Marni Nixon: Four Little Things

The very first thing I remember about Marni Nixon, who died on July 24, was this: She was the voice of Mary Poppins on the Disneyland Records compilation of songs from the film.

I was awfully young -- I must have been about six years old when the record was released. I don't know what possessed me to read the record labels (I had more than one of the singles), except that I read everything I could get my hands on. All I know is, those record labels formed an impression of Marni Nixon that would last for years.

The next thing I remember about Marni Nixon is that she had come to my college to give a master class. Please! I was digging The Who and The Buffalo Springfield, plus whatever indie/punk/jazz fusion stuff my far-edgier friends could throw at me. Why would I want to spend two stultifying hours listening to the no-doubt saccharine singing advice of Mary Poppins?

Probably because every other voice major was planning to. In any case, I went.

I only remember two things about that class. The first was that sweet, Julie Andrews lookalike casually eviscerating the student accompanist's "cocktail piano". The second was her seen-it-all approach to the "Black Swan" aria from Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium, whose first lines are:

The sun has fallen and it lies in blood.

The moon is weaving bandages of gold.

O black swan, where, oh, where is my lover gone?

It didn't seem to matter that the vocal department's reigning diva was trying not to quake in her boots. The aria was wrong, and Marni Nixon was ready to take it apart.

I was just another wide-eyed voice major in the auditorium, glad for once not to be sitting in the front row, but Marni Nixon taught me a lot that day.

She taught me that you could look and sound fragile without breaking. She taught me that you could look and sing like an ingenue and still call others to task for faking it, ingenue roles be damned. She taught me that you could explore ugly, painful subject matter, even as people continued to underestimate you and your unimpressive baby face.

I did not realize at the time how much Marni Nixon had taught me, or that she had taught me anything at all. But, I look back now, and see that those hard lessons came from her and her alone. For that, I am eternally grateful.

Rest in peace, Ms. Nixon. Wherever you are, they've finally stopped underestimating you.