The Singing Voice of the Stars: Marni Nixon – Part 1

 

[I watched an old movie about two weeks ago.  I’d DVR’d it off cable some time ago to watch at my convenience, and its turn came up. 

[It was a movie whose title I knew, but had never seen—though I knew about it generally.  It was 1957’s An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, a well-known romantic weepy. 

[I’m not going to give a review or even a report on the movie.  My reason for bringing it up is that in the plot, Kerr’s character, Terry McKay, is a nightclub singer . . . but Kerr doesn’t sing.  So her songs are dubbed by an off-camera singer.

[That’s the point here.  The singer was Marni Nixon, possibly the best-known ghost singer—that’s what they’re called in the biz—in Hollywood. 

[As soon as I learned that fact, I knew I had to write a post about Nixon—of whom even I had heard, even though I didn’t know the name of any other ghost singer.  So that’s what I’ve done.  Here, in two parts—Nixon had a busy and full life (she died in 2016 at 86)—is my profile of Marni Nixon, Ghost Singer to the Stars.]

What do actresses Margaret O’Brien, Jeanne Crain, Marilyn Monroe, Ida Lupino, Deborah Kerr, Sophia Loren, Janet Leigh, Natalie Wood, and Audrey Hepburn all have in common—aside from the fact that they all are or were Hollywood movie stars?

At one time or another, in one movie or another, for one song, a whole score, or a few notes—their singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon (1930-2016), probably the greatest “ghost singer” whose name you may never have heard and whose face you may never have seen.

According to Wikipedia,

A ghost singer is a professional singer who dubs the singing parts officially credited, or billed, to another person, usually the star or co-star of a musical or film, especially those who are cast for dancing or acting skill or for celebrity rather than for singing talent.

Some journalists compare the situation with stunt performers hired to do the physical scenes for movie stars.  Except, as Nixon notes, the stunt people’s work have been getting screen credit for many years now.

The 1952 MGM movie Singin’ in the Rain (written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, produced by Roger Edens and Arthur Freed, starring Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds) tells a story of a novice actress (Reynolds) who voices the film performances of a veteran silent-film actress (Jean Hagen) who can’t talk, much less sing.

In the film—the behind-the-cameras story regarding who dubbed whom and why is a wonderful sidelight to this article—there are several scenes in which various methods of dubbing are shown.  (The technology employed in Singing’ is somewhat more primitive than that used in the 1950s and ’60s because the movie is set in the 1920s, when the new talking pictures were overtaking the silents.  The basic techniques depicted, however, were still used into the demise of dubbing in the ’70s and ’80s.)

In her IMDb bio, Gary Brumburgh quips that Nixon “has ensured herself a proper place in film history although most moviegoers would not recognize her if they passed her on the street.”  That’s a tad ironic, because Nixon bore a strong resemblance to Julie Andrews, with whose career Nixon’s was somewhat intertwined.

The 5'4" soprano became known as a singer’s singer from her work on several movie musicals of the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s in which she served as a ghost singer, as they are known, dubbing the singing voices of non-singing stars.  The millions of moviegoers who saw the films and the millions of record-buyers who listened to the soundtrack albums of such popular movies as The King and I (1956), West Side Story (1961), and My Fair Lady (1964) recognized her voice without having any idea to whom they were listening. 

“Marni is one of those unsung heroes (or should I say ‘much sung’ heroes),” added Brumburgh, “whose incredible talents were given short shrift at the time.”  That’s because the Hollywood studios in the middle of the 20th century habitually (and contractually) didn’t publicize the fact that famous actors weren’t singing their own songs on the soundtrack.

Screen credit for the ghost singer was a guaranteed impossibility (until the practice was changed with Nixon’s help).  The studios were so bent on maintaining the deception that even on the published sheet music and soundtrack albums of film musicals, the songs were credited to the actors who appeared on the screen rather than the ghost singers who actually sang the songs.

In her obituary, the New York Times reported that Nixon had told the ABC News late-night television program Nightline in 2007, “You always had to sign a contract that nothing would be revealed.”

Twentieth Century Fox, when I did “The King and I,” threatened me.  They said, if anybody ever knows that you did any part of the dubbing for Deborah Kerr, we’ll see to it that you don’t work in town again.

Nonetheless, within the entertainment business, Marni Nixon was known; the Times called her work “one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets.”  The beans were finally spilled worldwide in a 1964 Time magazine article, “Hollywood: Instant Voice,” in which Nixon was dubbed “the ghostess with the mostest.”  She became known to insiders and semi-insiders as “the singing voice of the stars.”  (I remember hearing her name in the ’60s when I was in college.)

