Marni Nixon
Encyclopedia
Marni Nixon is an American
Americans
The people of the United States, also known as simply Americans or American people, are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...

 soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 and playback singer
Playback singer
A playback singer is a singer whose singing is prerecorded for use in movies. Playback singers record songs for soundtracks, and actors or actresses lip-sync the songs for cameras, while the actual singer does not appear on screen.-South Asia:...

 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
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Biography

Born Margaret Nixon McEathron in Altadena, California
Altadena, California
Altadena is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Los Angeles County, California, United States, approximately from the downtown Los Angeles Civic Center, and directly north of the city of Pasadena, 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
Roger Wagner
Roger Wagner, KCSG was an American choral musician, administrator and educator.-Early life:Wagner was born in Le Puy, France. His younger brother was actor and voiceover artist Jack Wagner. Roger Wagner was immersed in music from his youngest years...

; this choir evolved into the Roger Wagner Chorale in 1948, and later into the Los Angeles Master Chorale
Los Angeles Master Chorale
The Los Angeles Master Chorale is a professional chorus in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1964 by Roger Wagner to be one of the three original resident companies of the Music Center of Los Angeles County...

 in 1964.

She went on to study singing
Singing
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...

 and opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 with Carl Ebert
Carl Ebert
Carl Ebert was a German theatre and opera producer and administrator.-Biography:He worked as an actor and theatre director in Germany from 1915 to 1927, directing Brecht's In The Jungle of Cities in Darmstadt in 1927...

, Jan Popper, Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky
Boris Goldovsky was a Russian conductor and broadcast commentator, active in the United States. He has been called an important "popularizer" of opera in America...

 and Sarah Caldwell
Sarah Caldwell
Sarah Caldwell was a notable American opera conductor, impresario, and stage director of opera.- Life :Caldwell was born in Maryville, Missouri, and grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was a child prodigy and gave public performances on the violin by the time she was ten years old...

. She embarked on a varied career, involving film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 and musical comedy as well as opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 and concerts. She appeared on American television, dubbed the singing voices of film actresses in The King and I
The King and I (1956 film)
The King and I is a 1956 musical film made by 20th Century Fox, directed by Walter Lang and produced by Charles Brackett and Darryl F. Zanuck. The screenplay by Ernest Lehman is based on the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical The King and I, based in turn on the book Anna and the King...

, West Side Story
West Side Story (film)
West Side Story is a 1961 musical film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. The film is an adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was adapted from William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. It stars Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno,...

and My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady (film)
My Fair Lady is a 1964 musical film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, of the same name, based on the 1938 film adaptation of the original stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The ballroom scene and the ending were taken from the previous film adaptation , rather than from...

, and acted in several commercial stage ventures.

Nixon performed on the U.S. National Tour of Cameron Mackintosh
Cameron Mackintosh
Sir Cameron Anthony Mackintosh is a British theatrical producer notable for his association with many commercially successful musicals. At the height of his success in 1990, he was described as being "the most successful, influential and powerful theatrical producer in the world" by the New York...

's U.K. revival of My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...

through July 2008, replacing Sally Ann Howes
Sally Ann Howes
Sally Ann Howes is a British actress and singer, who currently holds dual British-American citizenship. Her career on stage, screen and television has spanned over six decades...

 in the role of Mrs. Higgins.

Under her own name, she has also recorded songs by Jerome Kern
Jerome Kern
Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A...

, George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...

, Arnold Schönberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

, Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...

, and Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...

.

Opera

Nixon's opera repertory includes Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos is an opera by Richard Strauss with a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Bringing together slapstick comedy and consuming beautiful music, the opera's theme is the competition between high and low art for the public's attention.- First version :The opera was originally...

, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, both Blonde and Konstanze in Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail is an opera Singspiel in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German libretto is by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner with adaptations by Gottlieb Stephanie...

, Violetta in La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...

