Scope and Content Note
The Harriet Hoctor Collection documents the life and career of dancer, choreographer, and teacher Harriet Hoctor (1905-1977). The collection spans from 1868 to 1977, but the bulk of the material is from 1923 to 1937, the height of her dance career. She toured the United States and England performing on the vaudeville stage and in full-length musical revues. After retiring from the stage, she founded the Harriet Hoctor School of Ballet in the Boston area and spent decades as a dance instructor.
The collection is organized into five series according to subject. Biographical Files contains clippings, personal papers, family history, materials collected by Hoctor, and information on the Harriet Hoctor School of Ballet and her hometown, Hoosick Falls, New York. Correspondence consists of letters and notes sent to Hoctor from family members, friends, and admirers, and Photographs presents a pictorial history of Hoctor from her earliest dancing days.
Clippings, photographs, and correspondence related to specific theatrical productions or motion pictures are found in the Production Files. This series holds material on Hoctor's major stage productions and also includes her work with Fred Astaire in the 1937 film Shall We Dance featuring her signature back bend, and her portrayal of herself in The Great Ziegfeld, a cinematic celebration of her frequent producer Flo Ziegfeld.
The smallest series, Music, contains 12 works owned by Hoctor and likely connected either to her performance career or her later work as a choreographer and dance instructor.