Classically trained, Ms. Nixon was throughout the 1950s and \u201960s the unseen \u2014 and usually uncredited \u2014 singing voice of the stars in a spate of celebrated Hollywood films. She dubbed Deborah Kerr in \u201cThe King and I,\u201d Natalie Wood in \u201cWest Side Story\u201d and Audrey Hepburn in \u201cMy Fair Lady,\u201d among many others.<\/p>\n
Her other covert outings included singing for Jeanne Crain in \u201cCheaper by the Dozen,\u201d Janet Leigh in \u201cPepe\u201d and Ida Lupino in \u201cJennifer.\u201d \u201cThe ghostess with the mostest,\u201d the newspapers called her, a description that eventually began to rankle.<\/p>\n
Before her Hollywood days and long afterward, Ms. Nixon was an acclaimed concert singer, a specialist in contemporary music who appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic; a recitalist at Carnegie, Alice Tully and Town Halls in New York; and a featured singer on one of Leonard Bernstein\u2019s televised young people\u2019s concerts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Her concerts and her many recordings \u2014 including works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Webern, Ives, Copland, Gershwin and Kern \u2014 drew wide critical praise. Yet as late as 1990, decades after Ms. Nixon had made good on her vow to perform only as herself, she remained, in the words of The Los Angeles Times, \u201cthe best known of the ghost singers.\u201d<\/p>\n At midcentury, Hollywood was more inclined to cast bankable stars than trained singers in films that called for singing. As a result, generations of Americans have grown accustomed to Ms. Nixon\u2019s voice, if not her face, in standards like \u201cGetting to Know You<\/a>,\u201d from \u201cThe King and I\u201d; \u201cI Feel Pretty<\/a>,\u201d from \u201cWest Side Story\u201d; and \u201cI Could Have Danced All Night<\/a>,\u201d from \u201cMy Fair Lady.\u201d<\/p>\n Though Ms. Nixon honored the bargain, her work soon became one of Hollywood\u2019s worst-kept secrets. She became something of a cult figure, appearing as a guest on \u201cTo Tell the Truth<\/a>\u201d and as an answer to clues featured by \u201cJeopardy!,\u201d Trivial Pursuit and at least one New York Times crossword puzzle.<\/p>\n Her increasing renown helped bring her spectral trade into the light and encouraged her to push for official recognition. \u201cThe anonymity didn\u2019t bother me until I sang Natalie Wood\u2019s songs<\/a> in \u2018West Side Story,\u2019 \u201d Ms. Nixon told The Times in 1967. \u201cThen I saw how important my singing was to the picture. I was giving my talent, and somebody else was taking the credit.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the studios seldom accorded Ms. Nixon the screen credit and royalties that she began to demand, both became customary for ghost singers.<\/p>\n Starting as a teenager in the late 1940s and continuing for the next two decades, Ms. Nixon lent her crystalline soprano to some 50 films, sometimes contributing just a line or two of song \u2014 sometimes just a single, seamless note \u2014 that the actress could not manage on her own.<\/p>\n The voice of an angel heard by Ingrid Bergman in \u201cJoan of Arc\u201d? It was Ms. Nixon\u2019s.<\/p>\n The songs of the nightclub singer<\/a>, played by Ms. Kerr, in \u201cAn Affair to Remember\u201d? Also Ms. Nixon.<\/p>\n The second line of the couplet \u201cBut square-cut or pear-shape\/These rocks don\u2019t lose their shape,\u201d with its pinpoint high note on \u201ctheir,\u201d from \u201cGentlemen Prefer Blondes\u201d? That was Ms. Nixon too. (The film\u2019s star Marilyn Monroe sang the rest of the number, \u201cDiamonds Are a Girl\u2019s Best Friend<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n It was a decidedly peculiar calling \u2014 and not one on which Ms. Nixon had ever planned \u2014 entailing not so much imitating actors as embodying them.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s fascinating, getting inside the actresses you\u2019re singing for,\u201d she told The New York Journal-American in 1964. \u201cIt\u2019s like cutting off the top of their heads and seeing what\u2019s underneath. You have to know how they feel, as well as how they talk, in order to sing as they would sing<\/a> \u2014 if they could sing.\u201d<\/p>\n Over time, however, Ms. Nixon came to regard her spectacular mimetic gift as more curse than blessing. For despite her myriad accomplishments as a singer of art songs, she was obliged to spend years exorcising her ghostly cinematic presence.<\/p>\n \u201cIt got so I\u2019d lent my voice to so many others that I felt it no longer belonged to me,\u201d she told The Times in 1981. \u201cIt was eerie; I had lost part of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n A petite, fine-boned woman who resembled Julie Andrews, Ms. Nixon was born Margaret Nixon McEathron on Feb. 22, 1930, in Altadena, Calif., near Los Angeles.<\/p>\n She began studying the violin at 4 and throughout her childhood played bit parts \u2014 \u201cthe freckle-faced brat,\u201d she called her typical role \u2014 in a string of Hollywood movies. At 11, already possessed of a fine singing voice, she won a vocal competition at the Los Angeles County Fair and found her true calling. She became a private pupil of Vera Schwarz, a distinguished Austrian soprano who had settled in the United States.<\/p>\n At 17, Ms. Nixon appeared as a vocal soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Leopold Stokowski, singing in Orff\u2019s \u201cCarmina Burana.\u201d She later studied opera at Tanglewood with Sarah Caldwell and Boris Goldovsky.<\/p>\n During her teenage years, Ms. Nixon worked as a messenger at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Knowing of her musical ability \u2014 she had perfect pitch and was an impeccable sight reader \u2014 the studio began recruiting her to furnish the singing voices of young actresses. The work helped pay for Ms. Nixon\u2019s voice lessons.<\/p>\n Her first significant dubbing job was singing a Hindu lullaby for Margaret O\u2019Brien in \u201cThe Secret Garden,\u201d released in 1949.<\/p>\n On Broadway, Ms. Nixon appeared in the Sigmund Romberg musical \u201cThe Girl in Pink Tights\u201d in 1954 and, more recently, in the musical drama \u201cJames Joyce\u2019s \u2018The Dead\u2019 \u201d (2000), the 2001 revival of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s \u201cFollies\u201d and the 2003 revival of \u201cNine.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Nixon\u2019s first marriage, to Ernest Gold, a film composer who won an Oscar for the 1960 film \u201cExodus,\u201d ended in divorce, as did her second, to Lajos Frederick Fenster. Her third husband, Albert Block, died in 2015.<\/p>\n Survivors include her daughters from her first marriage, Martha Carr and Melani Gold Friedman; her sisters Donyl Mern Aleman, Adair McEathron Jenkins and Ariel Lea Witbeck; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. A son from her first marriage, Andrew Gold, a popular songwriter whose hit \u201cThank You for Being a Friend\u201d became the theme of the NBC sitcom \u201cThe Golden Girls,\u201d died in 2011 at 59<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n
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<\/p>\nMarni Nixon and Dick Latessa in the Encores! production of the musical \u201cMusic in the Air\u201d at City Center in 2009.<\/span> Credit<\/span>Sara Krulwich\/The New York Times<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/p>\nMarni Nixon as Eliza Doolittle in \u201cMy Fair Lady\u201d onstage in 1964.<\/span>Credit<\/span>Alix Jeffry<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n