Marni Nixon

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Marni Nixon

Marni Nixon, following a performance at the Metropolitan Room, New York City, 2009.
Born February 22, 1930 (1930-02-22) (age 79)
Altadena, California
Spouse(s) Ernest Gold (1950–1969)
Lajos Frederick Fenster (1971–1975)
Albert Block (1983-)
Children Andrew Gold (b.1951)
Martha Gold (b.1954)
Melani Gold (b.1962)

Marni Nixon (born February 22, 1930) is an American soprano renowned for dubbing the singing voices of featured actresses in well known movie musicals. This has earned her the sobriquet "The Ghostess with the Mostess", and also "The Voice of Hollywood".[1] 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.

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[edit] Biography

Born Margaret McEathron in Altadena, California, Nixon 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.

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 extensively 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. Her light, flexible, wide-ranging soprano and uncanny accuracy and musicianship have made her valuable in more classical ventures, and have contributed to her success in works by Anton Webern, Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, Paul Hindemith and Alexander Goehr, many of which she has recorded.

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 Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra among others. She taught at the California Institute of Arts from 1969–1971 and joined the faculty of the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, in 1980 where she taught for many years.[2]

[edit] Career highlights

Nixon's dubbing career includes:[3]

Except for Dementia, in which she received on-screen credit as "Featured Voice", the credits for her many dubbing roles did not appear on the titles of any of the films, and Nixon did not begin to be fully credited or widely acknowledged until the movies' subsequent release on VHS decades later.

[edit] My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music

Ms. Nixon gained much notoriety for My Fair Lady, as news-eager journalists ripped apart the customary veil of secrecy.[citation needed] Industry buzz[who?] has said this to have been the cause of Hepburn's failing even to get nominated for an Academy Award for the demanding role.

Nixon finally appeared on screen singing for herself as Sister Sophia in the film The Sound of Music. Julie Andrews, the star of the film of The Sound of Music, had played Eliza Doolittle in the stage version of My Fair Lady, but had lost the film role to Audrey Hepburn. Andrews greeted Nixon with a hearty handshake and said, "I really love your work!" In fact, the two had already worked on the same song in a previous film: Nixon voiced one — or more — of the trio of geese in the animated "Jolly Holiday" sequence of Mary Poppins (1964). Nixon also sang the role of Mary Poppins herself on a collection of songs from the film released on Disneyland records in 1964, in new arrangements that were considerably different from the ones used in the film.[citation needed]

[edit] Later work

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-TV 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.

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's mother.

On June 18, 2007, Marni joined a group of volunteers who were inspired by the documentary film "Tocar y Luchar."[1] They are trying to bring more music education to all children.[2]

Nixon performed 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.

Under her own name, she has also recorded songs by Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Arnold Schönberg, Charles Ives, 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").

On October 27, 2008, Marni Nixon was presented with the Singer Symposium's Distinguished Artist Award in New York City.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Biography of Marni Nixon at curtainup.com
  2. ^ Bernheimer: "Marni Nixon", Grove Music Online
  3. ^ Lawson, Kyle. "Marni Nixon in My Fair Lady", The Arizona Republic, June 10, 2008

[edit] Sources

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marni_Nixon"