R.I.P. Marni Nixon, singing voice of the Hollywood stars

Legendary “ghost” singer Marni Nixon has died at the age of 86, the New York Times reports. Nixon died yesterday in Manhattan from breast cancer, according to her student and friend Randy Banner. Nixon was often heard but rarely seen in movie musical classics: Her lovely soprano echoed from the mouths of Deborah Kerr in The King And I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.
Though Nixon remained in the shadows for most of her career, Kerr actually tipped the public off about Nixon, despite Twentieth Century Fox’s insistence that Nixon keep her participation quiet. “Deborah Kerr herself, gave me some credit right away on The King & I,” Nixon told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. Nixon later also subbed in for Kerr on An Affair To Remember. “By the time I was doing West Side Story a few years later, everyone was questioning that Natalie Wood could sing that well. By the time I did My Fair Lady, I didn’t have to say anything. You weren’t ‘in’ if you didn’t know it was me.”