Death
In early 1979 Champion received from his doctors at the Scripps Institute a diagnosis of Waldenström macroglobulinemia, a rare form of blood cancer. He began treatment at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles and was advised not to take on work. In August, 1980, he died in New York City at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. When Champion died at 1:00 on August 25, 1980, it was six hours before the opening-night curtain of “42nd Street,” the Broadway musical he directed. It would be his greatest success, running nine years. Producer David Merrick kept the news secret, including from the cast. During the enthusiastic curtain calls, he entered the stage and melodramatically made the shocking announcement amidst the applause. “No, no. This is tragic. You don’t understand. Gower Champion died this morning.”
Read more about this topic: Gower Champion
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“My death from the wrists,
two name tags,
blood worn like a corsage
to bloom
one on the left and one on the right....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)