It's common practice, by the way, for singers on film to dub their own singing voices.  They regularly record their songs, with full accompaniment, before shooting the musical scene, then perform the scene in front of the camera while lip-synching to their own recording.  Few actors actually voice songs on camera for practical reasons.

If you’ve ever scrutinized a singer’s face and, especially, his or her neck, closely while they’re vocalizing, you’re bound to see that it’s not really an attractive look.  The neck muscles are strained and the mouth and lower jaw are contorted; even the eyes, brows, and forehead are clenched in unappealing ways.  On camera, this is exaggerated, especially in close-ups, which are common in musical films.

All this is amplified when there’s dancing involved because not only the movements, but the exertions of dancing make delivering and recording the singing difficult, particularly in the days before wireless mics and directional pick-ups.  Emotional or stressful moments in the scene can also make singing hard.  Location-shooting, especially outdoors, when the acoustics of a soundstage isn’t available, is also problematic.

So movie singers almost always lip-synch to recordings, even when the performers do their own singing.  The methods, however, are technically the same for working with a ghost singer.  There are essentially three techniques of dubbing.  (24 Frames of Silver: A Cinema Blog for the Soul by Lee O. has a post, “A Voice to Match: Exploring the Re-mystifying Role of the Hollywood Ghost Singer,” that provides a detailed examination of the craft of film-dubbing and ghost-voicing and covers both history and methodology.)

“Playback” is by far the most common technique.  This is the method in which the ghost singer pre-records the number which is then played back on the set for the filming and the actor mimes the song to the recorded rendition.  This method is obviously only available when the director knows in advance that the actor on screen will be dubbed.  It requires the actor to match the vocalizing of the ghost in order to look convincing to an audience.

The second most frequently used technique is “dubbing.”  In this method, which can be used when the decision to use a ghost singer’s voice on the soundtrack is made after the director decides the actor’s pipes are inadequate for the task, the on-screen performer sings on camera (or lip-synchs to his or her own pre-recorded singing), and then the ghost singer re-records the song after the filming.  In this case, the ghost has to match the vocalizations of the actor on the screen the same way a foreign-language film is dubbed into English (or vice versa).

The final method is a hybrid technique in which the on-screen actor does the singing for the camera, either on the set or in a studio recording, and then a ghost singer is brought in to “sweeten” or enhance the soundtrack recording in places where the original performer was weak or otherwise inadequate, the way Nixon tweaked Monroe’s high notes in “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).  This is called “doubling” and it can be quite tricky for the off-screen singer, who has to make two voices sound like one.

Doubling, Nixon has noted, can require very complicated, close work between the singer and the actor.  “I have to know dramatically what she wants to do, but she has to act in my voice,” she says.  The dubber wears headphones through which she hears the orchestra in one ear and the actress singing in the other so the ghost singer can pick up the actor’s vocalizations and carry it beyond her range.

In most films where ghost singing is employed, all three of these methods may be used—and frequently are.  Today, most movie musicals and films which feature even one or two songs, dubbing by an outside performer is no longer common—except perhaps “doubling.”  Nixon has said that dubbing some songs can take as long as six weeks.

(In this article, I’ll be talking mostly about female ghost singers.  To be sure, the majority of off-screen singers in Hollywood have been women, but by no means exclusively.  Arguably, the best-known male ghost singer was Bill Lee, 1916-80, who dubbed the voices of Christopher Plummer as Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music and John Kerr as Lt. Cable in the movie version of South Pacific.  He also sang on the soundtracks of animated films like Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp as a pirate and a dog.

(There were also Giorgio Tozzi singing for Rossano Brazzi in South Pacific; Bill Shirley, who sang “On the Street Where You Live” for Jeremy Brett in My Fair Lady; Tucker Smith, ghost voice for Russ Tamblyn in West Side Story; and Jimmy Bryant, most famous for dubbing Richard Beymer, also in WSS. 

(The main reasons why male actors are less often ghosted than female is a sort of prejudice.  Studios deem that the men, especially the older, more mature leading men, can get by on screen with talk-singing—think Rex Harrison and Robert Preston—jazzier and less formal singing styles—Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly—or weaker vocals.)

After the 1960s heyday of the big musical film had passed—by the 1970s, the popularity of the movie musical took a nosedive and fewer were made—there was little call of dubbing singers.  When the form experienced a revival in the ’90s and 2000s, a new trend obviated the call for ghost singers: authenticity. 

It was considered an artistic and marketing point for actors, even non-singers, to do their own vocalizing (as well as dancing and other specialty aspects of performance).  Actors wanted to show that they “could do it all.”  Of course, by now there’s pitch correction software like Auto-Tune and other computer manipulations to fix vocal shortcomings. 

