

Once they realize you're like a sponge and aren't going to take over their performance, it's fine. "With dubbing," Nixon said, "you have to feel the people you're singing for are your friends. There were some of my phrases used in 'Sleepless in Seattle.' I dubbed 'An Affair to Remember' in five different languages."īut the early 1960’s was the major time for Marni Nixon as the Singing Voice of the Stars - for Natalie Wood in 1961's West Side Story and for Audrey Hepburn, in My Fair Lady. "People forget that Deborah played a nightclub singer in that film," Nixon said. A year later she did Kerr's crooning in An Affair to Remember. Her first big musical was 1956's The King and I, in which she sang for Deborah Kerr. Marni Nixon's chameleon-like singing was soon in great demand. I thought that was awful - her voice suited her persona so beautifully." She stood over me and told me what to do!" Little known is her dubbing of the phrase "These rocks don't lose their shape" for Marilyn Monroe when the blonde bombshell sang "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" in 1953's "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." "The studio wanted Marilyn's entire voice dubbed," Nixon says.

She was supposed to sing an old song of hers, 'I'm Coming, Virginia,' and she couldn't sing it anymore.
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My hardest one was Ethel Waters for a TV show. had a regular person who dubbed for her in the bigger films. Marni Nixon recalled, "I also dubbed Janet Leigh - I can't remember for what - and Jeanne Crain in some of the smaller features. Her first job was singing for Margaret O'Brien in 1949's Secret Garden.

A California native, Nixon (no relation to the late, disgraced President) got into the "dubbing" game early. People still look at me and say, 'Is she an actress?'"Ĭertainly Marni Nixon was a very gifted musical actress, a talent which for years overshadowed her other considerable abilities. I have to figure out in a creative way how I can do this. "I want to do more movies, but of course, at my age, everybody famous is already there. Marnie Nixon liveed in New York where she also taught voice.
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She and Andrews, however, did appear together in 1965's Sound of Music (Nixon played Sister Sophia, who helped ponder how to solve a problem in the song "Maria"). The two, however, are forever linked by My Fair Lady, Andrews for originating the role of Eliza on Broadway in 1956 and then losing it in the 1964 film to Audrey Hepburn, and Nixon for dubbing Hepburn's singing. Marni Nixon bears an eerie resemblance to one performer she's never dubbed - Julie Andrews. But Marni Nixon had a face - and voice - all her own, as she demonstrated to audiences for five decades. Marni Nixon was the singing voice of Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood, Jeanne Crain and Marilyn Monroe, to name only a few. She giave master-clases throughout the country in musical theater and classical song. Besides her singing career, Marni Nixon was also an actress, recently nominated for an Ovation award. She worked with Lehmann in a production of Ariadne auf Naxos at the Music Academy of the West and considered her a friend. An accomplished singer in her own right, she sang opera, classical song and appeared on Broadway. The American soprano, Marni Nixon, was known in the popular world as the singing voice behind the stars of West Side Story, The King and I and My Fair Lady.
