Nixon Totally Explained

Everything about Marni Nixon totally explained

Marni Nixon (born February 22 1930) is an American singer whose renown for dubbing the singing voices of featured actresses in well known movies earned her the sobriquet "The Ghostess with the Mostess", and also "The Voice of Hollywood".

Biography

She was born Margaret McEathron in Altadena, California and began singing at an early age in choruses. At the age of 14, she became part of the newly formed Los Angeles Concert Youth Chorus -- whose other members included a 13-year old Marilyn Horne and a 19-year old Paul Salamunovich, among many others -- under famed conductor Roger Wagner; this choir evolved into the Roger Wagner Chorale in 1948, and later into the Los Angeles Master Chorale in 1964.

Career

Nixon's dubbing career includes:

The voices of the angels heard by Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc (1948)
The singing voice of Margaret O'Brien in The Secret Garden (1949)
Providing Marilyn Monroe with a few top notes in her performance of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' (1953)
The singing voice for Deborah Kerr in the Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I (1956) (on some tracks of the film, Kerr's and Nixon's voices were skillfully intertwined)
The singing voice for Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember (1957)
The singing voice for Natalie Wood as Maria in West Side Story (1961) and also sang some parts of the score of Anita played by Rita Moreno, sharing the load with co-dubber Betty Wand and Moreno herself. In parts of the quintet setting of the song "Tonight", she sings both Maria and Anita's lines.
The singing voice for Audrey Hepburn as Eliza in My Fair Lady (1964), for which Nixon gained much notoriety, as news-eager journalists ripped apart the customary veil of secrecy. Industry buzz has said this to have been the cause of Hepburn failing even to get nominated for an Academy Award for the demanding role.**

Nixon appeared finally on screen singing for herself in the film The Sound of Music as Sister Sophia. Julie Andrews lost the role of Eliza Doolittle to Hepburn, but won the Oscar for Mary Poppins. When they first met on the set of The Sound of Music, she greeted Nixon with a hearty handshake and, "I really love your work!" In fact, they'd already worked on the same song: Nixon voiced one--or more--of the trio of geese in the animated "Jolly Holiday" sequence of Mary Poppins. Nixon also sang the role of Mary Poppins herself on a collection of songs from the film released on Dinseyland records in 1964, in new arrangements that were considerably different than the ones used in the film.
   The credits for her many dubbing roles didn't appear on the titles of any of the films, and Nixon didn't begin to be fully credited or widely acknowledged until the movies' subsequent release on VHS decades later.
   When Hollywood musicals gave her less work, she started to perform on stage, as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and as Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she hosted a children's television show in Seattle on KOMO channel 4 called Boomerang. In 2001, she replaced Joan Roberts as Heidi Schiller in the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies. In 2003, she returned to Broadway as a replacement in role of Guido's mother in the revival of Nine. In the 1998 Disney film Mulan, Nixon sang the role of Grandmother Fa. November 6 2006 Nixon gave a master class at Cornish College of the Arts.
   In March 2007 she was involved in a concert version of My Fair Lady, in which she performed the role of Mrs. Higgins, Professor Higgins' mother.
   On June 18, 2007, Marni joined a group of volunteers who were inspired by the documentary film "Tocar y Luchar."(External Link) They are trying to bring more music-education to ALL children.(External Link) Nixon is currently performing on the U.S. National Tour of Cameron Mackintosh's U.K. revival of My Fair Lady through July 2008, replacing Sally Ann Howes in the role of Mrs. Higgins.
   In her own name, she's also recorded songs of Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern.
   One of her three husbands, Ernest Gold, composed the theme song to the movie Exodus. They had three children together, one of whom is the singer and songwriter Andrew Gold ("Lonely Boy" and "Thank You For Being a Friend").

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