Harriet Hoctor

Harriet Hoctor (September 25, 1905 – June 9, 1977) was a ballerina and actress born in Hoosick Falls, New York, to Timothy Hoctor and Elizabeth Kearny Hoctor. She was one of four children, alongside siblings Martin Francis, John, and Eloise. Hoctor never married. Her early training began at age twelve, when her maternal aunt Annie Kearney, a social secretary to a wealthy Hoosick Falls woman, arranged for Hoctor to study in New York City under Russian ballet master Louis Harvy Chalif at the Normal School of Dancing.

By sixteen, Hoctor was performing in vaudeville, appearing on the same bill as the Duncan Sisters before joining their act and becoming a featured player in their Broadway production Topsy and Eva. Her work there brought her to the attention of Florenz Ziegfeld, who offered her a trial role in The Three Musketeers, which reached Broadway in 1928. In 1929, she was given the opportunity to dance in a ballet staging of George Gershwin's An American in Paris. Her Broadway career, which spanned from 1924 to 1936, also included the musical Show Girl, the musical Simple Simon, Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1925, and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, among other productions.

Between 1931 and 1932, Hoctor performed in London at the London Hippodrome in a production called Bow Bells, in which she danced en pointe up and down an escalator. During her time in England, sculptor Jacob Epstein created a bronze sculpture of her. After returning to the United States, she appeared in Earl Carroll's Vanities revue of 1932. Later in the decade, she performed in the Ziegfeld Follies in a ballet titled Night Flight, which she arranged with the assistance of choreographer George Balanchine. The piece depicted the soul of a young female aviator who crashes and dies while attempting a nonstop cross-country flight.

Hoctor's film career brought her additional recognition in the late 1930s. She appeared as herself in The Great Ziegfeld in 1936. In the 1937 film Shall We Dance, which starred Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Hoctor danced with Astaire. Composer George Gershwin wrote a symphonic orchestral piece, Hoctor's Ballet, specifically for her for that film; the piece appears at its conclusion. Hoctor had been reported by columnist Louella Parsons in 1935 as a potential replacement for Rogers in the film, though Rogers ultimately retained the role. In 1937, The New York Times announced Hoctor as the lead in the planned Astaire film A Damsel in Distress, a part that ultimately went to Joan Fontaine. Hoctor also appeared in Billy Rose's Casa Manana Revue in 1938.

In the early 1940s, Hoctor opened a ballet school in Boston, where she taught three days a week. She died on June 9, 1977, at Northern Virginia Doctor's Hospital in Arlington, Virginia, following an extended illness, at the age of 71. She was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery in Hoosick Falls after a Mass of Christian Burial at the Church of the Immaculate Conception. The summer of her death, playwright Frank Wirmusky staged This Is Your Life, Hoosick Falls, a theatrical work depicting twelve notable figures from the town's history, among them Hoctor, who was portrayed onstage by actress Kelly Thompson.