Marge Champion

Marge Champion was an American dancer and actress.

The daughter of a Hollywood dance coach who was friends with Walt Disney, Champion was recruited by Disney to serve as the movement model for the lead character in 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Champion would also provide the movements for the Blue Fairy in 1940’s Pinocchio and the ballet-dancing hippos in 1940’s Fantasia.

Champion and her husband, Gower Champion, also had great success as dance partners and choreographers for Broadway musicals, films and television shows. Champion won an Emmy award in 1975 for choreographing the television movie Queen of the Stardust Ballroom.

The Champions worked together on television in the late 1940s and 1950s, first appearing in Admiral Broadway Revue with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca on NBC. They also were featured on The Bell Telephone Hour, General Electric Theater, The Ed Sullivan Show, and The Dinah Shore Chevy Show.

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.

Champion died October 21, 2020, in Los Angeles, California. She was 101.