MARNI NIXON

The American soprano Marni Nixon is known in the popular world as the singing voice behind the stars of West Side Story, The King and I and My Fair Lady. An accomplished singer in her own right, she has sung opera, classical song and appeared on Broadway. Ms. Nixon worked with Lehmann in a production of Ariadne auf Naxos at the Music Academy of the West and considered her a friend. Besides her singing career, Marni Nixon is also an actress, recently nominated for an Ovation award. She gives master clases throughout the country in musical theater and classical song.

She was the singing voice of Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood, Jeanne Crain and Marilyn Monroe, to name only a few. They, on the other hand, were her face. But Marni Nixon has a face -- and voice -- all her own, as she has been demonstrating to audiences for five decades.

The soprano bears an eerie resemblance to one performer she's never dubbed -- Julie Andrews. 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. 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").

Ms. Nixon lives in New York where she also teaches voice.

Certainly she's a very gifted musical actress, a talent which for years overshadowed her other considerable abilities. A California native, Nixon (no relation to the late, disgraced President) got into the "dubbing" game early. Her first job was singing for Margaret O'Brien in 1949's Secret Garden.

Nixon recalls, "I also dubbed Janet Leigh -- I can't remember for what -- and Jeanne Crain in some of the smaller features. [Jeanne] had a regular person who dubbed for her in the bigger films. My hardest one was Ethel Waters for a TV show. She was supposed to sing an old song of hers, 'I'm Coming, Virginia,' and she couldn't sing it anymore. 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."

Nixon's chameleon-like singing was soon in great demand. Her first big musical was 1956's The King and I, in which she sang for Deborah Kerr. A year later she did Kerr's crooning in "An Affair to Remember." --in five different languages."

But the early '60s was the major time for 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.

After the musical boon of the 1960's, Nixon was not silent. She performed on Broadway, starred in her own TV show (Boomerang) in Seattle, did concerts, theater, night clubs and classical recordings, and toured extensively with both Liberace and Victor Borge.

Nixon completed a tour as Fraulein Schneider in "Cabaret" and has dubbed Grandma Fa for Disney's, "The Legend of Mulan." Her son Andrew Gold, is a Songwiter, Record Producer, instumentalist and singer. Daughter Martha Carr, is a Los Angeles psychologist and Melani Gold, is a Hellerworker, (Body-movement Integrationist), Massage Theapist (and singer-songwriter). For the past 16 years, Nixon has been married to musician Al Block.