Marjorie Celeste Champion was an American dancer and actress.
32 Facts About Marge Champion
2.
Marge Champion did creative choreography for liturgy, and served as a dialogue and movement coach for the 1978 TV miniseries, The Awakening Land, set in the late 18th century in the Ohio Valley.
3.
Marge Champion was born in Los Angeles, California, on September 2,1919.
4.
Marge Champion's father, Ernest, was a Hollywood dance director who taught Shirley Temple, Betty Grable, Ramon Novarro, Cyd Charisse, Fay Wray and Joan Crawford, as well as Champion's future husband Gower Champion; her mother was Gladys Lee Baskette.
5.
Marge Champion had an older half sister, Lina Basquette, who began acting in 1916 in silent films.
6.
Marge Champion started as a child under the instruction of her father.
7.
Marge Champion studied exclusively with her father from age five until she left for New York.
8.
Marge Champion credited her good health and long career to her father's teaching principles: careful, strict progression of activity, emphasis on correct alignment, precise placement of body, attention to detail and to the totality of dynamics and phrasing.
9.
Marge Champion played Tina in the Hollywood High School operetta The Red Mill.
10.
Marge Champion sang in the Hollywood High School Girls' Senior Glee Club and graduated in 1936.
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Marge Champion was hired by The Walt Disney Studio as a dance model for their animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
12.
Marge Champion's movements were copied to enhance the realism of the animated Snow White figure.
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Marge Champion even recalls doing some modeling for Mr Stork in Dumbo.
14.
When working with Disney on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Marge Champion recalls, "the animators couldn't take a young girl out of themselves, they couldn't take the prince out of themselves".
15.
Gower and Marge Champion appeared as the Mystery Guests on the May 15,1955, airing of What's My Line.
16.
Marge Champion and Zdenek co-authored two books, Catch the New Wind and God Is a Verb, related to this work.
17.
Marge Champion served as a dialogue and movement coach for the TV miniseries, The Awakening Land, adapted from Conrad Richter's trilogy of the same name.
18.
Marge Champion has worked as a dance instructor and choreographer in New York City.
19.
Marge Champion made a rare television acting appearance in 1982 on the dramatic TV series Fame, playing a ballet teacher with a racial bias against African-American students.
20.
Marge Champion appeared in several stage musicals and plays on Broadway as a performer.
21.
Marge Champion made her New York debut in What's Up.
22.
Marge Champion performed in the Dark of the Moon as the Fair Witch, and Beggar's Holiday having multiple roles.
23.
Marge Champion made her last Broadway appearance in 3 for Tonight in 1955.
24.
Marge Champion appeared as Emily Whitman in the 2001 Broadway stage revival of Follies.
25.
Marge Champion married Art Babbitt, an animator at Disney and creator of Goofy, in 1937.
26.
Marge Champion married dancer Gower Champion in 1947, and they had two sons.
27.
Marge Champion died four years later on May 22,1981 in a helicopter accident during the production of the miniseries World War III.
28.
Marge Champion became stepmother to Boris' five children including Katey, Jean, Liz, and Joey.
29.
Marge Champion died one year later on October 21,2020, at her son's home in Los Angeles.
30.
Marge Champion was honored with the Disney Legends Award in 2007.
31.
Marge Champion was interviewed at a Hollywood film festival screening of The Swimmer by filmmaker Allison Anders for the same release.
32.
Marge Champion still danced twice a week with choreographer, actor, and an original member of American Ballet Theatre, Donald Saddler, who first performed at Jacob's Pillow in 1941.