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Gower Carlyle Champion (June 22, 1919 – August 25, 1980) was an American actor, ... Bye Bye Birdie; 1964 Tony Award for Best Choreography – Hello, Dolly!
NYC Center. Bye Bye Birdie is a stage musical with music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Lee Adams, based upon a book by Michael Stewart . Originally titled Let's Go Steady, Bye Bye Birdie is set in 1958. The play's book was influenced when Elvis Presley was drafted into the Army in 1957. The rock star character's name, "Conrad Birdie", is ...
Aug 26, 1980 · but also "Bye, Bye Birdie" and "I Do, I Do." Toward the end of that decade, his life began to change. In 1972, about the time he was trying to become a film director, he and Marge Champion were ...
- Gower Champion was nominated for 15 Tony Awards and won 8 times. That’s just one shy of director/choreographer Bob Fosse, who won 9 Tonys in all.
- When he was only a junior in high school, Champion won a dance contest with his dance partner, Jeanne Tyler. The duo promptly quit school and hit the road, touring nightclubs as “Gower and Jeanne.”
- Gower and Jeanne made their Broadway debut in a 1939 revue called The Streets of Paris. The show also featured Abbott & Costello and Carmen Miranda.
- After serving in the Coast Guard during WWII, Champion partnered with Marjorie Belcher, the daughter of his former dance teacher. First billed as “Gower and Bell,” they soon found acclaim as “Marge and Gower Champion,” and married in 1947.
Aug 24, 2010 · “That was okay in the 1930’s,” says Martin, “but Gower eliminated them, because he knew it didn’t work in the 1960s.” Winning Tonys® for direction AND choreography in one year isn’t easy. In the ‘60s, Champion did it three times, for Bye Bye Birdie, Hello, Dolly! and The Happy Time. Even with a two-person show — I Do! I Do!
From then on he choreographed and directed a mixture of smash hits and dismal flops in a list that included “Three for Tonight,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Carnival,” “Hello, Dolly!”, “I Do!
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Dancers Over 40's Dancers and Creative Talents of Gower Champion continues with stories about how Gower structured numbers, from Bye Bye Birdie to Rockabye H...
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