Marni Nixon Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Presbyterian Church USA Joins Growing List of Denominations Repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery – It also voted to develop recommendations of how Presbyterian congregations “can support Native Americans in their ongoing efforts for sovereignty and fundamental human rights”

NAACP calls for national moratorium on charter schools

The Sewage Still Spills. The Park South neighborhood in Albany still dumps raw sewage into the Hudson River

Journalist Jeff Sharlet on What’s Wrong (and Right) With the Media

The 7 biggest problems facing science, according to 270 scientists

SamuraiFrog is 40 and had been having a difficult time with the medical bureaucracy. So Jaquandor suggested some natal day music

The writing process: Levine and Isaacs and Sedinger

MAD magazine’s Jack Davis, R.I.P. and more on Jack

I participated in TWC Question Time #47: Do you find creator controversies make you more or less interested in comics by those creators?

What Calvin and Hobbes taught me about mindfulness

Old photos and other miscellany

Walter Cronkite Apollo 11 Interview with Robert A. Heinlein & Arthur C. Clarke

Alan Moore is the best author in human history

Star Wars book review

Legally Blonde – Feminist Review and Analysis

TV shows made special television commercials to represent the products of their sponsors

Bummer: Sesame Street’ Lets Go Longtime Cast Members Bob, Gordon and Luis

Comedians in cars getting coffee: John Oliver

Now I Know: Calling Dar Bizziebee and The Key to Seceding and Buds But Not Buddies and The Most Boring Day of the Last Century

Sunshine bloggers fillyjonk and Chuck Miller

Is it Mary or Sue? and Hominy and understanding

Elephants and Donkeys

Weekly Sift: The Big Lie in Trump’s Speech and You Have to Laugh

Understanding Trump

Inside the scramble to oust Debbie Wasserman Schultz. “Aides to President Barack Obama urged him to get rid of the troublesome DNC chair last fall. He passed, figuring she was Hillary Clinton’s problem to solve”

Tim Kaine on Abortion

The Houston Chronicle endorses Hillary Clinton, already

Oldest Presidents inaugurated
73 Reagan (II) 1985 Colon cancer, benign prostatic enlargement, dementia (?)
69 Reagan (I) 1981 Life-threatening hemorrhage after gunshot to chest
68 Harrison, W 1841 Died of pneumonia after one month in office.
66 Eisenhower (II) 1957 Stroke, despite taking anti-coagulant medication.
66 Jackson (II) 1833
Reagan turned 70 on February 6, 1981; Donald Trump turned 70 on June 14, 2016; Hillary Clinton turns 69 on October 26, 2016

MUSIC

Marni Nixon, Singing Voice Behind WEST SIDE STORY, THE KING AND I & More, Dies at 86 – I wrote about her last year HERE

Say hello — and then say goodbye — to Qandeel Baloch, twenty-six

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Campaign Songs

Ciara – Paint It, Black (The Last Witch Hunter Soundtrack)

Rossini’s Overture to William Tell

HOFFMAN FILES: Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Coverville 1133: The Linda Ronstadt cover story; and Coverville 1135: Cover Stories for Buddy Guy, Louis Armstrong, and Paul Anka

Michelle Obama & Missy Elliott Do Carpool Karaoke With James Corden

Harry Chapin – What Made America Famous (Soundstage)

A Chorus Hamilton Line

Late 1969: Let the Sunshine In featuring these people and these people and the cast of HAIR. Those scheduled but did not show included Muhammad Ali, Julian Bond, Dick Gregory, John Lindsay and Sidney Poitier

Movie buffs may have seen Deborah Kerr as Anna in The King and I (1956), Natalie Wood as Maria in West Side Story (1961), and/or Audrey Hepburn as Eliza in My Fair Lady (1964).

But when they sang on screen, their voices were all dubbed by the amazing Marni Nixon. Yet, her name appears nowhere in the films’ credits.

“Marni made her Broadway musical debut in 1954 in a show that lasted two months but nothing came from it. In 1955, the singer contracted to dub Deborah Kerr in The King and I (1956) was killed in a car accident in Europe and a replacement was needed. Marni was hired…and the rest is history…

The studios brought her in to ‘ghost’ Ms. Kerr’s voice once again in the classic tearjerker An Affair to Remember (1957),” and other classic roles.

Listen to:
Marni Nixon – Movie and TV Clips (2006)
Marni Nixon on Dubbing for Marilyn Monroe and Deborah Kerr
Marni Nixon on the game show “To Tell the Truth” (December 7, 1964)

“She finally appeared on screen in a musical in The Sound of Music (1965) starring Julie Andrews… [but] she is only given a couple of solo lines in ‘How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?’ as a singing nun.” Still, “she continued on with concerts and in symphony halls while billing herself as ‘The Voice of Hollywood’ in one-woman cabaret shows… Her last filmed singing voice was as the grandmother in the animated feature Mulan (1998).

“Married three times, twice to musicians; one of her husbands, Ernest Gold, by whom she had three children, was a film composer and is best known for his Academy Award-winning epic Exodus (1960).”

One of her children with Ernest Gold was the late Andrew Gold, who had a single Thank You For Being A Friend, which hit #25 on the Billboard charts in 1978. The song was later re-recorded by Cynthia Fee to serve as the theme song for the NBC sitcom The Golden Girls.

In the early 1990s, I saw him perform with group Bryndle, which included Kenny Edwards, Wendy Waldman, and Karla Bonoff.

But I know him best for a song called Lonely Boy, (#7 Billboard, 1977), which “was included in a number of film soundtracks, including Boogie Nights in 1997 and Adam Sandler’s 1998 movie The Waterboy, among others.” Although the lyrics included some facts of his life – “He was born on a summer day 1951” and “In the summer of ’53 his mother brought him a sister” – Gold insisted he had a happy childhood.

From Andrew Gold’s 2011 New York Times obit:

“His mother was taken aback [by ‘Lonely Boy’] She said, ‘Andy, oh, my God, the pain you must have felt.’ But he said he hadn’t even thought of it that way. He thought he was making it up.”