Marge Champion, a dancer who achieved nationwide television fame in the 1950s with her husband and dance partner Gower Champion and even then had already contributed to cinema history as a movement model for three classic Walt Disney animated films, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 101.
Her death was announced by her son Gregg Champion. A cause was not specified.
The daughter of a Hollywood dance coach, Champion was already performing in public when she was recruited by Disney to serve as the movement model for the lead character in 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the same year she entered a three-year marriage to Disney animator Arthur Babbitt. Champion would also provide the movements for the Blue Fairy in 1940’s Pinocchio and the ballet-dancing hippos in 1940’s Fantasia.
But if her work had already been seen by millions, Champion didn’t become recognizably famous until the late 1940s,...
Her death was announced by her son Gregg Champion. A cause was not specified.
The daughter of a Hollywood dance coach, Champion was already performing in public when she was recruited by Disney to serve as the movement model for the lead character in 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the same year she entered a three-year marriage to Disney animator Arthur Babbitt. Champion would also provide the movements for the Blue Fairy in 1940’s Pinocchio and the ballet-dancing hippos in 1940’s Fantasia.
But if her work had already been seen by millions, Champion didn’t become recognizably famous until the late 1940s,...
- 10/22/2020
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
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