Marni Nixon and squeaky pigs

When I was a music major at Arkansas Tech, I a times listened to the music of Anton Webern, who was one of the major composers of twelve-tone music. My wife (somewhat appropriately) dubbed his atonal compositions as "squeaky pig music." The record library at Tech had a recording of the complete works of Webern, and the soprano in those recordings was named Marni Nixon. That is all I knew about her at the time, but I was impressed that she could sing such difficult music.

Years later I learned that Nixon had an extensive career in Hollywood dubbing voices for actresses whose voices were not up to the task. For example, she was the singing voice of Natalie Wood (Maria) in West Side Story. She also dubbed Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady - and those are only two of her more notable efforts.

Nixon made a guest appearance on the television program The Mothers In Law, which my wife likes very much. In that episode, she gave a comeuppance to Eve Arden's and Kaye Ballard's grandiose opera ambitions. I happened to glance at the screen while Pam was watching it, and pointed out to her that that was the "squeaky pig" woman she had heard in our college days.

HERE is a very interesting Youtube spot that shows Nixon doing a dubbing test with tunes from The Sound of Music. She certainly was attractive enough to have been a star in her own right, and one wonders why that never happened.


Marni Nixon

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