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
Deborah Kerr the bittersweet love story "An Affair to Remember" (1957). She reunited with Grant and Mitchum for a sophisticated comedy, "The Grass Is Greener" (1960), and then joined Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra in a love triangle for a romantic comedy, "Marriage on the Rocks" (1965). In 1966, the producers of "Carry On Screaming!" offered her a fee comparable to that paid to the rest of the cast combined, but she turned it down in favor of appearing in an aborted stage version of "Flowers for Algernon". In 1967, Kerr appeared in the comedy "Casino Royale", achieving the distinction of being,