Word: championed
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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42ND STREET Directed and Choreographed by Gower Champion Songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin...
42nd Street will be remembered as the last work of Gower Champion, 59, an encapsulation of much that he did best. As a director, he had a jet pilot's sense of speed and angle of ascent. Fond memories of his Bye Bye Birdie offer abundant evidence of that. His choreography could turn from the gliding thunder of tap to the vaulting grace of a waltz without missing a step. The vitality of such 42nd Street numbers as The Shadow Waltz-done just with work lights-Lullaby of Broadway and We're in the Money ensures that this...
Producer David Merrick waited until the cast of 42nd Street had grinned, waved and danced through almost a dozen curtain calls on opening night at the Winter Garden Theater before coming onstage and making an announcement to them and to the audience: "This is tragic. Gower Champion died this afternoon...
...cast, who knew that their director was ailing and hospitalized, had little idea of the severity of his sickness. The news that Champion was dead poleaxed them. Wanda Richert wept in Merrick's arms, and, after a moment of stunned silence. Jerry Orbach called backstage to the house manager, "Bring it in, bring...
...dignity that may have been missing at this moment was evident in the last months of Champion's life. He had been suffering from a rare malignancy of the blood, Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, for some time. Dr. Lilian Reich of New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center said that Champion first showed signs of the disease ten years ago, but that it was not diagnosed until four years later. Throughout the long rehearsal and preview period Champion scheduled his treatments so they would not conflict with his work. Says Dr. Reich: "It was clear...