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Virginia Bosler was a dancer/actress born September 23, 1926 in Newton, Massachusetts, the daughter of artist Marjorie (Fairbanks) and John Bosler, a marine engineer. She grew up in largely rural areas along the northeast coast, an environment she always preferred. Virginia started dance lessons as a child but gave it up for a few years until her interest was re-ignited as a teenager. She then attended Jacob's Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts for three summers, and was a favorite of Jacob's Pillow founder Ted Shawn.

A physics and trigonometry whiz in high school Virginia attended Barnard College in New York on a full scholarship to study physics. It was her first experience in a big city - and she hated it. Accustomed to the quiet of her childhood world, the pace and noise of The Big Apple took a toll on her nerves. That, and trying to juggle a full course-load in a demanding subject while pursuing her dance studies led Virginia to put the scholarship on hold after her first year and dedicate herself to dance. She had a self-imposed deadline - if she didn't have a professional job at the end of twelve months it meant a return to school. Within eight months she was dancing on Broadway.

Agnes de Mille saw Virginia onstage and immediately recognized that "she came across". de Mille hired her in 1946 for the tour of Bloomer Girl and after a few months summoned her back to New York to audition for a new show she was choreographing - Brigadoon (Mar 13 1947 - Jul 31 1948). Virginia won the part of Jean MacLaren which turned out to be a career-defining role. Eighteen months on Broadway, a year in the national tour, and she also re-created the character in every New York revival up to, and including the 1962-63 production. Virginia was the only original cast member to appear in the movie version of Brigadoon (1954). By her tally she played Jean over a thousand times.

Virginia stood out in stage productions in the early fifties, especially Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952 (1952-1953), and her association with de Mille continued to pay dividends. In 1954 she was a member of the Agnes de Mille Dance Theatre and was included in the movie version of Oklahoma! (1955), followed by a European tour of the play. Various stage and television appearances filled out the fifties and early sixties, until she retired from performing in 1963 to raise a family.

In 1956 Virginia had married Hubert A. Doris, a music professor at Columbia University and Barnard College in New York, and they had a son and a daughter. Widowed in 2008, Virginia lived a comfortable retirement until her early nineties in rural Maine - peace and quiet at last. She passed away at the age of ninety three in August of 2020.

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Virginia Bosler

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