“There is going to be a permanent ballet company in Philadelphia.”

Catherine tries to make ballet more appealing to Americans by recruiting and training “manly” men with no prior dance experience. She hires Alexis Dolinoff as her partner, répétiteur, and men’s teacher. The Littlefield Ballet gives its first performance on October 25, 1935. The Littlefield School moves into unassuming quarters at 1815 Ludlow Street. By the end of 1935, Catherine has changed the company’s name to the Philadelphia Ballet and premiered The Snow Queen at the Academy of Music. Karen Conrad and Joan McCracken emerge as leading soloists. Catherine choreographs new ballets of her own in 1936 and presents modernist works by Russian-Jewish choreographer Lasar Galpern. Jimmie Littlefield elopes with a Philadelphia widow and moves with her and her young son to a farm she owns called Zacata on the Potomac River in northern Virginia. Catherine eventually buys a bungalow nearby in Montross and the Littlefields use the area as a family retreat.

“Mommie was the sparkplug and Catherine was the inspiration.”

Mommie opens a dance studio in Llanerch and teaches for the Philadelphia Music Club at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in the 1920s. