Marge Champion

Marge Champion, born Marjorie Celeste Belcher on September 2, 1919, in Los Angeles, California, was an American dancer, actress, and choreographer whose career spanned more than seven decades. She died on October 21, 2020, at her son's home in Los Angeles at the age of 101.

Champion was the daughter of Ernest Belcher, a dance director whose students included Shirley Temple, Betty Grable, Cyd Charisse, Ramon Novarro, Fay Wray, Joan Crawford, and Gower Champion, who would later become her husband. Her mother was Gladys Lee Baskette, née Rosenberg, whose first husband, Frank Baskette, died by suicide. Champion's older half sister from that first marriage was Lina Basquette, who had begun appearing in silent films in 1916. Her maternal grandfather, Lazarus Rosenberg, was Jewish. Champion trained exclusively under her father from age five until she left for New York, and she credited his principles — careful progression of activity, correct alignment, precise body placement, and attention to dynamics and phrasing — with her good health and long career. Her first dance partner was Louis Hightower. At eleven she made her debut at the Hollywood Bowl in the ballet Carnival in Venice, and by twelve she was teaching ballet at her father's studio. She also performed in the Hollywood High School operetta The Red Mill, sang in the school's Girls' Senior Glee Club, and graduated in 1936.

In 1933, at the age of fourteen, Champion was hired by Walt Disney Studios as a dance model. Her movements were used to animate the title character in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), and for one sequence she modeled while wearing a bulky overcoat to represent Dopey standing on Sneezy's shoulders during the Silly Song dance. She subsequently served as the movement model for the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio (1940), for Hyacinth Hippo in the Dance of the Hours segment of Fantasia — a ballet parody she also helped choreograph — and recalled doing some modeling for Mr. Stork in Dumbo.

Following her marriage to Gower Champion, the two worked together as a dance team in a series of MGM musicals. Their first MGM film together was Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), followed by Show Boat (1951), Everything I Have Is Yours (1952), Mr. Music (1950, with Bing Crosby), Give a Girl a Break (1953), Jupiter's Darling (1955), and Three for the Show (1955). MGM sought to have the couple remake Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films, but only one such project was completed: Lovely to Look At (1952), a remake of Roberta (1935). The Champions declined to remake the others, the rights to which remained with RKO. The couple also appeared as Mystery Guests on What's My Line on May 15, 1955, with Mary Healy identifying them, and again on February 8, 1959, when panelist Martin Gabel made the identification. During the summer of 1957, they starred in their own television situation comedy, The Marge and Gower Champion Show, which featured song and dance numbers and included real-life drummer Buddy Rich playing a fictional character named Cozy.

Champion's Broadway career extended from 1943 to 2001. She made her New York stage debut in What's Up in 1943, then appeared as the Fair Witch in Dark of the Moon in 1945 and took on multiple roles in Beggar's Holiday in 1946. She starred in 3 for Tonight in 1955. Decades later, at the age of 81, she returned to Broadway to play Emily Whitman in the 2001 revival of Follies. Champion also contributed to Broadway productions as a choreographic assistant and associate, serving as assistant to the choreographer on Lend an Ear (1948), assistant to Gower Champion on Make a Wish (1951), special assistant on Hello, Dolly! (1964), and choreographic associate on Stepping Out (1987).

Beyond performing, Champion worked as a choreographer for television, earning an Emmy Award for her work on Queen of the Stardust Ballroom. She also choreographed Whose Life Is It Anyway? and The Day of the Locust. In 1978 she served as dialogue and movement coach for the television miniseries The Awakening Land, adapted from Conrad Richter's trilogy and set in the late eighteenth-century Ohio Valley. In 1982 she made a television acting appearance on the dramatic series Fame, playing a ballet teacher with a racial bias against African-American students. During the 1970s, Champion, actress Marilee Zdenek, and choreographer John West collaborated on creative worship services featuring dance and music at Bel Aire Presbyterian Church, later offering workshops and liturgical arts programs nationally. She and Zdenek co-authored two books related to this work: Catch the New Wind and God Is a Verb.

Champion married animator Art Babbitt, creator of the Goofy character, in August 1937; they divorced three years later. She married Gower Champion in 1947 — the two had first met at age twelve when Gower was a student at her father's dance school — and together they had two sons, Blake and Gregg, though Los Angeles remained their home base throughout their marriage. They divorced in January 1973. Champion married director Boris Sagal in 1977; he died on May 22, 1981, in a helicopter accident during production of the miniseries World War III. Through that marriage she became stepmother to his five children, including Katey, Jean, Liz, and Joey. Her son Blake died at age 25 in a car accident in 1987.

Among her honors, Champion received the Disney Legends Award in 2007, was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 2009, and received the Douglas Watt Lifetime Achievement Award at the Fred and Adele Astaire Awards in 2013.