MARNI NIXON

(22 February 1922 - 24 July 2016)

The American singer, actress and vocal teacher Marni Nixon worked in film, TV, opera, musicals and classical concerts, but will be chiefly remembered for her work as a voiceover and playback artist who dubbed many famous actresses whose own singing voices were perhaps less than perfect. Marni had always performed as a child and later sang in choirs including the Roger Wagner Chorale. She studied singing and opera but her film career started in 1942 in The Bashful Bachelor. She was the voices Ingrid Bergman heard in Joan of Arc. Then she sang for Margaret O’Brien in Big City (1948) and The Secret Garden (1949) and was the singing voices of Walt Disney’s Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), the geese in Mary Poppins (1964) and Mulan (1998). Although Marni, who had a clear soprano voice, did sing in opera and act on stage and in films (she was Sister Sophia in The Sound of Music) she also did TV work with Danny Kaye, Woody Woodbury, Joey Bishop, Jerry Seinfeld and had her own show Boomerang. With her fine vocal range she managed to dub other actors such as Deborah Kerr in The King and I and An Affair to Remember, Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Gypsy, Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, as well as Janet Leigh and Jeannie Crane. Marni Nixon was married three times, first to film composer Ernest Gold (Exodus) with whom she had three children. Both Andrew and Melanie are singer-songwriters.

MICHAEL DARVELL