Maria Karnilova

Maria Karnilova (August 3, 1920 – April 20, 2001) was an American dancer and actress born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Filip and Stefanida Dovgolenko, emigrants from Tsarist Russia. The family subsequently relocated to Brooklyn, New York. Born Maria Karniloff, she adopted a series of professional names over the course of her career, eventually settling on Karnilova. Though her professional surname has sometimes been attributed to her mother's maiden name, that attribution is incorrect; her mother's maiden name was Shlonskaya.

Karnilova began her performing career at the age of seven, joining the Children's Ballet of the Metropolitan Opera in 1927. In 1939, the same year she entered the professional Broadway world, she became a founding member of the corps of Ballet Theater, the company now known as American Ballet Theatre. Her Broadway debut came in 1946 with Call Me Mister, launching a stage career that would span more than four decades, from 1939 to 1981.

Her most celebrated Broadway role was Golde in the original 1964 production of Fiddler on the Roof, which starred Zero Mostel. That performance earned her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 1965. She returned to Fiddler on the Roof in its 1981 revival. Her other Broadway credits include Miss Liberty (1949), Two's Company (1952), Jerome Robbins' Ballet: U.S.A. (1958), Gypsy (1959), in which she originated the role of Tessie Tura, Bravo Giovanni (1962), Gigi (1973), God's Favorite (1974), Bring Back Birdie (1981), and A Gala Tribute to Joshua Logan. She also received a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Musical for her work in Zorba in 1968.

Beyond the stage, Karnilova appeared in the films The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) and Married to the Mob (1988). In 1948 she married actor George S. Irving, and the two remained together until her death in Manhattan on April 20, 2001, at the age of 80. She was survived by her husband, two children, and three grandchildren. Irving died in 2016 at the age of 94.