RIP Marge Champion

I thought she was adorable.  She and her very handsome husband entertained me when I was falling in love with movies, with musicals and with absolutely anyone who danced on that big screen.  Marge and Gower Champion were the only married dancing movie partners I knew and they dazzled me with their vitality, twirling, swirling, dipping, leaping, kicking, acrobatics and imaginative choreography through six films, a television series and numerous other TV shows.

Marge Champion died last week at 101 years of age.  She had been tucked away at her son's home in Los Angeles for six months to stay out of the path of covid19.

Marjorie Celeste Belcher Babbitt Champion Sagal was a child of show biz.  Born in Los Angeles in 1919 to Ernest Belcher and Gladys Baskette, she came naturally to dancing because her father was a famous, talented and trusted dance instructor to such stars as Shirley Temple, Betty Grable, Cyd Charisse, Joan Crawford and Gwen Verdon.  He had Marjorie dancing about as soon as she could walk, just as he had his stepdaughter, Lina Basquette, a silent film star.

I think it's telling that I've never heard a wicked or unkind thing about Marge.  She came from love, it's what she knew and it's what she gave back.  Her naturally glowing personality showed up easily in her performing, whether dancing or acting.  She was under her father's strict but loving guidance throughout her young years and eventually she could do it all.

Her early life was full and never ordinary due to her talent and her name.  At 11 she was in the ballet Carnival of Venice at the Hollywood Bowl and the following year she was a ballet instructor (!)  at her father's studio.  It was in middle school that she became friendly with fellow student Gower Champion, who also became a student of her father's.  At Hollywood High Marge impressed everyone with her exuberant turn in the operetta The Red Mill.

Walt Disney hired her as a dance model for Snow White in the 1937 animated production, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  In short order she performed in the same capacity for The Blue Fairy in Pinocchio and as the Hyacinth Hippo in Fantasia.  

Around the time that she modeled for Snow White, she married Art Babbitt, a Disney animator who created the famed Goofy.  After they were divorced in 1941, she played Snow White in a touring gig with The Three Stooges.

Marge had dancing bits in three movies before she was signed to play Irene's girlfriend in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) alongside Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.  It, too, was a small part but enough of one to open her to perhaps pursuing a movie career.  She had small roles in four other films the same year.

However, she would wind up in New York, hoping to pursue a ballet career and most unhappy to learn what she'd feared for years... she was too short at 5'2" to be in ballet.  Meanwhile, after directing on Broadway and ending a stint in the military, Gower Champion reappeared in her life and their friendship, as they say, turned to love.

It also turned into a classy and unique dancing partnership. 

Marge made her Broadway debut in 1945 and appeared a second time the following year.  She and Gower began wowing crowds in nightclubs and other venues.   They married in 1947 and their billing, once they reached the movies as a team, would always be Marge and Gower Champion, rather than being listed individually.  From 1948-51 they co-choreographed three Broadway shows.

National visibility certainly increased in 1949 when they joined Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca's weekly television show, Admiral Broadway Review.  Critics raved over the pair's imaginative dancing which they called narrative dances, meaning they always told a story.  Their routines sparkled with pantomime, satire, parody, frequent props and bits of nostalgia.

It was no surprise when Hollywood came calling.  Paramount had them play themselves in a little-known Bing Crosby flick, Mr. Music (1950).

It was also no surprise that the studio that employed dancers such as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Debbie Reynolds, Bobby Van, Leslie Caron and Bob Fosse would corral Marge and Gower Champion.  MGM would put them immediately into one of its big musical extravaganzas, Show Boat (1951), which would become the pair's best and most famous movie.

The Champions' characters were not part of the main story but they were as enjoyable as Ava Gardner and musical stars Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson and William Warfield.  They played performers on the Cotton Blossom, the title star.  They had four numbers but my favorite is the captivating I Might Fall Back on You.  Any time I see this number, I play it again and always catch something new.  You can see it at the end of the posting.

