Patricia Bowman

Patricia Bowman (December 12, 1908 – March 18, 1999) was an American ballerina, ballroom dancer, musical theatre actress, television personality, and dance teacher.

Dance critic Jack Anderson described her as "the first American ballerina to win critical acclaim and wide popularity as a classical and a musical-theater dancer... Her sparkling stage personality won her many fans."

Life and career Born in Washington D.C., Bowman studied dance with various teachers in her native city, New York City, and in Europe. She joined the dance troupe of Vera Fokina, the wife of choreographer and dancer Michel Fokine, which was engaged for performances at the New York Hippodrome in 1926. She continued to tour periodically with the Fokine ballet in the late 1920s and 1930s. During this period she also worked as a ballroom dancer with Tony DeMarco, was a prima ballerina at the Roxy Theatre (1928–1932), and toured in vaudeville. In 1937 she returned to Broadway in Arthur Schwartz's Virginia, and in 1938 she toured as a prima ballerina with Mikhail Mordkin's dance troupe.

Bowman left the American Ballet Theatre in 1941, after which she became the headline act at the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan with singer Elvira Ríos. In the summer of 1942, she created the role of the Sorceress of the North, aka Glinda, at The Municipal Opera Association of St. Louis, in the first ever stage production of The Wizard of Oz to use the songs from the 1939 MGM film. In 1944 she created the role of Ilse Bonen in the original Broadway cast of Fritz Kreisler's Rhapsody.

On screen, Bowman appeared in early television broadcasts in 1931 and 1939. She was a featured dancer in the 1937 film O-Kay for Sound. She made guest appearances on The Milton Berle Show, Cavalcade of Stars, The Ken Murray Show, and the Ford Star Revue. In 1951 she hosted her own television program, The Patricia Bowman Show, for CBS.

After retiring from performance, Bowman was the director of a ballet school in New York from 1957 to 1977. She married Albert Kaye in 1977, at which point she retired and relocated to Las Vegas. She lived there until her death in 1999.