Patricia Bowman

Patricia Bowman (December 12, 1908 – March 18, 1999) was an American ballerina, ballroom dancer, musical theatre actress, television personality, and dance teacher born in Washington, D.C. She studied dance with teachers in her native city, in New York City, and in Europe, beginning her performing career as a teenager under her birth name, Edna Bowman, at a time when no major ballet companies existed in the United States. She adopted the stage name Patricia Bowman in 1927.

Bowman's earliest stage work appeared in musical revues and live performances at movie palaces during the 1920s and 1930s. Her Broadway debut came in 1925 in George White's Scandals, a production she also appeared in during its 1926 and 1927 editions. That same period saw her join the dance troupe of Vera Fokina, wife of choreographer Michel Fokine, for engagements at the New York Hippodrome in 1926, and she continued to tour periodically with the Fokine ballet through the late 1920s and 1930s. Among her better-known works from this association was Tennis, a humorous piece choreographed by Fokine himself. Concurrently, she worked as a ballroom dancer with Tony DeMarco, served as prima ballerina at the Roxy Theatre from 1928 to 1932, and toured in vaudeville.

In 1932 Bowman was appointed the leading ballerina of the newly opened Radio City Music Hall, an engagement documented in the venue's inaugural program among her verified Broadway credits, and she continued performing there into the early 1950s. In 1934 she appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies alongside Fanny Brice, the Howard Brothers, Jane Froman, and Everett Marshall. That same year she was featured in the revue Calling All Stars, which ran into 1935. She returned to Broadway in 1937 in Arthur Schwartz's Virginia, and in 1938 she toured as a prima ballerina with Mikhail Mordkin's dance troupe.

In 1939 Bowman became a founding member of the American Ballet Theatre, then known simply as Ballet Theatre, with which she served as a principal dancer from 1939 to 1941. The company's first season, which began in January 1940, included her performances as Princess Odette in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, the title role in Adolphe Adam's Giselle, and the role of Lisette in the United States premiere of La fille mal gardée. She also appeared in Fokine's Les Sylphides during that season, a work she performed again with the company in 1955 as a guest artist opposite Erik Bruhn. In the summer following the company's inaugural season, she portrayed Cinderella in the premiere of Edward Eager's musical adaptation After the Ball at the Clinton Playhouse in Connecticut.

Following her departure from the American Ballet Theatre in 1941, Bowman became the headline act at the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan alongside singer Elvira Ríos. In the summer of 1942 she created the role of the Sorceress of the North, also known as Glinda the Good Witch, at the Municipal Opera Association of St. Louis in the first stage production of The Wizard of Oz to incorporate songs from the 1939 MGM film. The cast included Evelyn Wyckoff as Dorothy Gale, Lee Dixon as the Scarecrow, Donald Burr as the Tin Man, Edmund Dorsey as the Cowardly Lion, John Cherry as the Wizard, and Helen Raymond as the Wicked Witch of the West. In 1944 Bowman created the role of Ilse Bonen in the original Broadway cast of Fritz Kreisler's Rhapsody, her final Broadway credit.

On screen, Bowman appeared in early television broadcasts in 1931 and 1939 and 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 The Patricia Bowman Show on CBS.

After retiring from performance, Bowman directed a ballet school in New York from 1957 to 1977. She married Albert Kaye in 1977 and relocated to Las Vegas, where she lived until her death on March 18, 1999.