By and large, the studios—who meanwhile had lost a lot of their clout in controlling what goes before the cameras—and moviegoers have gone along with this, but it hasn’t always helped in the critical response or at the box office.

The practice of dubbing was chiefly used for movie musicals, either original screen productions, such as 1953’s The Band Wagon directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring dancers Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse (whose singing was dubbed by India Adams, 1927-2020) or film versions of stage musicals, such as those for which Nixon became known.

While film musicals can be conceived, either in the writing or in the filming, to accommodate actors who aren’t really singers, stage musicals are frequently written with professional stage singers in mind—performers like Mary Martin or Alfred Drake, Julie Andrews or Theodore Bikel, or Bernadette Peters or Mandy Patinkin.  The scores often put demands on the actors which most cannot fulfill without singing talent and a well-trained vocal technique.

Oddly, however, ghost singers, as I noted, sometimes even sweetened the vocal work of singing actors like Rita Moreno (b. 1931), whom Nixon helped out on West Side Story in which Moreno famously played Anita.  Nixon dubbed Moreno’s singing in the “A Boy Like That” duet with Maria.

Nixon’s principal responsibility in West Side Story was to dub the singing voice of Natalie Wood, 1938-81, who played Maria, but juggling the soundtrack recording made it possible for Nixon to seem to sing a duet all by herself.

The circumstance here was the collision of an accident of timing and a vocal-range issue.  Moreno was a coloratura at the time of WSS, a soprano voice with a high range.  “A Boy Like That” has some low passages, especially the beginning, that Moreno couldn’t reach.  (Chita Rivera, the originator of the role on Broadway, had a lower range.) 

There was another ghost singer who’d been hired to cover the song, but she caught a cold just when the number was going to be recorded.  So Nixon was drafted to sing both parts.  “I . . . did a duet with myself,” Nixon explained.  “And nobody really knew.  I just changed the quality of my voice.  I tried to do one very dark and one very light.”

That was one of Nixon’s many special abilities that made her so desirable as a ghost: she could adjust her voice to mimic the speaking voice of the singers she dubbed.  Many ghost singers either couldn’t or just didn’t bother with this bit of acting, but Nixon did it habitually.

Nixon was remarkably versatile, so she was equally convincing as the English schoolteacher Anna Leonowens of The King and I, the Puerto Rican teenager Maria of West Side Story, and the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle of My Fair Lady. 

In a 2004 interview, for example, Nixon explained that when she worked with Deborah Kerr (1921-2007) on The King and I, the film adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway hit, “I was brought in and had to follow along with her, getting her diction and acting style.”  Even after the threat 20th Century Fox delivered, Nixon asserted, “I just thought of it in terms of the challenge of really trying to make [my voice] sound exactly like Deborah Kerr.”  Nixon recalled that “each number took a week." 

When she worked with Audrey Hepburn (1929-93) in My Fair Lady, “I sat in on her singing lessons, so I could hear not only the Cockney and the upper-class British, which are two different voices,” Nixon recalled.  “But I also had to get her very unique speech patterns, so I had to listen very carefully so I could catch it.”

Nixon’s technique, which she makes sound simple and straightforward, appears to be more thoughtful and conscientious than the common practice.  She explained the “whole secret of dubbing,” based on her gig singing for Margaret O’Brien (b. 1937): “You extend the actress's speaking voice.  You imagine how the actress would sing if she could sing and be sure to take from her what she wants to do dramatically.”

(An anecdote related by ghost singer Annette Warren, b. 1922, who dubbed Ava Gardner’s voice on  “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man” from the 1951 MGM musical Show Boat, reveals that when she sang for Lucille Ball in the films Lured, 1947; Sorrowful Jones, 1949; and Fancy Pants, 1950, Warren’s trained voice didn’t “match the huskiness of Lucy’s speaking voice.”  Nonetheless, says Warren, she didn’t try to make her singing style resemble the voice of the actresses she ghosted.)

In an unusual circumstance for a ghost singer, Nixon even dubbed some of Natalie Wood’s spoken lines in WSS as well.  In Nixon’s account, at the end of a taping session, when the cast and crew had gotten a little giddy from fatigue, Wood bobbled some lines that came after the end of a song.  The ghost singer was brought in to redub them.

As far as I know, WSS was the only time Nixon covered two actors in the same film.  Among other things, it shows how flexible she was, how reliable, and how resourceful.  All without ever becoming famous outside the business.

Nixon did dub the same actor in two different movies three times, however.  The first time was dubbing the singing voice of child actor Margaret O’Brien in Big City (1948) and again in The Secret Garden (1949) when Nixon was 17-18 (and O’Brien was 10-11).  

In 1962, after ghosting for Natalie Wood’s Maria in WSS in the year before, Nixon also sang Wood’s high notes in Gypsy.  (Wood played Louise, better known as Gypsy Rose Lee, the title character.)

