When Champion started in the theatre in 1936, vaudeville was in its
death throes. He and his first partner, Jeanne Tyler, played the last re-
maining vaudeville houses, mostly with dance bands, and enjoyed a brief
but successful career when vaudeville tried to team with the motion
picture. They were also featured in one of the last of the spectacular
Broadway revues, Streets of Paris, in 1939. The team broke up when
World War II began.

After the war, Champion teamed up with the daughter of his childhood
dancing teacher and, not too many months later, they were married and
made a career for themselves as Marge and Gower Champion. They were
the definitive American dance team of the 1950s. Their motion picture
career, which was short-lived, came at the very end of the era of lavish
MGM musicals.

Champion went on to a successful career as a Broadway director-
choreographer, his last show, 42nd Street opening the day he died, Au-
gust 25, 1980. He became famous as a result of his Broadway musicals,
but his aim had always been to direct motion pictures. Fame in that field
eluded him, however, and the few films that he directed were not suc-
cessful at the box office.

Gower Carlisle Champion was born on June 22, 1919, the son of John
W. and Beatrice (Carlisle) Champion, in Geneva, Illinois, a prosperous
suburb of Chicago. ¹ He was named after his maternal grandmother, Bell
Gower. ² John Champion was an advertising executive with Munsing-
wear, the underwear manufacturer. ³ In September of 1919 John Cham-
pion announced that he had fallen in love with his secretary. John and

-1-