A young woman sitting next to me at the first of two Barrington Stage sponsored summer cabaret showings of Marni Nixon, The Voice of Hollywood had come to the top of the Crown Plaza in Pittsfield, MA simply to hear her sing "all those great songs" listed in the ads for the show. She had no idea that Nixon was famous for being invisible — the voice dubbed in for the high visibility stars in stage-to-screen adaptations of West Side Story and My Fair Lady. Her mother, who did know the reason for Nixon's famous "Ghostess with the Mostest" nickname, remarked "you'd think they would have looked first and foremost for singing talent before casting those movies. . ." She shouldn't have been surprised. Hollywood during its movie musical heyday, as now, was always ruled by box office consideration. As people in the real estate business follow the mantra of location, location, location— so Hollywood's mantra is star power, star power, star power!

At any rate, Marni Nixon's story makes for an interesting footnote to Hollywood. Her bio-concert requires only a piano accompanist and a screen for the film clips used to illustrate her anecdotes about her ghostly adventures. Add to the easy to mount production values the interest in plays about movie history like Barrington Stage's Mack and Mabel which is sure to turn up at other regional theaters) and this has all the earmarks of a small show that could easily travel from its two-day trial run in Pittsfield to other cabarets or small theaters.

Ms. Nixon's musical selections represent her entire career (including her most recent appearance as Freulein Schneider in Cabaret) and a personal life which includes several marriages to musicians. (Husband #1 composed the theme song to the movie Exodus which he sold for a flat fee of $75 and which she sings with much feeling). But the meat and potatoes of the evening are her experiences as a song dubber. Her patter includes some fascinating tidbits that even those who are familiar with her behind the scenes role are unlikely to have heard before. Here are a few samples:

On her first dubbing roles
While working mostly as an extra she did a brief dub-in for the child actress Margaret O'Brien. The film: The Secret Garden. She also dubbed in the angel voices Ingrid Bergman heard in Joan of Arc.

On dubbing for Deborah Kerr
While her most famous "collaboration"" with Kerr was The King and I, she also sang a song for her in An Affair to Remember which co-starred Kerr and Cary Grant. Nixon amusingly freezes Kerr's screen image while singing the dubbed song.

On West Side Story
While Natalie Wood's songs were Nixon's chief assignments, she also did one number for Rita Moreno and does a roll take on a scene where she is effectively doing a duet with herself. That dubbing assignment also led to her asking to be paid some royalties. While her request was to no avail, Leonard Bernstein ceded one quarter of one per cent of his royalties to her (anyone who knows anything about music royalties will understand the value of Bernstein's generosity).

On her minor role in The Sound of Music opposite Julie Andrews who smarted from being by-passed for the movie version of My Fair Lady
Nixon was happy to be cast as one of the nuns but there was some nervous anticipation about meeting Andrews to whom she served as a reminder of a major disappointment. After all, it was because of Nixon's skills as a singing ghost that the studio powers were able to hire the bigger but non-singing star, Audrey Hepburn. As it turned out, Andrews walked over to her, shook her hand and said "I like your work." She became a good enough friend to help Nixon overcome her anxieties when she was cast to play Eliza in a City Center My Fair Lady revival.

— Elyse Sommer, 1999.