, the title role in La Périchole
La Périchole
La Périchole is an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach. Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy wrote the French-language libretto based on the 1829 one act play Le carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée, which was revived on 13 March 1850 at the Théâtre-Français...

and Philine in Mignon
Mignon
Mignon is an opéra comique in three acts by Ambroise Thomas. The original French libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The Italian version was translated by Giuseppe Zaffira. The opera is mentioned in James Joyce's The Dead,...

. Her opera credits include performances at Los Angeles Opera
Los Angeles Opera
The Los Angeles Opera is an opera company in Los Angeles, California. It is the fourth largest opera company in the United States. The company's home base is the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, part of the Los Angeles Music Center.-Current leadership:...

, Seattle Opera
Seattle Opera
The Seattle Opera is an opera company located in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1963 by Glynn Ross, who served as the company's first general director through 1983, Seattle Opera's season runs from August to late May, with five or six operas offered and with eight to ten performances each, often...

, San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...

 and the Tanglewood Festival among others. In addition to giving recitals, she appeared with the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...

 under Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

, the Los Angeles Philharmonic
Los Angeles Philharmonic
The Los Angeles Philharmonic is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California, United States. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from July through September...

, the Cleveland Orchestra
Cleveland Orchestra
The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall...

, Toronto Symphony Orchestra
Toronto Symphony Orchestra
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra is a Canadian orchestra based in Toronto, Ontario.-History:The TSO was founded in 1922 as the New Symphony Orchestra, and gave its first concert at Massey Hall in April 1923. The orchestra changed its name to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1927. The TSO...

, the London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra
The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...

 and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is the leading symphony orchestra in Israel. It was originally known as the Palestine Orchestra, and in Hebrew as התזמורת הסימפונית הארץ ישראלית The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (abbreviation IPO; Hebrew: התזמורת הפילהרמונית הישראלית, ha-Tizmoret ha-Filharmonit...

 among others. She taught at the California Institute of Arts from 1969–71 and joined the faculty of the Music Academy of the West
Music Academy of the West
The Music Academy of the West is a music conservatory located in Montecito, California near Santa Barbara, California. Every year, it hosts a summer music festival for the community highlighted by concerts and workshops directed by famous composers, conductors, and artists.A yearly maximum of 135...

, 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
    Ingrid Bergman
    Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...

     in Joan of Arc
    Joan of Arc (1948 film)
    Joan of Arc is a 1948 Technicolor film directed by Victor Fleming; starring Ingrid Bergman as the French religious icon and war heroine. It was produced by Walter Wanger. It is based on Maxwell Anderson's successful Broadway play Joan of Lorraine, which also starred Bergman, and was adapted for the...

    (1948).
  • The singing voice for Margaret O'Brien
    Margaret O'Brien
    Margaret O'Brien is an American film and stage actress. Although her film career as a leading character was brief, she was one of the most popular child actors in cinema history...

     in The Secret Garden
    The Secret Garden (1949 film)
    The Secret Garden is a 1949 US drama film. It is the second screen adaptation of the classic 1909 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett . The screenplay by Robert Ardrey was directed by Fred M. Wilcox...

    (1949).
  • Providing Marilyn Monroe
    Marilyn Monroe
    Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

     with a few top notes in her performance of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend
    Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend
    "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" is a song introduced by Carol Channing in the original Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , which was written by Jule Styne and Leo Robin...

    " in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).
  • An eerie vocalise
    Vocalise
    A vocalise is a vocal exercise without words, which is sung on one or more vowel sounds.-In classical music:Vocalise dates back to the mid-18th century...

     (wordless vocal) as part of George Antheil
    George Antheil
    George Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor. A self-described "Bad Boy of Music", his modernist compositions amazed and appalled listeners in Europe and the US during the 1920s with their cacophonous celebration of mechanical devices.Returning permanently to...

    's score for Dementia (1955).
  • The singing voice for Deborah Kerr
    Deborah Kerr
    Deborah Kerr, CBE was a Scottish film and television actress from Glasgow. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance as Laura Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy, a role which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture The King and I, and was a three-time...

     in the film of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I
    The King and I (1956 film)
    The King and I is a 1956 musical film made by 20th Century Fox, directed by Walter Lang and produced by Charles Brackett and Darryl F. Zanuck. The screenplay by Ernest Lehman is based on the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical The King and I, based in turn on the book Anna and the King...

