SIX GOWER CHAMPION SL Robbins and Fosse, Gower Champion first made his name as a dancer before becoming a choreographer. But he was different from them both in that in his early career he was an idolized nightclub dancer with his partner, Marge, who shared his personal as well as professional life and whose performing career blossomed with his. Marge was born into family that was deeply part of show business and the profession of dance, Her father, Ernest Belcher, had achieved success as a young dancer in England: as the male half of a ballroom dancing team in the 1910s, he appeared before the royal family. In 1914 he decided to try his fortunes in America, and after arriving in New York, he toured the East Coast on the Keith and Orpheum vaudeville circuits. A year later he settled in Los Angeles, a thriving young city with a burgeoning silent film industry, and opened his first dance studio with an enrollment of five students, “two who aid and three who did not.” But enrollment increased steadily until Belcher, with two thousand stu- dents, had the largest dance studio in Los Angeles. In 1931 Cecil B. De Mille, for whom he had worked as dance director for many of his silent films, built Belcher an expensive, three-story dance studio in the Wilehine district. The studio was invaluable asa source of dancers needed for pro. duction numbers, and as a school where De Mille’s stars could be trained quickly for ballet and other types of dance. In the silent film era, Belcher Personally instructed Clara Bow, Vilma Banky, Pola Negri, Lillian Gish, and Mary Pickford; when talkies came in he was the dance teacher of Ruby Keeler, Betty Grable, and Shirley Temple. At one time or another Rite GOWER CHAMPION «18: Hayworth, Nanette Fabray, Cyd Charisse and Gwen Verdon all studied Writh him, Her father’s studio, with its quality of a glamorous Hollywood fity tale, defined Marge's childhood. When she was five years old, her father began her dance traning, taking it for granted that she would appear famously on the stage. Gower's childhood was quite different, Although he grew up in Los Angeles, he was born—on June 22, 1920—in Geneva Ilinois, s well-cy do suburb of Chicago where his fther, John Champion, was » succes advertising executive with Munsingwear. When Gower, named afta fay ‘arernal grandmother, Belle Gower, was not yet a year old, John Chany, Pion fll in love with his secretary and told his wife Beatrice that he wea leaving her. He remarried and in 1922 Beatrice, shattered by his deserien and partly to be near her sister, moved to Los Angeles with her infane sons, Gower and John, Jr. Unwilling to accept money from Champion, she mage # living as a dressmaker. Two splendidly informal doctoral dissertations have been written on Gower Champion by David Payne-Carter and John Gilvey, both of which give a sense of the mother as being overly rigid and ever conscious of the injuries she had suffered. life.” Gilvey writes, “she sought solace in Christian Science, She grew increasingly suspicious and sanctimonious—a rigid overseer of Gower sad John, whose every move was strictly monitored in the overly Protective household she supervised.” Novelist and screenwriter Jess Gregg, Gower’s bestfriend since their Gzely childhood, remembers Mrs. Champion as “a woman who wasn't old but who seemed old. There was something stern about her. She wag very Siacsng and precise, and insisted chat [Gower] keep up the highest sane dards, She never let him deviate from her idea of perfection, She influenced Gover enormously.” In school he was known by his peers 2s “the prince,” since he seemed to them aloof, remote, even a bit arrogant. “He wae always bresence,” Gregg remarks, “like a natural aristocrat. Reserve might have been his middle name. He always seemed to be in control.” At an early School for children inclined toward the arts, some of whom, including Gower himself, performed on radio soap operas emanating from Let Angeles. In 1931, when he was twelve, he took dance snd piano leveons ve the Norma Gould School of Dance on Larchmont Avenue near the Pat ‘Mount Fil Studios. Attending such clases was one ofthe ritual of grow. ing up at thar time and being prepared to move in good society.82+ BROADWAY, THE GOLDEN YEARS At the Gould School, Gower met an attractive, dark-haired girl named Jeanne Tyler, who would become his first professional dance partner; and before long, because they wanted more advanced training, they decided to register at Elisa Ryan's Studio of Dance in Beverly Hills. Here, in addition to learning the basics of ballroom dancing, they could take part in the dance program with some of the leading child stars of the day, including Shirley Temple. As a small child, in fact, Shirley Temple developed an instant crush on Gower, seven years her senior. “Happy and handsome,” she writes in her autobiography, “he had instantly become my idol. ... My ‘unrequited crush on him started when I was only six years old at Elisa Ryan’s dancing school. Later I had occasionally dated him. ... For years thereafter Champion and I carried on a low-tempo flirtation, intermittent and inconclusive."