‘Ghostess with the mostest’ who sang for Hollywood stars dies at 86

woman whose singing was heard in place of that of the leading actresses in such classic movie musicals as West Side Story, The King and I and My Fair Lady has died.

Hollywood voice double Marni Nixon was 86.

Michael Kirsten, senior vice president of Nixon’s talent agency, Harden-curtis Associates, said she died on Sunday in New York.

Nixon had been suffering from breast cancer.

She had a wide-ranging music and theatre career, but her biggest audiences of the 1950s and 1960s never saw her face. 0 Marni Nixon sang in place of Natalie Wood and Deborah Kerr

Instead, they heard Nixon singing as they watched nonsinging stars such as Natalie Wood in West Side Story.

She was also Deborah Kerr’s singing voice in The King and I and Audrey Hepburn’s in My Fair Lady.

The nature of her work led Time magazine to dub Nixon “the ghostess with the mostest”.

Nixon only sang on screen once, as Sister Sophia, one of the nuns performing How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria? in The Sound Of Music.

In later years, she appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, performed on Broadway and in opera houses and taught at the California Institute of the Arts, and toured for many years with Liberace.

She is survived by two daughters.