Marni Nixon, the “Ghost Voice” of Hollywood, Dies at 86

Marni Nixon, the singer whose voice can be heard filling in for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and for Deborah Kerr in The King and I, has died aged 86, according to the New York Times.

Her death was a result of breast cancer complications, Randy Banner, Nixon’s friend told the New York Times.

Nixon’s career in film started in 1948 when she sang the voices of the angels heard by Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc (1948). Fox vocal director Ken Darby then called her in 1955 to dub Kerr in the screen version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I“. But Nixon’s reputation in Hollywood got her another big ticket gig: West Side Story – where things were not quite as friendly with Natalie Wood, who played Maria.

Nixon said she had a better working relationship with Audrey Hepburn on My Fair Lady, even though Hepburn, like Wood, expected most of her own vocals to be used. Earlier, she added a few notes to Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”, from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes“. “I moved up to Seattle, Washington”, Nixon told TheaterMania in 2013, and was asked “if I would do a children’s show, so we improvised with some students of mine who had puppets”. “And she would watch me, while I sang”.

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

Nixon recalled that after getting no royalties from the big-selling “The King and I” soundtrack album, she and her manager fought for better treatment for “West Side Story“.

Born February 22, 1930, in Altadena, California, Nixon worked during her teenage years at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios as a messenger. She got to sing “Honor To Us All” in the film. She asked the film’s producers for, but did not receive, any direct royalties from her work on the film, but Leonard Bernstein contractually gave her 1/4 of one percent of his personal royalties from it. She performed in the 2008 North American Tour of Cameron Mackintosh’s United Kingdom revival of My Fair Lady in the role of Mrs. Higgins. These performances marked her first time on Broadway since taking the stage in 1954’s The Girl in Pink Tights.

Nixon was married to film composer-conductor Ernest Gold, Oscar victor for “Exodus”, from 1950 to 1969. Nixon married flutist Albert Block in 1983. He recounts this story from the premiere of The Sound of Music: “She got out of her vehicle with her red hair and they all screamed and then they looked at her and said: Oh, it’s nobody!”

She is survived by three sisters, two daughters from her first marriage, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Her son Andrew Gold died in 2011.

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