Marni Nixon, Hollywood Singing Voice, Dies at 86

She also toured the USA with one-woman show Marni Nixon: The Voice of Hollywood, hosted kids show Boomerang in 1970s and 80s, and released a memoir I Could Have Sung All Night in 2006.

Wood, playing Maria in West Side Story, thought Nixon would be helping out on the high notes.

Although Nixon’s work went mostly unaccredited, she was one of the worst-kept secrets in the business. The puppets are now part of the collection at the Museum of History and Industry and stored at the museum’s Sodo facility.

Nixon, a “ghost singer” who did not receive onscreen credit for her work on these legendary musicals, died Sunday of breast cancer in Manhattan, her friend told The New York Times.

Born in Southern California, Nixon became a sought-after singer by the time she was a teenager. “I realized. that this was something that would outlive me”.

The singer likened her work to that of a stuntman, and collaborated closely with the stars to flawless the screen illusion.

In the 1940s, ’50s and into the ’60s, major film actresses without great singing voices were often “dubbed” by anonymous background singers. “I said to her, ‘Look, people aren’t supposed to know that I did your dubbing.’ And she said, ‘Well, I don’t have to know that that’s in your contract.’ She was that gracious”.

“It’s fascinating, getting inside the actresses you’re singing for”, she told The New York Journal-American in 1964.

Nixon was later to provide the singing voices of Natalie Wood in West Side Story in 1961 and for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, in 1964. She sang part of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” for Marilyn Monroe in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes“, for 20th Century-Fox in 1953. She can be seen in the background of “The Grapes of Wrath”, “Babes on Broadway”, “Song to Remember”, “The Emperor Waltz”, “The Good Old Summertime” and almost 50 other films.

In this video, Marni Nixon, who appeared on camera as Sister Sophia in “The Sound of Music”, performs a medley of songs as a guide for singers dubbing the soundtrack for foreign language editions.

In the 1998 Disney film Mulan, Nixon was the singing voice of “Grandmother Fa”.

As the era of big, traditional movie musicals dried up, though, so did Nixon’s film career.

The Broadway performer and singing teacher died Sunday in NY, according to multiple reports.

“Whenever there was a song to be sung in a scene, I would get up and stand next to her and watch her while she sang”, Kerr told NPR.

“I sat in on her singing lessons, so I could hear not only the Cockney and the upper-class British, which are two different voices”. But that was not to be. “I don’t think that Natalie Wood’s ego could take that”. At 11, already possessed of a fine singing voice, she won a vocal competition at the Los Angeles County Fair and found her true calling. Marni was called back to dub over Kerr’s singing again for the 1957 film, An Affair to Remember which also starred Cary Grant. The film isn’t a musical, but Kerr’s character is a nightclub singer. Marni, a combination of the first syllables of her first and middle names, was created for the benefit of a younger sibling who could not pronounced “Margaret”.

She began teaching voice at the California Institute of the Arts in the 1970s, although she continued to appear on stage, primarily in operatic roles. In her 2006 autobiography, “I Could Have Sung All Night: My Story”, Nixon wrote of her first dubbing job at MGM for child start Margaret O’Brien (in Hindu!) for “The Secret Garden”.

Nixon appeared on Broadway in The Girl in Pink Tights in 1954, in James Joyce’s The Dead in 2000, in Follies in 2001 and in Nine in 2003.

Nixon would later star in a stage tour of “My Fair Lady” in 2007. He died in 2011. Survivors include two daughters from her first marriage, Martha Carr of Los Angeles and Melani Gold Friedman of Tujunga, Calif.; three sisters; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Information from KIRO 7 staff is also included in this report.

Biographical material in this story was written by The Associated Press’ late Hollywood correspondent Bob Thomas.