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
Anna Leonowens to London, was better known by his stage name of Boris Karloff, making Anna his grand-aunt. Anna Edwards never approved of her sister's marriage, and her self-imposed separation from the family was so complete that, decades later, when a Pratt relative contacted her, she replied by threatening suicide if he persisted. Anna's mother, Mary Edwards, a widow, later married an Irish soldier, Patrick Donohoe of the Royal Engineers. Anna Edwards's relationship with her stepfather Donohoe was not a happy one, and she later accused him of putting pressure on her, like her sister (with whom she also fell out), to