After she dubbed Kerr’s Anna in The King and I, Nixon dubbed her again in 1957’s romantic tearjerker An Affair to Remember.  That second film isn’t a musical, but Kerr’s character, Terry McKay, is a successful nightclub singer and sings several numbers on camera—including one in French: “Our Love Affair”/”Ce bel amour.”  (Nixon said she dubbed An Affair to Remember in five different languages.)

It was Kerr who first outed Nixon’s alter-ego as a ghost singer.  An Academy Award nominee for Best Actress in The King and I, Kerr praised Nixon’s work with her on the film in an interview with London’s Daily Mirror in 1956.  This, of course, was the star of the very film for which Nixon was contractually sworn to secrecy regarding her participation.  Nixon’s efforts were also specified in Bosley Crowther’s review of the film in the New York Times.

Nixon’s association with Kerr on The King and I was symbiotic.  Their relationship was professional and co-operative as Nixon mirrored the actress’s movements to create the perfect film illusion.  The ghost singer told the Washington Post that at the same time, Kerr “wanted to also look like she was really singing and wanted to be using the same muscles and the same stretches you do in expressions.”

On NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, freelance arts reporter Jeff Lunden relates that Nixon recalls,

Whenever there was a song to be sung in a scene, I would get up and stand next to her and watch her while she sang.  And she would watch me, while I sang.  After we recorded that song, she would have to go to the filming of it and mouth to that performance.

In a Variety article in which Stephen Cole, Nixon’s co-author on her memoir, describes his work with the ghost singer, whom Cole dubs “the consummate collaborator,” he explains “how Kerr and Nixon trade lines that are spoken and lines that are sung to meld into one fabulous performance.”  He declares that the result was “one voice made by two artist.”

This cordiality wasn’t always the case, however.  Nixon and Audrey Hepburn also worked together harmoniously on My Fair Lady, but her work with Natalie Wood on WSS was fraught.

“In the case of Audrey Hepburn,” recalled Nixon to WaPo, “she was very smart and could say, ‘I know this is not good enough, I want to keep trying myself,’ but she had to accept that it wasn’t quite what it should be.”  In the end, Nixon provided all Hepburn’s singing for MFL.

Hepburn, who’d been training and practicing all during the prep time for filming, was very disheartened when she was told her singing just wasn’t good enough.  She walked off the set in disappointment.

The actress had put herself under a great deal of pressure because she was very aware whom she was replacing in the role.  Julie Andrews (b. 1935) had originated the part of Eliza Doolittle on Broadway, becoming an international star from the performance.  She also had a perfect singing voice. 

Hepburn’s casting for the film over Andrews (who would later take over the film role of Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music from Broadway superstar Mary Martin, 1913-90), was controversial to say the least.  Her trepidation over the responsibility was recorded by André Previn, who arranged the film adaptation of Frederick Loewe’s stage score (for which Previn won an Oscar) and directed the orchestra, in Barry Paris’s Audrey Hepburn (1996).

But Hepburn returned the next day and apologized for her “wicked” behavior.  Recalled Nixon, “That was her idea of being very wicked.”  Hepburn remained helpful despite her disappointment; she gave Nixon rides to the studio in her limo and helped her master the Cockney accent in which Eliza spoke—and sang.  Nixon and Hepburn became collaborators instead of competitors.

The situation on the WSS set was different, though.  “I don’t think that Natalie Wood’s ego could take that.” Nixon felt.  “Frankly, I think they [i.e., the studio] used to create that kind of attitude too much—allowing them to have the illusion when they knew all along that she wasn’t good enough.”  Wood thought Nixon was brought in to fill in the occasional high notes, as the ghost singer had done for Marilyn Monroe (1926-62).

According to Nixon, Wood’s singing was out of synch with the orchestra.  This was a difficulty for Nixon because if she sang precisely with the orchestra, her words wouldn’t match Wood’s lip movements.  “I had to compromise as best I could,” the singer said.

Nixon said that Wood didn’t know how much of her singing would be done by her ghost singer.  “She didn’t know that [her work] would all be thrown out and that it would be all my voice at that point,” affirmed Nixon.  The studio had kept Wood in the dark for fear she’d pull out of the production, even letting her rehearse with the full orchestra and lip-synch her songs to her own recordings so she wouldn’t tumble to the truth.  Nixon felt the studio was lying to Wood and it made her “very uneasy” to participate in the deception.

[This is the end of Part 1 of “The Singing Voice of the Stars.”  Please come back on Wednesday, 30 March, for the rest of my profile of Marni Nixon.  I’ll start with her bio and go on to discuss more about her work and professional life.]