Deaths Elsewhere

Janet Collins,

86, the first black prima ballerina to appear at the Metropolitan Opera and one of a few black women to become prominent in American classical ballet, died Wednesday in Fort Worth, Texas.

In 1951, Ms. Collins performed lead roles in Aida and Carmen and danced in La Gioconda and Samson and Delilah at the Met in New York City. That was four years before Marian Anderson made her historic debut as the first black performer to sing a principal role at the Met. Ms. Collins was not allowed to tour with the company during the off season because she could not perform onstage with white dancers in the South.

Ms. Collins left the Met in 1954. During the 1950s, she toured with her own dance group throughout the United States and Canada and taught. She also danced in films - the 1943 film musical Stormy Weather and the 1946 film The Thrill of Brazil.

In 1974, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater paid homage to Ms. Collins and Pearl Primus as pioneering black women in dance.

Shirley Bulah Stamps,

59, whose fight to attend an all-white school in Wilmington, Del., more than 50 years ago became part of the action that led to the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision, died Wednesday after suffering a heart attack.

Mrs. Stamps was abandoned at birth in a Wilmington apartment building and was adopted. As an 8-year-old in 1951, she was one of two children named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit that led to a state Supreme Court ruling that Delaware schools be desegregated.

But the state Board of Education appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, and her suit was combined with several others from around the country. That led to the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., ruling which found that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. The Delaware case was unique in that all the other state courts had upheld segregation.

Martha Scott,

88, who created the role of the sweet, ethereal Emily in the original Broadway production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town and was nominated for an Oscar for repeating it in the film version, died Wednesday in Van Nuys, Calif.

Miss Scott's trademark was warm sincerity in an era when glamour-girl artificiality reigned. She appeared in more than 20 movies, at least that many Broadway productions and a variety of television shows. She also produced plays and movies.

She loved to point out that she had played Charlton Heston's mother twice in films, in The Ten Commandments (1957) and Ben-Hur (1959) and his wife twice onstage: in Design for a Stained Glass Window (1950) and The Tumbler (1960). But her most sparkling accomplishment was when, as a 23-year-old novice, she was chosen at the last minute for the part of Emily Webb in Our Town, Wilder's classic about the cycles of birth, love and death in Grovers Corners, a small New England town.

Geoffrey Bawa,

83, a Sri Lankan architect whose striking blend of traditional Asian forms and contemporary international styles produced houses and public buildings in harmony with their Asian landscapes, died May 27 at his home in the capital, Colombo.

In 1998, a stroke left him paralyzed and unable to speak, but working from his home he continued to oversee projects being carried out by his associates in Sri Lanka and India.

As Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, emerged as an international tourist destination in the 1960s, Mr. Bawa designed a series of luxurious hotels that set a new standard for resorts in Asia, each one integrated into its unique location.