* Her interest in Gower, however, seems to have been ‘more than passing. According to Gregg, Temple put off marriage until she knew for certain that Gower would be marrying someone else. Elisa Ryan’s Studio was noted for its “white glove cotillions,” at which her pupils displayed their accomplishments. At one of these, a vivacious blond-haired girl named Marjorie Celeste Belcher (Ernest Belcher’s daughter), who sat behind Gower in a history class at the Herbert Howe Bancroft Junior High School, performed a Portuguese hat dance. When her father came to see her perform, he noticed Gower as he danced with Jeanne Tyler, and was so impressed by him that he offered him a full schol- arship at his school. At the Ernest Belcher School of Dance, Gower took ballet classes two or three times a week without necessarily being serious about them, for at this time he had little thought of becoming a dancer. His life took a sudden turn, however, when he was seventeen and a senior at Fairfax High School. He and Jeanne Tyler had been entering dance contests purely for fun and recreation, and winning a number of them. But in February 1936 they took part in a highly touted contest called the “Veloz. and Yolanda Waltz to Fame,” after the celebrated dancing team who were present to take part in voting for the winners. The other judges included a talent scout for MGM, and the first prize was a week’s engagement at the Coconut Grove night- club in Los Angeles. Gower and Jeanne entered the competition as a lark; the prize was of no interest to them and, moreover, they did not expect to win. When they did, Gower’ life changed immediately and forever. ‘They were signed by MCA, a major theatrical agency booking acts into nightclubs and theaters across the country. For the engagement at the Coconut Grove, they were coached by a dance teacher at Elisa Ryan's and Gower CHAMPION + 183 by Emest Belcher; and their act had such marked success that their engage- ‘ment was extended six weeks. In October of 1936, accompanied and vigi- lantly chaperoned by Beatrice Champion, Gower and Jeanne traveled to Chicago for an engagement at the Drake Hotel, where they were billed as “America’s youngest dance team.” They exuded not only youth but also the confidence of professionals, and they captivated audiences. After seven- teen weeks at the Drake, MCA sent them on tour with the Eddie Duchin Orchestra, and then with the orchestras of Guy Lombardo and Wayne King, with whom they played Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, Washing- ton, and other big cities. Following the big-band tours, they were booked into the Mount Royal Hotel in Montreal, where they enjoyed extraordinary success in an engage- ment of thirty-two weeks. In their conquest of New York, they were booked into the Empire Room of the Waldorf Astoria for New Year's Eve, 1937, and a week later into the hotel's choicest venue ofall, the Sert Room. ‘They played the Persian Room of the Plaza Hotel and the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Plaza. But what marks this period particularly is that it brought Gower into the New York theater. The choreographer Robert ‘Alton, who had seen them perform in Montreal, incorporated their act into his new tevue, The Serece uf Paris, whiich opened on June 19, 1939, a few days before Gower turned twenty. Perhaps the last of the lavish revues of the 1920s and 1930s, The Streets of Paris drew rave reviews. Its M.C. was the veteran comic Bobby Clark (of Clark and McCullough), instantly recognizable by his pair of painted-on- glasses and trick cigar. The cast included Abbott and Costello, making their debut on Broadway after a decade in burlesque and vaudeville, and ‘Carmen Miranda, newly arrived from Brazil with her signature fruitbowl headdress. She proved the sensation of the evening, and the revue launched her career in America. In a timely number, Alton mocked British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s sellout of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the form of the latest dance craze, “Doin’ the Chamberlain,” which was sung by Luella Gear while a chorus of Chamberlain look-alikes, led by Gower and Jeanne as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, strutted about the stage waving black umbrellas. Gower and Jeanne won praises in the press as “one of the brightest and most graceful couples to have reached Broadway in years.” But just as important for Gower’s emerging career was his new- found association with Robert Alton, then at a high point of his succes: the 1939-1940 season alone he directed the dances for eight new musical, including the history-making Pal Jory (1940). An idol of Gower’s, Alton184 + BROADWAY, THE GOLDEN YEARS ‘came out of a tradition of “old Broadway” show dance, refined by extraor- dinary attention to