Eager to reteam Grayson and Keel, MGM came up with Lovely to Look At (1952), a tepid remake of Roberta.  The comedic part of the story was a major yawn for me but the musical numbers were worth  it.  For my money and apologies to costar Ann Miller, the best dancing is from the Champions.  Their I Won't Dance and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes can't be beat.

They received top billing in their next two films.  There's long been a claim that Everything I Have Is Yours (1952) is autobiographical.  The Champions play a dance team that longs to work on Broadway and just as they get their chance, she becomes pregnant and he searches for a new partner.  The dance numbers are excellent but the story never really catches up.  It was a minor MGM effort and didn't strike gold at the box office.

The critique of Give a Girl a Break (1953) isn't a lot different from the above film although it was more popular and the dancing is even more exquisite since the director, Stanley Donen, was a dancer and choreographer as were the Champions and Bob Fosse.  If dancing is your thing, check this one out.

There are no words to properly describe the destruction of the bomb called Jupiter's Darling (1955).  Let's just leave it that is concerns Hannibal wanting to conquer Rome with lots of dancing, singing and comedy.  Does it sound like something you're eager to see?  Well, no one else saw it either.  MGM agreed too and ended its association with Esther Williams and the Champions.  As superb as they were at their craft, they didn't turn in to the super attraction the studio was looking for.

They two-stepped it over to Columbia to make Three for the Show (1955), which was mainly an effort to see if Betty Grable's career had any steam left.  (It didn't).  She and Jack Lemmon (in this third film) struck out as a romantic duo.  The plot, a twist on My Favorite Wife, concerns a woman whose dead husband returns to find her married to someone else.  Again the Champions had a couple of good turns around the dance floor and Marge had a solo fantasy number, Which One.  There is liberal use of such old favorites as I've Got a Crush on You, Someone to Watch Over Me, Just One of Those Things, How Come You Do Me Like You Do and Down Boy.

Three for the Show would turn out to be the last movie Gower performed in and the last film for the Champions as a pair.  They appeared on dozens of television variety shows and had the usual nightclub engagements.  In 1957 they had their own television show for one season.

Their professional partnership ended in 1960.  Gower's career truly took off as an award-winning Broadway director and choreographer.  Marge tended to their two sons, co-authored a couple of books, choreographed some projects, taught and appeared in a couple of movies, both in 1968, in straight acting gigs.

She had a small role in Blake Edwards's largely-slapstick comedy, The Party, starring Peter Sellers.  He plays a blackballed bit actor who is mistakenly invited to a studio chief's party, the same man who wants him dead.  If it sounds like it could be a bit over the top, it is but there are enough genuine laughs to warrant the invite.

The Swimmer is a pretentiously boring movie that I loathed.  Business exec Burt Lancaster swims from pool to pool in his neighborhood pontificating with various ladies and filling their pretty heads with psycho-babble.  I wanted to drown him.

Marge made her last big-screen appearance in The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County (1970).  It's a comedy-western with heart and features a lot of old-time actors in bit parts.

In 1973 sadly she and Gower divorced although they would remain friends.  Four years later she married director Boris Sagal (father of actress Katey Sagal).  In 1980, Gower died at age 59.  A year later Sagal died when he walked into a helicopter blade on one of his film sets.

She did some choreography for the films Queen of the Stardust Ballroom, The Day of the Locust and Whose Life Is It, Anyway?  It 1982 she played a ballet teacher on Fame.

In 1987 one of her sons, Blake, died in an automobile accident.

She lived in New York and had a farmhouse in Massachusetts and stayed busy at numerous things she enjoyed while trying to work through the sadnesses of her life.

I don't think the public heard much about Marge for years.  Then in 2001, at age 82, she joined the Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies and danced and acted eight performances a week for six months.  Then I heard nothing about her until last week.

I thank her (and Gower) for the good times.  They were the Champions.

Coming up:

We'll have a gay ol' time all November