Marni Nixon

Marni Nixon
Marni Nixon, following a performance at the Metropolitan Room, New York City, 2009
Born	(1930-02-22) February 22, 1930 Altadena, California, United States
Spouse(s)	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 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 under 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 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.

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.

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. 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.

Nixon's autobiography, I Could Have Sung All Night, was published by Billboard Books in 2006.

Career highlights

Nixon's dubbing career includes:

• The voices of the angels heard by Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc (1948).
• The singing voice for 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).
• An eerie vocalise (wordless vocal) as part of George Antheil's score for Dementia (1955).
• The singing voice for Deborah Kerr in the film of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I (1956) (in one song — "Shall I tell you what I think of you?" — Kerr's and Nixon's voices were skilfully intertwined; this was deleted from the film before its release, but it was retained on the soundtrack cast recording; Deborah Kerr also provides the spoken words at the beginning of "Getting to know you").
• Dubbing Deborah Kerr's singing voice again in An Affair to Remember, one year after dubbing her in The King and I.
• The singing voice for Natalie Wood as Maria in West Side Story (1961). Nixon 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, according to her autobiography.
• The singing voice for Audrey Hepburn as Eliza in My Fair Lady (1964). In the finished film, the only remaining singing vocals by Audrey Hepburn herself are a section of the song "Just You Wait", one line in the song "I Could Have Danced All Night" – "Sleep, sleep, I couldn't sleep tonight", and "Just You Wait" (reprise).

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 until the movies' subsequent release on VHS decades later.

Because she performed the voices for actresses in musicals, she has been called "The Ghostess with the Mostess", and "The Voice of Hollywood".

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 film The Sound of Music, cast in the role by director Robert Wise. In the DVD commentary to the film, he comments that audiences were finally able to see the woman whose voice they knew so well.

Later work

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 non-singing role of Mrs. Higgins, Professor Higgins's mother.

On June 18, 2007, Nixon joined a group of volunteers who were inspired by the documentary film Tocar y Luchar ("To Play and To Fight"); their goal is to bring more music education to school children.

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 IMDb
• Marni Nixon at the Internet Broadway Database
• Marni Nixon at IMDb

Interview

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