Singer and voice double

Born: February 22 1930;

Died July 24 2016

MARNI Nixon, who has died aged 86, was the unseen, uncredited singing star of three of Hollywood’s best-loved musicals – The King and I, My Fair Lady and West Side Story. Generations of film-lovers would recognise the voice but not the face or name of the woman now known as the most famous “ghost singer” of the golden age of film.

Among the actresses to whom Nixon lent her lilting soprano singing voice in around 50 movies were Helensburgh-born Deborah Kerr, Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood in the afore-mentioned musicals, as well as to Ingrid Bergman, Jeanne Crain and Ida Lupino when they were called upon to sing in the dramas Joan of Arc, Cheaper By the Dozen and Jennifer.

Other actresses, not least Marilyn Monroe in her most iconic musical number Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), just borrowed a few high notes from Nixon whose involvement was kept secret.

Marni Nixon was born Margaret Nixon McEathron in Altadena, California in 1930. Her nickname came from the first letters of her first and middle names. Throughout her childhood, she played bit parts in movies and showed musical talent on violin and as a singer. In her teens, she became a private pupil of Vera Schwarz, a distinguished Austrian soprano who had settled in the United States.

At the age of just 17, Nixon appeared as a vocal soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Leopold Stokowski, singing in Orff’s Carmina Burana, before studying opera at Tanglewood.

Her dubbing career began in 1949 when she provided the singing voice for MGM child star Margaret O’Brien in The Secret Garden. That same year, she provided the singing voice for Cinderella in the classic Walt Disney animation. She went on to make her Broadway debut in The Girl in the Pink Tights, in 1954.

Back in the golden age of Hollywood, studios would buy the rights to Broadway shows in order to turn them into lavish musical spectacles. To guarantee good box office returns, they would cast their biggest stars in them – regardless of their singing abilities.

The first major musical which Nixon worked on was the 1956 extravaganza The King and I, in which Deborah Kerr played the leading role of British nanny Anna Leonowens. In 2004, Nixon said: “I was brought in and had to follow along with her, getting her diction and acting style. She in turn would study how I looked when I hit the high notes.” Nixon went on to record the soundtrack album – which became a chart-topper – for a flat fee of $420.

The studios swore Nixon – who was already a critically acclaimed concert singer in her own right – to secrecy regarding her involvement with the films and its soundtrack, and told her that if she broke the terms of her contract she would never work in Hollywood again.

Although Nixon, albeit with gradual resentment, kept her end of the deal, her involvement soon became one of Tinseltown’s worst-kept secrets, and she was labelled “the ghostess with the mostest” by tabloids. She was finally outed as Kerr’s singing voice when the actress, who received an Oscar nomination for The King and I, praised her work on the film.

Kerr may have appreciated Nixon’s contribution to her film’s success, but Natalie Wood, who had hoped and expected to sing the challenging part of Maria in Leonard Bernstein’s score for West Side Story (1961), felt betrayed by the studio when she learned that her singing had been entirely replaced with that of a voice double. For that movie, Nixon faced the gruelling task of getting her singing to match Wood’s on-screen lip movements. It was the same story with My Fair Lady (1965), as Audrey Hepburn had also hoped to do her own singing, with perhaps only a little support from Nixon.

By the time the soundtrack album for West Side Story was being recorded, Nixon and her manager had decided to lobby for royalties. She later recalled that Leonard Bernstein himself stepped in and made “the incredibly generous gesture” of giving up a percentage of his royalty share – amounting to an impressive payout for her, as the album did phenomenally well.

It was probably just as well that the era of the Hollywood musical was winding down as the dubbing experience was beginning to take an emotional toll on Nixon, who felt as if she was losing her own identity by spending so much time studying and trying to get into the mindset of the actresses to whom she was lending her voice.

Over time, Marni Nixon became a name in her own right, appearing on TV, singing in operas and in Broadway revivals of Follies and Nine. She toured with My Fair Lady in 2007 and published her autobiography I Could Have Sung All Night in 2006. Among her onscreen appearances are as Sister Sophia in The Sound of Music (1965), Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and in the recent documentary, Secret Voices of Hollywood.

Thrice married, she is survived by her two daughters from her first marriage. Her late son from that marriage, Andrew Gold, was a rock musician/songwriter whose song Thank You For Being a Friend became the title music for The Golden Girls.

ALISON KERR