Patricia Bowman

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

"[1] 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.

[3][4] 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.

[1] In 1932 Bowman was appointed the leading ballerina of the newly opened Radio City Music Hall; a theatre she continued to perform at into the early 1950s.

[1] In the summer following the ABT's first season she portrayed Cinderella in the premiere of Edward Eager's musical adaptation of the fairy tale, After the Ball, at the Clinton Playhouse in Connecticut.

[8] 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.

[9] 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.