MARGE CHAMPION

(2 September 1919 - 21 October 2020)

The American dancer and actress Marge Champion, who has died at the age of 101, was one half of the dance partnership Marge and Gower Champion who graced many Hollywood musicals in the 1950s. She was born Marjorie Celeste Belcher to Ernest and Gladys Belcher in Los Angeles. Her father was a Hollywood dance director who trained Marge from an early age and she herself became an instructor with her father at twelve in 1931, the year she first met Gower Champion. Her debut was at the Hollywood Bowl, she sang with the Hollywood High School Glee Club and became a model for the Walt Disney’s animators. Her first film was The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. With Gower she toured in shows and they subsequently appeared on television and in films and eventually married. They made several MGM musicals including Till the Clouds Roll By, Show Boat, Lovely to Look At, Everything I have Is Yours, Give a Girl a Break, Three for the Show and Jupiter’s Darling. Marge appeared on Broadway in Lerner & Loewe’s What’s Up?, Duke Ellington’s Beggar’s Holiday and the play Dark of the Moon. She became an assistant to Gower’s work as a stage director on Make a Wish, Hello, Dolly! and Stepping Out and she appeared in the 2001 revival of Sondheim’s Follies at the age of 81. Her first husband was Disney animator Art Babbitt but they divorced after three years. She married Gower in 1947 and they divorced in 1973. They had two sons, Blake and Gregg, but Blake died in a car accident aged just 25. She married film director Boris Sagal in 1977 but he died in a helicopter accident in 1981. Marge and Gower Champion were both born in the same year but, sadly, Gower contracted a rare blood cancer and died prematurely on 25 August, 1980, just a few hours before the first night of his most successful production of 42nd Street. He was just 61.

MICHAEL DARVELL