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Nixon's career on film started in 1948 when she sang the voices of the angels heard by Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc (1948). The next year, she did her first dubbing work when she provided Margaret O'Brien's singing voice in 1949's The Secret Garden. She also dubbed Marilyn Monroe's high notes in Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). She appeared on Broadway in 1954 in The Girl in Pink Tights.[5]

In 1956, she worked closely with Deborah Kerr to supply the star's singing voice for the film version of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I, and the next year she again worked with Kerr to dub her voice in An Affair to Remember.[1] In 1961's West Side Story, the studio kept her work on the film (as the singing voice of Natalie Wood's Maria) a secret from the actress,[6][7] and Nixon also dubbed Rita Moreno's singing in the film's "Tonight" quintet. She asked the film's producers for, but did not receive, any direct royalties from her work on the film, but Leonard Bernstein contractually gave her 1/4 of one percent of his personal royalties from it.[2] For My Fair Lady in 1964, she again worked with the female lead of the film, Audrey Hepburn, to perform the songs of Hepburn's character Eliza.[6] Because of her uncredited dubbing work in these films, Time magazine called her "The Ghostess with the Mostest".[8][9]

Nixon made a special guest appearance on Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts broadcast that aired April 9, 1961, entitled "Folk Music in the Concert Hall." She sang three "Songs of the Auvergne" by Canteloube.[citation needed] Under her own name, she has recorded songs by Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Arnold Schönberg, Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and Anton Webern. Nixon was nominated for two Grammy Awards for Best Classical Performance, Vocal Soloist, one for her Schönberg album and one for her Copland album.[1][4]

Nixon's first onscreen appearance was as Sister Sophia in the 1965 film The Sound of Music. In the DVD commentary to the film, director Robert Wise comments that audiences were finally able to see the woman whose voice they knew so well.[10] After this, Nixon concentrated on concert work

Marni Nixon performing "Vivaldi" from the PBS Great Performance Series presentation of TAKING MY TURN, the award-winning, critically acclaimed musical with lyrics by Will Holt , music by Gary William Friedman and adaptation/direction by Robert H. Livingston, the same team that collaborated on the hit show THE ME NOBODY KNOWS.
TAKING MY TURN was one of the first musicals to deal with aging. The spoken words were collected from interviews with people "in their prime", which became the basis for the non-linear book.
The amazing cast of Broadway and recording veterans including Margaret Whiting, Cissy Houston, Marni Nixon and Tiger Haynes.
TAKING MY TURN opened Off-Broadway in 1983, and won the 1984 Outer Critic's Circle Award for Best Lyrics/Music and a Drama Desk nomination for Best Musical.