Columbia Masterworks Records by John Gielgud—the longest-running "Hamlet" in Broadway history to date. Columbia Masterworks' most successful Broadway album was the original cast recording of "My Fair Lady" (OL-5090, 1956), starring Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Stanley Holloway and Robert Coote. This first album was issued only in mono, but the first stereo recording of "My Fair Lady"—featuring the same four stars, this time with the London cast—followed in 1959. And in 1964, Columbia Masterworks issued the film soundtrack album of the show, starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn's "singing voice", Marni Nixon. The most successful film soundtrack release on Columbia Masterworks was the
The King and I (1956 film) O'Hara, who had a pleasant soprano voice, was originally cast, but Richard Rodgers did not agree to the casting. It was Yul Brynner who pressed for Deborah Kerr to play the role. Marni Nixon provided Kerr's singing for the film. Nixon and Kerr worked side-by-side in the recording studio for songs which combined speaking and singing. Nixon would also dub Kerr's singing the following year, for the film "An Affair to Remember". Donald Bogle's biography of Dorothy Dandridge claims that Dandridge was offered the role of Tuptim in partial fulfillment of her three-picture contract with 20th Century-Fox, but that Dandridge