Marge Champion on Walt Disney - Interview
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Coming to Blu-Ray October 6th.
Oct 7, 2009 Dominic von Riedemann
At age 14, Marge Champion became the live-action model for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, coming to Blu-Ray October 6th (look for an upcoming review).
In Part #1 of our interview, Champion discussed how she got the job and what it was like performing the role for Disney's animators. In this installment, she shares her memories of 'Uncle Walt' and why he was unhappy about her first marriage to Art Babbitt.
S101: Did you work a lot with Walt Disney?
Champion: “I didn’t work so much personally with him because he was always busy in his office, reviewing everything that came in. His presence was always felt, whether he was there or not. At that time, they had to get this movie out because the studio was going bankrupt. Also, much to his dislike, he had to help with the fundraising. He finally went to the Bank of America and showed them what he had done so they could give him enough money to finish the picture and get it out on December 21, 1937.
S101: What specific stories or memories did you take away from Snow White?
“Well, I was working 3 days a month while going to Hollywood High School, and turning 14, 15 and 16: I worked all those years. I also did the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio and I did all the dance sequences and some of the ideas for the hippopotamus in Fantasia.
“There are a thousand memories, and it’s hard to pick them out. It was really my college education: I couldn’t go to college because there were no dance programs.
But my father told me, “You can dance, because your career will start when you’re out of high school, or you can go to college.” There was no way of doing both in those days. I’d been trained in dance for 10 years, so it wasn’t a hard decision to make. I’d already been appearing in my father’s ballets at the Hollywood Bowl, the Redlands Bowl: the first thing I did after graduating high school was dance in the Civic Light Opera in Los Angeles.”
S101: Getting back to Disney, did you get to know Walt after a while?
“Oh sure! I was introduced to him from the beginning, because he was a slight acquaintance of my father, who had been a dance director (the old term for a choreographer) for Charlie Chaplin, Mack Sennett and Cecil B. DeMille.
“Walt always told me, ‘Call me Uncle Walt, because you’re too young to call me Walt.’ All the other animators were told to call him Walt. He wasn’t my uncle but he certainly was a guiding force for the first 3 years of my working career.”
S101: What was your impression of him?
“Between 14 and 18 you change a lot. I always respected him, I loved the Silly Symphonies, the 'Three Little Pigs,' Mickey and Minnie and Donald Duck: I loved all of that. I knew nothing of the financial problems, that they couldn’t make enough money from those animated shorts. I didn’t ask a whole lot of questions when I was 14; I enjoyed the time I got out of school. By the time I was 15, I could buy a Model A Ford for $100 – in those days you could get a driver’s license at 15.”
S101: While you worked for Walt Disney–
“I never worked for Disney more than 1 or 2 days a month.”
S101: Is there a story that you could tell in order to give an idea of what Walt was like?
“(pauses) I’ve never been asked that question. (pauses again) I’d have to think about that. I know he was very protective: he was very upset when Art Babbitt started dating me. We eventually married the month before I turned 18 (Babbitt was 11 years older than her).
It was a long time before I realized just how much he liked dancing. Whenever possible, he would have somebody dancing, whether it was Donald Duck or the Silly Symphonies. I know a lot from Mindy Aloff’s Hippo in a Tutu: she interviewed me for that book.
“I found Walt very kind to me, and very specific about what he wanted from the directors and the animators. He had a sense of fun and play . . . it’s hard for me to remember any one event. He never called me in the office and bawled me out so I didn’t know that side of him.
“I had huge respect for that man, but we never had a sit-down-and-tell-each-other-stories kind of relationship."
S101: Say you’re talking with somebody who hasn’t seen Snow White–
“(laughs) You’re going to enjoy it, because nobody on that night in Carthage Circle Theatre on December 21st had seen a full-length animated feature before. And they were so moved by it that they even cried.”
a young Marge Champion
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