    (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
    Deborah Kerr
    Deborah Kerr, CBE was a Scottish film and television actress from Glasgow. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance as Laura Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy, a role which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture The King and I, and was a three-time...

    's singing voice again in An Affair to Remember
    An Affair to Remember
    An Affair to Remember is a 1957 film starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, and directed by Leo McCarey. It was distributed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation....

    , one year after The King and I.
  • The singing voice for Natalie Wood
    Natalie Wood
    Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...

     as Maria in West Side Story
    West Side Story (film)
    West Side Story is a 1961 musical film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. The film is an adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was adapted from William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. It stars Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno,...

    (1961). Nixon also sang some parts of the score of Anita played by Rita Moreno
    Rita Moreno
    Rita Moreno is a Puerto Rican singer, dancer and actress. She is the only Hispanic and one of the few performers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony, and was the second Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award....

    , sharing the load with co-dubber Betty Wand
    Betty Wand
    Betty Wand is an American singer and author, best known as the singing voice dubbed in for various actresses in musical films, including Leslie Caron in Gigi and some of Rita Moreno's part in West Side Story...

     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
    Audrey Hepburn
    Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...

     as Eliza in My Fair Lady
    My Fair Lady (film)
    My Fair Lady is a 1964 musical film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, of the same name, based on the 1938 film adaptation of the original stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The ballroom scene and the ending were taken from the previous film adaptation , rather than from...

    (1964). In the finished film, the only remaining singing vocals by Audrey Hepburn
    Audrey Hepburn
    Audrey Hepburn was a British actress and humanitarian. Although modest about her acting ability, Hepburn remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century...

     herself are a section of the song "Just You Wait", one line in the song "I Could Have Danced All Night
    I Could Have Danced All Night
    "I Could Have Danced All Night" is a song from the musical My Fair Lady, with music written by Frederick Loewe and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, published in 1956...

    " – "Sleep, sleep, I couldn't sleep tonight", and "Just You Wait" (reprise).


Her film contributions were not credited, with the exception of Dementia, in which she received on-screen credit as "Featured Voice". 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 1965 film The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music (film)
Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical film directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The film is based on the Broadway musical The Sound of Music, with songs written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and with the musical...

. In the DVD commentary to the film, director Robert Wise
Robert Wise
Robert Earl Wise was an American sound effects editor, film editor, film producer and director...

 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
KOMO-TV
KOMO-TV, virtual channel 4, is a television station in Seattle, Washington. It is an affiliate of ABC and broadcasts on digital channel 38. KOMO-TV is the flagship station of Fisher Communications, and its studios and offices are co-located with sister radio stations KOMO , KVI , and KPLZ-FM ...

 channel 4 called Boomerang. In 2001, she replaced Joan Roberts as Heidi Schiller in the Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 revival
Revival (play)
A revival is a restaging of a stage production after its original run has closed. New material may be added. A filmed version is said to be an adaptation and requires writing of a screenplay....

 of Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...

's Follies
Follies
Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...

. 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
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is a musical based upon George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe...

, 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
Exodus (film)
Exodus is a 1960 epic war film made by Alpha and Carlyle Productions and distributed by United Artists. Produced and directed by Otto Preminger, the film was based on the 1958 novel Exodus, by Leon Uris. The screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo, which represented the breaking of the Hollywood...

. They had three children, including singer/songwriter Andrew Gold
Andrew Gold
Andrew Maurice Gold was an American singer, musician and songwriter. His works include the Top 10 single "Lonely Boy" , as well as the singles "Thank You for Being a Friend" , and "Never Let Her Slip Away" ....

 (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
Sigma Alpha Iota
Sigma Alpha Iota , International Music Fraternity for Women. Formed to "uphold the highest standards of music" and "to further the development of music in America and throughout the world", it continues to provide musical and educational resources to its members and the general public...

 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


Interview
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK