OnStage: From studio to star

'Some people believe that ghosts are spirits come back from the dead to haunt us," Marni Nixon writes in her autobiography, "I Could Have Sung All Night." "I became famous for being one."

Nixon was an uncredited singer in classic Hollywood movies, lending her operatic soprano voice to songs ostensibly delivered onscreen by such stars as Natalie Wood ("West Side Story"), Deborah Kerr ("The King and I") and Audrey Hepburn ("My Fair Lady").

That last musical has been a sort of touchstone for Nixon, who turns 78 on Friday. In 1964, she sang upward-bound Englishwoman Eliza Doolittle not just onscreen, as immortalized by Hepburn, but also onstage, in a New York operatic production.

Now she returns to Lerner and Loewe's classic musical as Mrs. Higgins, mother of arch Prof. Henry Higgins in a production that opens Wednesday at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis.

"It doesn't feel like closing a circle -- that sounds too final -- but it feels like being a part of a rich, continuous loop," Nixon said by phone from Chicago, where she recently joined the "My Fair Lady" cast. "You know, this show is really wrapped up with my career and life. It's very exacting work, learning all those lines, but it's also very exciting."

Celebrated production

Hailed by one London paper as "the revival against which all others will be measured," this 50th-anniversary tour originated in London under Tony-winning director Trevor Nunn (whose "King Lear" played the Guthrie last fall). Another Tony winner, Matthew Bourne, did the choreography (his "Swan Lake," "Car Man" and "Edward Scissorhands" all played Twin Cities venues in recent years).

The production stars British actors Christopher Cazenove as Henry Higgins and Lisa O'Hare as Eliza.

"I was nervous about having [Nixon] hear me sing the songs that she's so famous for singing, but she's really quite lovely," O'Hare said.

"There's huge pressure on anyone playing Eliza to compare to Audrey Hepburn and Julie Andrews," who played the role onstage, O'Hare said. "But in rehearsals you have to be as free as you can be. And you begin to find your way, yourself in her. Eliza's a raw, tough and earthy character who becomes refined without losing her strength. I like her arc and identify with it." O'Hare has some experience finding herself in iconic roles, having recently played Mary Poppins in London.

Midwest connections

While Nixon helped create Eliza onscreen, her own life was very different. She was born in California, but her family hailed from Wisconsin and Canada.

"My father was a beautiful singer, but he wanted a stable life," she recalled. "My mother wanted him to be on the road, singing."

Her showbiz-smitten mother even pawned a diamond ring to pay for voice lessons for little Marni, who once sang in a youth chorus with Marilyn Horne. Nixon, whose singing was written up in a newspaper when she was just 10, eventually found her way to Hollywood and a career in the studio.

In those pre-Milli Vanilli days, vocal dubbing was widespread, but not talked about.

"Nowadays people accept stuntmen, doubles, all that," Nixon said. "But in those days, it was considered a detriment if people found out. I remember a studio executive telling me that I would never work again if people knew that I was the real voice in some of those shows. What gall to threaten me like that."

Showbiz egos

Putting angelic voices in the mouths of screen musical stars was demanding work, especially because she had to deal with star personalities. Nixon speaks admiringly of "The King and I" star Kerr, with whom she became friends. Kerr did not suffer any illusions of having a great singing voice. So, Nixon and Kerr would work together to find phrasing that was comfortable and natural to both.

"She was such a sweetheart, a beautiful person," said Nixon, who had a very different experience with other stars.

Hepburn was quite touchy about having a vocal double, Nixon said. "I wasn't around when she was doing the mouthing, since it wasn't planned to be that close of a working collaboration," Nixon said. "I didn't see the filming. She would not have it."

Her most difficult experience was with Natalie Wood on "West Side Story." "She did not at all accept the fact, while she was filming, that her voice was going to be completely dubbed," Nixon said. "She actually sang most of the movie while it was being filmed. I had to go back and watch her, after filming was done, and record the film exactly to those tracks. That's a much more difficult process. ... When the movie came out, she was furious with the studio that her singing was thrown out."

Nixon talks about much of her experience in "I Could Have Sung All Night," the title a takeoff on one of the famous "My Fair Lady" numbers. She also talks about performing opera, surviving cancer and watching her sister-in-law commit suicide by plunging from a New York skyscraper.

"It's so vivid, so in your memory, all these years," she said. "You can't erase the sight. A natural death, of course, is what we all like. But when someone chooses to end that circle, you have to be philosophical about it. Death is part of life."

That's not something that Eliza would accept. But Mrs. Higgins? Maybe.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390