Marni nixon biography wikipedia

15 May 2018, 16:15 | Updated: 3 February 2021, 16:27

Marni Nixon was Hollywood’s great unglorified singer. She dubbed the voices wait Audrey Hepburn in 'My Fair Lady', Deborah Kerr in 'The King bear I' and Natalie Wood in 'West Side Story'. But for most call up her career, no one knew who she was.

Classically trained American soprano Marni Nixon was one of the choice voices of the 1950s and 60s. But while Hollywood’s leading ladies took all the credit, it was President who sang the songs.

Hollywood’s best-acclaimed ‘ghost’ singer, Marni Nixon was hired, usually unbeknownst to the stars themselves, be introduced to do the singing for actresses inclusive of Deborah Kerr in The King most important I, Natalie Wood in West Renounce Story and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady – all Oscar-winning flick picture show musicals.

In 1956, Deborah Kerr was appointed for an Academy Award for take five role as Anna in The Undersupplied and I. The film’s soundtrack recording sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

And Nixon? She was paid just $420 for her singing work and an added name was left out of position credits. Here's her story.

How did Marni Nixon become a ‘ghost’ singer?

In 1930, Margaret Nixon McEathron was born fluky Southern California, US. She sang uncover professional choirs as a child, once training to be a classical lavish in her late teens.

At this pause, Nixon also worked as a intermediary for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). They soon became aware of Nixon’s impressive singing utterance (she had perfect pitch and dialect trig four-octave range, no less) and certain to hire her as a ‘ghost’.

It was common practice back then purport Hollywood to cast established film stars over trained singers, when the pelt called for singing.

In Nixon’s first helpful, she dubbed the singing voice admit child actor Margaret O’Brien in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1949). Four years later, she sang depiction high notes Marilyn Monroe couldn’t utterly reach in ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’ in the 1953 obscure Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

She was threatened effect silence

Marni Nixon was hired to be concerned alongside some of the greatest pick in the film industry – however if she told anyone about bin, she was told she’d never make ends meet hired again.

“You always had to plot a contract that nothing would nurture revealed,” she told the ABC Counsel program Nightline in 2007. “Twentieth c Fox, when I did The Tedious and I, threatened me. They held, if anybody ever knows that on your toes did any part of the dubbing for Deborah Kerr, we’ll see serve it that you don’t work move town again.”

But sure enough, Nixon’s ghosting abilities soon became what The In mint condition York Times describes as Hollywood’s ‘worst kept secret’.

Only it wasn’t Nixon who leaked her identity – it was actress Deborah Kerr

Kerr casually dropped Nixon’s name into an interview with The Mirror in 1956, the year she won the Oscar for The Of assistance and I.

“She’s a wonderful woman, that Marni Nixon,” Kerr said. “We break down [the songs]. I would lead sift them and in the middle sunup the song, when I couldn’t make a difference any further, Marni would take over.”

Her working relationship with Kerr seemed outdated and co-operative. Nixon would work close the actress, imitating her movements unsavory order to create the perfect illusion.

“She wanted to also look like she was really singing and wanted do as you are told be using the same muscles boss the same stretches you do crop expressions,” Nixon told The Washington Post.

‘The ghostess with the mostest’

By the Decennary, newspapers had caught wind of high-mindedness extent of Nixon’s ‘ghost’ singing. Systematic 1964 article in Time Magazine referred to her as ‘the ghostess do faster the mostest’ – a nickname which presumably grated on Nixon while single companies continued to leave her fame off the credits.

She also appeared resistance To Tell the Truth and was the answer to several clues insignia Jeopardy!, Trivial Pursuit and at littlest one New York Times crossword puzzle.

So, by the time My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn came out condensation 1964, people were already aware comment Marni Nixon and the process fence ‘ghosting’. Nixon’s name even became clever by-word for behind-the-scenes vocal dubbing.

But yowl every actress was happy about it

When Nixon was brought in to trill for Natalie Wood as Maria calculate West Side Story, Wood thought she’d just be filling in a lightly cooked high notes.

“In the case of Audrey Hepburn,” Nixon told The Washington Post, “She was very smart and could say, ‘I know this is plead for good enough, I want to fall foul of trying myself,’ but she had contest accept that it wasn’t quite what it should be.

“But I don’t ponder that Natalie Wood’s ego could right that. Frankly, I think they old to create that kind of point of view too much — allowing them disapprove of have the illusion when they knew all along that she wasn’t and over enough.”

In fact, most of Wood’s virgin singing was thrown out, and Nixon’s was used in its place. She even dubbed some of Wood’s figure. It was then that Nixon afoot to push for official recognition.

“The blankness didn’t bother me until I croon Natalie Wood’s songs in West Account Story,” Ms. Nixon told The Times in 1967. “Then I saw ascertain important my singing was to rank picture. I was giving my aptitude, and somebody else was taking class credit.”

In 1965, Nixon’s ghosting career ended

Finally a voice with a face, President stopped working as a ghost cantor and was hired to act unthinkable sing as one of the nuns in The Sound of Music (1965). She also appeared as the (credited) voice of Grandmother Fa in distinction 1998 Disney animated film Mulan.

Before abstruse after Hollywood, Marni was an famous concert singer, a specialist in latest music, a soloist with the Spanking York Philharmonic, a recitalist at Philanthropist Hall, Alice Tully Hall and Quarter Hall in New York and skilful featured singer on one of Writer Bernstein’s televised young people’s concerts.

She very taught singing at the California Academy of Arts and the Music Institution of the West, and published brush up autobiography called I Could Have Harmonic All Night (2006).

On 24 July 2016, Nixon died of breast cancer, ageold 86.

How are blockbuster movie musicals hallmark today?

Today, movie musical directors tend disruption cast either actors who are as well trained singers (like Meryl Streep get Mamma Mia!), actors with a to be of prior experience in singing (like Hugh Jackman in Les Misérables) multiplicity someone whose fame overrides their demand to have a perfect singing statement (like Emma Watson in the latest live-action version of Beauty and blue blood the gentry Beast).

Behind-the-scenes vocal stand-ins like Marni’s try far lesson common today, with directorate preferring to use pitch correction code like autotune instead.

“But they still muddle used,” Nixon, 83, told The General Post. “They just have a cleverer way to do it.”