Not long before she passed away at the age of 86, Marni Nixon gave an interview about her experiences ghost-singing in Hollywood. Not everyone was appreciative of her efforts, and she claimed that Natalie Wood stormed off the set of “West Side Story,” angry that word had gotten out and that audiences would know her singing voice wasn’t up to scratch (via People).
As for Audrey Hepburn, she still wanted to get her own voice into “My Fair Lady,” even after Nixon was brought in to ghost-sing for her, and there was some competition between them. Nixon recalled:
“She kept sneaking into the sound stage after I finished dubbing and would say, ‘I think I can do myself better.’ They gave me tapes of her singing, and I could hear her saying [to herself,] ‘Oh darn, I think I can do better. Maybe I can’t.’ She was really hard on herself. But she kept trying…She was trying very hard to use as much of herself as possible.”
Nixon pointed out that not all the singing in the film was her; Eliza’s working-class singing voice was really Hepburn’s own, while the “posher” sounding voice after Higgins has worked his phonetic magic is the ghost-singer. Did it cause any friction between her and Hepburn? Nixon said:
“No, never! Never! It was only appreciation. And she was trying to be as helpful as she could to tell me how to pronounce certain things and approve of it, to make sure it sounded like her – because if she couldn’t do it, then she’d work harder to get the pronunciation into me. She was spectacular that way.”
“My Fair Lady” was a box office hit and dominated the Oscars, winning eight of the twelve awards it was nominated for, including Best Picture and Director. Perhaps reflecting Hepburn’s dreadful miscasting and the perceived injustice of her winning the role, the only acting nomination the film didn’t receive was Actress. Rex Harrison took best actor and his Broadway Eliza, Julie Andrews, won Best Actress for “Mary Poppins.
