TRANSITIONS - Obituary

Dance Magazine, July, 2001 by Cheryl M. Willis

Maria Karnilova, a ballerina and musical-comedy performer who won a Tony Award in 1965 as Golde in Fiddler on the Roof, above, died April 20 in New York. She was 80. Karnilova, whose teachers included Michel Fokine and Antony Tudor, was a soloist with Ballet Theatre, the precursor to American Ballet Theatre, from 1939 to 1948, and later a ballerina with the Metropolitan Opera. Her other Broadway appearances included roles in Zorba and Gypsy.

Edith "Baby Edwards" Hunt was born July 3, 1922, in Philadelphia and died November 10, 2000, in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Baby Edwards began her performing career at age 3, singing and tap dancing in an amateur theater contest.

In 1939, she was cast in Erik Charell's Broadway musical Swingin' the Dream. Edwards performed on nightclub and theater circuits teamed as Pops and Baby, Taps and Baby (with Taps Miller), and Spic and Span (with Willie Joseph). For more than twenty years, Spic and Span performed on the African American club and theater circuit and in USO shows in Europe.

Opportunities for live performances declined for tappers in the 1950s, and Edwards taught tap at the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts. By the 1970s, she began performing in a series of variety shows that included Sepia in Artistry at Pace University in 1985 and The Swingin' Seniors at Small's Paradise in New York in 1986, the year in which Edwards suffered a severe heart attack.

By the 1990s Edwards was featured as a jazz singer and tap dancer in Steppin' In Time, a revue of African American singers, dancers, and comedians from the Swing Era. She was still doing wings, barrel turns, and full splits until several strokes ended her vibrant career.