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." She was the first prima ballerina of the Radio City Music Hall when it opened in 1932, and is chiefly remembered for her work as a founding member of the American Ballet Theatre with whom she was a principal dancer from 1939 to 1941. Active as a performer in Broadway musicals from 1925 to 1944, her performance credits on the New York stage include: the George White's Scandals (1925-1927), the Ziegfeld Follies of 1934, Calling All Stars (1934-1935), Arthur Schwartz's Virginia (1937), and Fritz Kreisler's Rhapsody (1944). In 1942 she portrayed the Sorceress of the North (a.k.a. Glinda the Good Witch) in the first stage adaptation of the 1939 movie musical The Wizard of Oz at The MUNY. On television, she appeared in several very early broadcasts in 1931 and 1939, and later headlined her own program, The Patricia Bowman Show for CBS in 1951. She was the director of a ballet school in New York from 1957 to 1977; after which she lived in retirement in Las Vegas.