Marni Nixon

Marni Nixon
Marni Nixon, following a performance at the Metropolitan Room, New York City, 2009
Born	February 22, 1930 (1930-02-22) Altadena, California, United States
Spouse	Ernest Gold (m. 1950–1969) Lajos Frederick Fenster (m. 1971–1975) Albert Block (m. 1983-present)
Children	Andrew Gold (1951-2011) Martha Gold (b. 1954) Melani Gold (b. 1962)

Marni Nixon (born February 22, 1930) is an American soprano and playback singer for featured actresses in movie musicals. She has also spent much of her career performing in concerts with major symphony orchestras around the world and in operas and musicals throughout the United States.

Biography

Born Margaret Nixon McEathron in Altadena, California to Charles Nixon and Margaret Elsa (née Wittke) McEathron, Marni Nixon, a child actress, also began singing at an early age in choruses, including performing solos with the Roger Wagner Chorale.

She went on to study singing and opera with Carl Ebert, Jan Popper, Boris Goldovsky and Sarah Caldwell. She embarked on a varied career, involving film and musical comedy as well as opera and concerts. She appeared on American television, dubbed the singing voices of film actresses in The King and I, West Side Story and My Fair Lady, and acted in several commercial stage ventures.

Under her own name, she has also recorded songs by Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Arnold Schönberg, Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and Anton Webern. Nixon received two Grammy Best Classical Performance, Vocal Soloist nominations, one for her Schönberg album and one for her Copland album.

Opera

Nixon's opera repertory includes Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Susanna in Le nozze di 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. Her opera credits include performances at Los Angeles Opera, Seattle Opera, San Francisco Opera and the Tanglewood Festival among others. In addition to giving recitals, she appeared with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra among others.

Career highlights

Nixon's career on film started in 1948 when she sang the voices of the angels heard by Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc (1948). The next year, she did her first dubbing work when she sang Margaret O'Brien's singing voice in 1949's The Secret Garden. And when Marilyn Monroe sang those high notes in Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), it was actually Nixon's voice audience heard. In 1956 she worked closely with Deborah Kerr doing the star's singing voice for the film version of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I and again the next year she worked with Kerr dubbing An Affair to Remember. In 1961's West Side Story, the studio kept her work on the film (as the singing voice of Natalie Wood's Maria) a secret from the actress and Nixon even dubbed Rita Moreno's singing in the film's number "Tonight". She asked the film's producers for, but did not receive, any direct royalties from her work on the film, but Leonard Bernstein contractually gave her 1/2 of one percent of his personal royalties from it. Nixon again dubbed for Wood when Gypsy was filmed in 1962. For My Fair Lady in 1964, she again worked with the female lead of the film, Audrey Hepburn, to perform the songs of Hepburn's character Eliza. Because of her dubbing work for non-singing actresses in musical films, in some circles she became known as "The Ghostess with the Mostest".

The Sound of Music

Nixon appeared on screen first telling her opinion to the nuns about Maria and then singing for herself as Sister Sophia in the 1965 film The Sound of Music. In the DVD commentary to the film, director Robert Wise comments that audiences were finally able to see the woman whose voice they knew so well.

Later work

She taught at the California Institute of Arts from 1969–71 and joined the faculty of the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara in 1980 where she taught for many years. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she hosted a children's television show in Seattle on KOMO-TV channel 4 called Boomerang. In 2001/2002, 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". Nixon's autobiography, I Could Have Sung All Night, was published in 2006. Nixon performed in the 2008 North American Tour of Cameron Mackintosh's U.K. revival of My Fair Lady in the role of Mrs. Higgins.

Family

The first of her three husbands, Ernest Gold, composed the theme song to the movie Exodus. They had three children, including singer/songwriter Andrew Gold (died June 3, 2011).

Honors

On October 27, 2008, Marni Nixon was presented with the Singer Symposium's Distinguished Artist Award in New York City. Marni Nixon is also an Honorary Member of Sigma Alpha Iota International Women's Music Fraternity.

Sources

• Nixon, Marni, with Cole, Stephen. I Could Have Sung All Night: My Story. New York, Billboard Books. 2006. ISBN 0-8230-8365-9.
• Martin Bernheimer: "Marni Nixon", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed September 22, 2008), (subscription access)

External links

• Official website
• Marni Nixon at the Internet Movie Database
• Marni Nixon at the Internet Broadway Database
• Marni Nixon at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Marni Nixon at the Internet Movie Database

Interview

• Marni Nixon - A Portrait for Radio - "Offbeat" on 103.2 Dublin City FM. Karishmeh Felfeli-Crawford in conversation with Marni Nixon