Marge Champion

Marjorie Celeste Champion ( Belcher; September 2, 1919October 21, 2020) was an American dancer and actress. At fourteen, 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 television show based on song and dance. She also 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. Early life Champion was born in Los Angeles, California, on September 2, 1919. Her 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 (née Rosenberg). Champion had an older half sister, Lina Basquette, who began acting in 1916 in silent films. Lina was the daughter of her mother's first husband, Frank Baskette, who died by suicide. Champion and Basquette's maternal grandfather, Lazarus Rosenberg, was Jewish. Marjorie began dancing at an early age as her sister had done. She started as a child under the instruction of her father. She studied exclusively with her father from age five until she left for New York. She 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. Her first dance partner was Louis Hightower. In 1930, she made her debut in the Hollywood Bowl at age 11 in the ballet "Carnival in Venice". By age twelve, she became a ballet instructor at her father's studio. Marge played Tina in the Hollywood High School operetta The Red Mill. She also sang in the Hollywood High School Girls' Senior Glee Club and graduated in 1936. She was hired by The Walt Disney Studio 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. For one scene Belcher served as model while wrapped in a baggy overcoat for two dwarfs at once, when for the "Silly Song" dance, Dopey gets on Sneezy's shoulder to dance with Snow White.