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.”
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Famous quotes containing the word death:
“You listen to artists fighting with each other, competing to the death like gladiators, in order to see who is going to get into a show, who is going to make it, who isn’t: who is going to get a full-page ad and who is going to get a half-page. Then I think, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to go off somewhere and just do your work?””
—Howardena Pindell (b. 1943)
“One is apt to be discouraged by the frequency with which Mr. Hardy has persuaded himself that a macabre subject is a poem in itself; that, if there be enough of death and the tomb in one’s theme, it needs no translation into art, the bold statement of it being sufficient.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“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)