detail and a clean, sharp sophistication. After running for eight months, The Streets of Paris toured Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, and Chicago, where it closed in May 1940, But shortly before the closing, Gower and Jeanne left the company to com- mence a number of engagements with their dance act, which took them by June 1940 to the Rainbow Room in New York. In 1942 they appeared together in two other Broadway musicals, which opened and closed ‘quickly. The Lady Comes Acros, brought over from England and directed by Romney Brent, with music and lyrics by Vernon Duke and John La Touche, lasted only three performances. Interestingly, though, the show's choreographer was George Balanchine, who specifically requested Gower and Jeanne for the production after having seen them perform. The second production, Count Me In, which opened in the autumn of the year, reunited Gower with Robert Alton. ‘With his appearances on Broadway and at New York's premiere night- clubs, Gower was already well-known and attracting attention. Young and attractive at the beginning of World War I he received some of the adula- tion that teenage girls were showering on Frank Sinatra. Gregg remembers how adolescent girls screamed adoringly at Gower when he and Gower walked along the street in New Haven during the tryout of a show. “He was extraordinary looking,” Gregg says. “Women would come up to him and want to paw him, to ‘feel’ him, He always hated it.” Before long, over the anxious objections of his mother, he enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard. He and Jeanne were, or thought they were, in love; but by the time Gower ‘was discharged from the service three years later, Jeanne had married and retired from show business. Starting over, Gower would soon be drawn to Ernest Belcher’s daughter Marjorie, and meteoric as his success with Jeanne Tyler had been, it would prove to be merely a dress rehearsal for his approaching career with Marge. Ernest Belcher had always hoped that Gower and Marge would get together, and when Gower asked him if he could suggest a new partner for him, he was only too happy to recommend his daughter. In his absence she had launched her own career. While still in her teens, she and her handsome dancing partner, Louis Hightower, were seen at her father’s dance studio and selected to be models for Snow White and Prince GOWER CHAMPION + 145 Charming in Walt Disney’s first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938); and she was subsequently the model for other Dis- ney characters in Pinocchio (1940) and Fantasia (1940). She and Hightower performed on the nightclub circuit and after the war she went to New York, where she appeared on Broadway in Dark of the Moon, In the same period, Gower shuttled back and forth between New York and Hollywood, where, in April of 1946, he signed a contract with MGM; but all that came of it was an insignificant segment in the movie musical Till the Clouds Roll By, in which he danced across the screen with Cyd Charisse for fifteen sec- ‘onds. He then returned to New York, where Marge and his friend Jess Gregg were both living, and rented a section (formerly a basketball court) of an abandoned church south of Houston Street. With the help of Marge and Jess, he converted it into living quarters and « rehearsal space. There, working in total isolation, he choreographed his new act with Marge that he hoped would take them to the clubs where he and Jeanne Tyler tri- umphed earlier. ‘The management of the Mount Royal Hotel in Montreal was overjoyed at the prospect of having Gower back. His new act with Marge was also booked sight unscen at the Palmer [louse in Chicago and the Plz Hotel in New York. While they were playing an engagement in Boston, Marge was called by Richard Rodgers with what was virtually an offer to star in his new show, Allegro, Itwas an enormous opportunity for her, but committing herself to what would presumably be a long-running show would jeopar- dize her partnership with Gower at a time when he had begun to talk of their getting married. In the end, she stayed with him and the act. All that spring and summer in the Midwest, they played to raprurous reviews; and in Los Angeles on October 7, 1947, they were married. Having begun their act as “Gower and Belle,” they now became “Marge and Gower Champion.” In addition to choreographing their nightclub act, Gower now had ambitions of choreographing shows on Broadway. His first chance came with a revue called Small Wonder that was directed by Burt Shevelove. The show's choreographer, Anna Sokolow, had withdrawn just as rehearsals were about to begin, and Gower was hastily recruited to take her place. ‘Small Wonder, which opened on September 15, 1948, included a number of young performers—Tom Ewell, Alice Pearce, Jack Cassidy, and Mary ‘McCarty among others—who would later become better known. But due chiefly to its weak score, Small Wonder ran for only three months.