Harriet Hoctor was born in
Hoosick Falls, New York, to Timothy Hoctor and Elizabeth Kearny Hoctor. She was one of four children, the others being Martin Francis ("Frank"), John, and Eloise. Harriet Hoctor never married.
Early training Hoctor's maternal aunt, Annie Kearney, was a social secretary to a wealthy woman in Hoosick Falls who took an interest in young Harriet. At the age of twelve she was sent to New York City and placed under the tutelage of
Russian ballet master
Louis Harvy Chalif of the Normal School of Dancing.
Stage By the time she was sixteen, Hoctor was touring in
vaudeville on the same bill as the
Duncan Sisters. She was asked to join their
act and became a key player in their
Topsy and Eva show presented on
Broadway. Hoctor appeared in a doll ballet and was informed that
Florenz Ziegfeld was offering her a trial part in his production of
The Three Musketeers (1928). By 1929, she was given the first opportunity to dance during a ballet staging of
George Gershwin's
An American in Paris.
Teaching In the early 1940s, Hoctor taught ballet three days a week in a school that she opened in Boston. ==Legacy==