Marge Champion obituary
The flashing legs and smiles of the energetic, witty husband-and-wife dancing duo Marge and Gower Champion were seen in seven movie musicals between 1950 and 1955. Like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis during the same period, Marge, who has died aged 101, and Gower seemed an inseparable pair.
After making a guest appearance in the Bing Crosby musical Mr Music (1950), in which they danced to Life Is So Peculiar, they signed with MGM, the home of the best musicals. In Show Boat (1951), they were a hit in two zestful numbers, I Might Fall Back on You and Life Upon the Wicked Stage. This was followed by Lovely to Look at (1952), a remake of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical Roberta, with the Champions dancing in the paradoxically titled I Won’t Dance in a room full of tailor’s dummies.
Marge and Gower, playing a husband-and-wife team, were given star billing for the first time in Everything I Have Is Yours (1952). The film came alive when they were on their toes, with Marge having her first solo entitled Derry Down Dilly. Gower choreographed the delightful Stanley Donen musical Give a Girl a Break (1953), in which the Champions performed a vibrant rooftop dance.
Their farewell film at MGM was Jupiter’s Darling (1955), an Esther Williams vehicle set in ancient Rome. Marge and Gower were a pair of Roman slaves who danced to If This Be Slavery and The Life of an Elephant with a chorus line of elephants.
The final film they made together was Three for the Show (1955), a Columbia Betty Grable musical, with the Champions injecting some style while dancing to the strains of Gershwin’s lovely Someone to Watch Over Me.
Marge was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of Ernest and Gladys Belcher. Her father was a dance teacher and choreographer who worked with many Hollywood stars of the day. She began learning dance at an early age, and by the time she was in her teens, she was teaching dance herself. In 1936, she danced in several productions with the Los Angeles Civic Opera. The following year, she married Art Babbitt, one of Walt Disney’s highest paid animators.
Babbitt asked Marge to model for the heroine of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). She posed for the ethereal Blue Fairy in Pinocchio (1940) and her inventive dancing was studied for the drawings of ostrich ballerinas and swaying blossoms in Fantasia (1940). For the last of these, Marge was dressed in a long tulle ballet skirt that resembled the shape of the blossoms that were to skim across the water.
She made her film debut under the name of Marjorie Belle in a brief role in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), a biopic of a husband-and-wife dance team, starring Astaire and Rogers. In 1945, by now divorced from Babbitt, Marge moved to New York, where she appeared as the Fair Witch in the charming folk fantasy Dark of the Moon, which ran for almost a year on Broadway.
It was then that she became reacquainted with Gower Champion, with whom she had attended Bancroft junior high school in Los Angeles (and who had been one of her father’s dance pupils). He had just returned from second world war duty and was looking for a dancing partner. As Gower and Belle, they played nightclubs and performed with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca in the TV variety show The Admiral Broadway Revue. They married in 1947 and went on to have two sons, Blake and Gregg.
After their musicals in Hollywood, the Champions went straight to Broadway in the 1955 revue Three for Tonight, dancing while Harry Belafonte sang, for 85 performances. The couple then appeared in a short-lived TV sitcom, The Marge and Gower Champion Show (1957), which ended their performing partnership, apart from a few guest appearances. Gower then concentrated on dance directing, while Marge took some straight acting roles, in films including The Party and The Swimmer (both in 1968). They divorced in 1973 and in 1977 she married the TV and film director Boris Sagal.
Marge choreographed the dances in The Day of the Locust (1975) and Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981).
She appeared as Emily Whitman, part of a husband-and-wife team, in the 2001 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, but spent most of the latter part of her life teaching dance in New York.
Sagal was killed in a helicopter accident in 1981 while scouting locations for a film; Blake died in a car accident in 1987. Marge is survived by Gregg and three grandchildren.
• Marge Champion (Marjorie Celeste Belcher), actor, dancer and choreographer, born 2 September 1919; died 21 October 2020
• Ronald Bergan died in July 2020
