Gower Champion was an American dancer, choreographer, and director.
Background
Gower Champion was born on June 22, 1919 in Geneva, Illinois, United States to John W. Champion, an advertising executive, and Beatrice Carlisle, a custom dressmaker. After his parents divorced, Champion was raised by his mother in Los Angeles.
Education
He studied dance under Ernest Belcher. He quit Fairfax High School at age seventeen, after winning an amateur dance contest.
Career
He began touring fashionable clubs with his partner, Jeanne Tyler. They billed themselves as "Gower and Jeanne, America's Youngest Dancers. " They danced together all the way to Hollywood, where they had cameo roles in Streets of Paris (1939), The Lady Comes Across (1942), and Count Me In (1942). Champion joined the United States Coast Guard during World War II, and the service recognized his talents by allowing him to tour with the patriotic musical Tars and Spars. After the war, he appeared in the motion picture Till the Clouds Roll By (1946). Working together as the dance team of Gower and Bell, the pair became a dancing sensation, and their stylish and energetic performances were especially suited to the new medium of television. They appeared on the "Admiral Broadway Revue" in 1949 and performed later on virtually every TV variety show of the 1950's. So great was their renown that in 1957 they starred in a situation comedy, the "Marge and Gower Champion Show, " in which they played themselves. Their career also included the big screen, with roles in such motion pictures as Mr. Music (1950), Show Boat (1951), Everything I Have Is Yours (1952), Give a Girl a Break (1953), Jupiter's Darling (1955), and The Girl Most Likely (1955). In 1948, Champion discovered Carol Channing and cast her in Lend an Ear, his first effort at directing and choreographing a musical stage production. The play was a Broadway hit and a success with the critics--Champion won the first of his seven Tony Awards. He did not, however, return to Broadway as director-choreographer until 1960, with the smash hit Bye Bye Birdie. Critical and popular acclaim swelled as one hit musical followed another: Carnival! (1961), Hello, Dolly! (1964), with Tony Awards for his direction and choreography, and I Do! I Do! (1966). No one who saw Dolly on stage could ever forget the waiters capering and duelling with shish kebabs in the Harmonia Gardens. For a performer, Champion was unusually shy. After a show, he often disappeared for hours at a time, especially on opening nights. As cast and crew rustled off to await the reviews at some posh restaurant, Champion would hide in the sets, enjoying people's candid observations about the performance. When Gower missed the reviews of Dolly, Marge returned to the theater to tell him the play was a hit--and found him in the set for the Harmonia Gardens. Work on Carnival! introduced Champion to producer David Merrick and began a fruitful, though stormy, collaboration. Irked by the choreographer's dictatorial attitude on the set, Merrick once called him the "Presbyterian Hitler. " Champion disputed only the first part of that characterization--he was an avowed agnostic. And he was demanding--one stagehand later recalled having to "audition" twenty pushcarts before Champion saw one he liked. Champion and Merrick disagreed loudly, passionately, and often about who should have final control over the finished production, and both asserted more than once that their latest play would be their last together. Nevertheless, they overcame their differences, personal and professional, to stage seven productions over a span of twenty years, most of which were critical and financial successes. Champion's most complete failures as an artist came in his attempts to direct dramatic productions for stage and screen. A natural as a dancer, choreographer, and musical director, his stage production of Lillian Hellman's My Mother, My Father and Me (1963) and the movie My Six Loves (1963) both flopped. He was more successful at directing television variety specials and won considerable respect as a "show doctor, " called in from the wings to cure ailing Broadway musicals. Oddly, although he saved several productions, including Liza Minnelli's The Act, Champion did not direct or choreograph a hit show for the better part of ten years--with the notable exception of Irene (1973). Such experimental plays as The Happy Time (1968), Mack and Mabel (1974), and Rockabye Hamlet (1976), the first two for producer David Merrick, were critical failures. After nearly five years' absence from the director's chair, Champion accepted Merrick's challenge to choreograph and direct a theatrical adaptation of the movie musical 42nd Street (1933), which had starred Ruby Keeler. He also knew he was not Merrick's first choice (Michael Bennett had already declined the offer). Yet the simple, old-fashioned musical was a perfect vehicle for the dance master's unique talents; both he and the play were charmingly and purposely anachronistic. He was not successful as a cutting-edge innovator like his friends Bob Fosse or Jerome Robbins; his style was sophisticated yet engagingly unpretentious, energetic yet reminiscent of Broadway's more innocent past. A year earlier, Champion's doctors had informed him that he had a rare blood disease and recommended inactivity. He chose to work, but the grueling pace of rehearsals debilitated him quickly. Unable to hide his growing infirmity, Champion told cast, crew, and producer that he had a virus and fought with Merrick to hasten production. Champion died only hours before 42nd Street opened on Broadway. Merrick, normally reclusive, came on stage after the show and ten curtain calls were over to tell cast and audience that Champion was dead. Few at the Winter Garden Theater missed the pervasive sense of tragic irony. 42nd Street was rife with show-business cliches--the ingenue, the fading star, the tough director who falls in love with the ingenue--which could only be topped by the ultimate Broadway cliche: with its directory lying dead in the hospital, the show had gone on.
Achievements
Connections
In 1947 he rediscovered his childhood sweetheart, Marjorie Celeste ("Marge") Belcher, the daughter of his former mentor. She became his dance partner and on October 5, 1947, they were married. They had two children. In 1973 the Champions divorced. Three years later, he married longtime friend interior landscaper Karla Most.
Recipient Donaldson, Dance magazine, Antoinette Perry awards for creation best dances on Broadway. Tony award for best director musical, choregrapher The Happy Time, 1967-1968.
Recipient Donaldson, Dance magazine, Antoinette Perry awards for creation best dances on Broadway. Tony award for best director musical, choregrapher The Happy Time, 1967-1968.