One of the great dancer and choreographers in both movies and stage, Marge Champion is best known today as the former wife of Gower Champion , when they worked together as a highly successfully dancing team in the MGM musical years. After retiring from movies, Champion now works as a dance teacher and as a choreographer in New York.
She was filmed for the reference of Disney animators (her then-husband Art Babbitt was an animator, and supervised much of the reference filming) as a model for the heroine in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio (1940), and Hyacinth Hippo in the "Dance of the Hours" segment of Fantasia (1940) (along with Ruby Dandridge ), which she also helped choreograph, in an elaborate parody of a Balanchine ballet danced by Vera Zorina in The Goldwyn Follies (1938). Marge even recalls doing some modeling for Mr. Stork in Dumbo (1941) .Younger step-sister of late silent screen actress, Lina Basquette .Daughter of dance teacher/choreographer Ernest Belcher .Stepmother of actresses Katey Sagal , Joey Sagal , Jean Sagal and Liz Sagal .Mother of film and television director Gregg Champion .
Most people know the lasting legacy of Harry Belafonte, the entertainer. This film unearths his significant contribution to and his leadership in the civil rights movement in America and to social justice globally.