Marge Champion dances in the 1952 film, Everything I Have Is Yours
Marge Champion, the dancer, choreographer and actress, is 101 years old today.
At a young age, she was hired as a dance model for Walt Disney Studios animated films. Later she performed as an actress and dancer in film musicals, and in 1957 had a TV show based on song and dance. She has also done creative choreography for liturgy, and served as a dialog and movement coach for the 1978 TV miniseries, The Awakening Land, set in the late 18th century in the Ohio Valley.
Champion was born Marjorie Celeste Belcher in 1919 in Los Angeles to Hollywood dance director, Ernest Belcher, and his wife, Gladys Lee Baskette. She had an older half sister, Lina Basquette, who was already acting in silent films at the age of twelve. She was the daughter of her mother's first husband, Frank Baskette, who committed suicide.
Marjorie began dancing at an early age as her sister had done. By the age of twelve, she became a ballet instructor at her father's studio. She was hired by Walt Disney Studios as a dance model for their animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Her movements were copied to enhance the realism of the animated Snow White figure.
Belcher later modeled for characters in other animated films, including the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio (1940), Maid Marion in Robin Hood and the Dancing Hippo in Fantasia.
In 1947, she married another dancer, Gower Champion (1919–1980). They had two sons, Blake and actor, Gregg Champion. They divorced in 1973.
She married director Boris Sagal on January 1, 1977. He was killed on May 22, 1981, in an accident during the production of the miniseries, World War III. He was the father of actress Katey Sagal.
Together as a dance team, the Champions performed in MGM musicals of the 1940s and 50s, including Show Boat (1951) and Everything I Have Is Yours (1952). MGM wanted the couple to remake Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films, but only one, Lovely to Look At (1952), a remake of Roberta (1935), was completed. The couple refused to remake any of the others, the rights to which were still owned by RKO.
During the summer of 1957, the Champions had their own TV series, The Marge and Gower Champion Show, a situation comedy with song and dance numbers. Marge played a dancer and Gower a choreographer. Real-life drummer Buddy Rich was featured as a fictional drummer named Cozy.
Champion has also worked as a dance instructor and choreographer in New York City.
In 1982, she made a rare television acting appearance on the dramatic TV series, Fame, playing a ballet teacher with a racial bias against African-American students. In 2001, she appeared as Emily Whitman in a Broadway revival of Follies.