A Gift and a Curse : Marni Nixon’s ability to mimic other singers kept her working but made it difficult to be herself as a performer

Life doesn’t come as a perfectly arranged package, even for the gifted. Ask Marni Nixon.

She’s the singer whose sobriquet, “Ghostess with the Mostest,” has earned her movie musical acclaim--as the behind-the-mike voice of Natalie Wood (“West Side Story”), Audrey Hepburn (“My Fair Lady”) and Deborah Kerr (“The King and I”).

What the former Angelena--who returns Monday for a special Monday Evening Concert at the Los Angeles County Art Museum--will tell you, though, is that she sees the limiting moniker as an easy, convenient reference rather than a backhanded compliment.

“But it used to make me mad,” says the singer with the ever-red tresses and radiant smile. So mad, at one point, that she vowed not to “ghost” anymore, “even for $20,000 a note.”

Little wonder. Nixon was cursed, if you will, with extraordinary versatility.

Because of her perfect pitch, compleat musicianship and high extension, she triumphed as the disembodied voice in works of the unsingable avant-garde. Because of her preternatural talent as a mimic, she mastered any style of pop, cabaret or show music--Edith Piaf, Jeannette McDonald, Julie Andrews.

“The irony of all this,” says Nixon, “is that I couldn’t be me. But then, it’s hard to be someone you don’t know or are insecure about. Which is one of the reasons I was so eager to jump into another person’s skin. I simply hadn’t developed the ego or confidence to want to be me.”

An even greater irony, says the 63-year-old singer--who began acting at age 10 and studying piano and violin even younger--is that the very career she often criticizes has been the vehicle for her personal growth.

Some people, she explains, can see a beginning and an end to their work, a finite division between it and private life, even eventual retirement.

“Not me,” says the singer, noting how her career and family situation were always mixed up like clothes tumbling in a dryer. “I used the career to center myself. It was a processing system, a place where I developed emotionally--and, most important, it continues that way.”

But practical realities had a way of forcing choices Nixon would not necessarily have wanted. The dubbing of movie musicals--she collaborated on 50 of them, all told--came about partly because she lived here and, with her struggling composer-husband Ernest Gold, depended on the handsome fees.

It was easy and left her time for their small children. Meanwhile there were also the illustrious Evenings on the Roof (now known as Monday Evening Concerts), with the likes of Igor Stravinsky often presiding. (“He found Marni thrilling,” says eminent scholar/pianist Leonard Stein, an early Los Angeles City College teacher of Nixon and the one who brought her to Stravinsky.)

Then came the upheaval of the ‘60s and ‘70s (divorce, a move to Seattle, remarriage, another divorce) and priorities got seriously scrambled--”resulting in missed opportunities,” she confesses.

“What I really wanted was a full operatic career. But three times I let crucial moments get away--because of the wrong-headed idea that there was more where that came from and because of getting diffused in the midst of jobs, kids and schedules.”

The first missed opportunity, was a bid from the New York City Opera to sing the Queen of the Night (Mozart’s “Magic Flute”), which she foolishly turned down, she says, fearing categorization as “a bird girl” or high-note oddity. The second involved a callback to the Metropolitan Opera Auditions on the Air finals; finding herself on a bus-and-truck tour at the prescribed date, she reneged.

And the third involved the San Francisco Opera.

“I was under a full-pay contract to ‘The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show’ when the call came to sing Nanetta in ‘Falstaff’ with Elisabeth Schwartzkopf, no less. The TV producers told me they would have to hire someone else if I left, even temporarily.

“We needed the steady money, so I was forced to pass--and cried for three days. Yes, these are deeply felt regrets. Before long the major opera companies saw me as a singer of esoterica or musical theater. The moment came and went.”

Stein concurs that circumstances kept Nixon from “becoming the brilliant opera or musical comedy star she had every reason to be.” Not living in New York took a toll, he says. For his sake, however, he is grateful that she was available to him “and for her inspiration in discovering all the (Anton) Webern songs, etc. that we did together.” (A healthy sampling will be on tap at Monday’s performance, their 40th anniversary retrospective. The two will also introduce the world premiere of songs written for Nixon by William Bolcom.)

At this stage Nixon has said “bye-bye, bird girl,” exchanging her stratospheric range for “something warmer, richer and, of course, a little lower.” And now she takes a certain fatalistic satisfaction in the course of events.

“I’m still evolving,” she says, “still finding new material to thread through my instrument and new ways to do it. These days when I say yes, I know what I’m saying yes to.”

Since moving to New York in 1981, for instance, Nixon has gravitated to offbeat ventures in musical theater: the adaptation of Oliver Sacks’ “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” (1988) and “Opal” (1992). In addition, she continues to sing recitals and concerts around the country and currently is artist-in-residence at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa.

What makes it all possible is Marni Nixon’s redoubtable talent:

“When you’re facile, people keep offering you jobs. And that, I’m lucky enough to say, makes retirement a moot point.”

Marni Nixon performs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., at 8 p.m. Monday. Tickets are $7-$11. Call (213) 857-6010.