eMoviePoster.com

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More

Marge Champion (born Marjorie Celeste Belcher) was an dancer, choreographer, and actress from the 1930s to the 1980s. Her best roles were in Show Boat and Everything I Have Is Yours. Not many people know this, but at the very beginning of her career, she was also the "movement model" for Disney's Snow White in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio, and the Dancing Hippo in Fantasia (she would be filmed and animators would use the film of her in drawing the characters!). Her husband at the time was Art Babbit, who was a top animator at Disney! They divorced, and in 1947, she married Gower Champion, who she almost always appeared with, and together they hosted their own television show. Marge passed away in 2020 at the age of 101.

Important Added Info: Note that this still has been personally autographed (signed) by Marge Champion! Also note that this is a special color 8" x 10" item that was given away as a premium from the Dixie Cup company. The Dixie Cup company created a large number of such premiums, which were given away to kids who sent in Dixie Cup lids. Each premium would have a full-color image of the star on the front, and on the back was biographical information of that star, along with black & white scenes from some of their movies. Every Dixie Cup premium would have two punch holes in one border, and kids would be sent two "covers" (one front and one back) to create a "scrapbook" (the covers gave the instructions on how to make the scrapbook by binding the Dixie Cup premiums between the two covers "with color cord, shoe string, or ribbon". Note that these were first made in the mid-1930s, and they continued all the way to the early 1950s (when the two holes switched to the top of the premium).

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In our last three all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning 224 more items (mostly 8x10 stills and repro 8x10s, but also 54 small photos)!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 still or repro (or sometimes another item) from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the late 1970s or 1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775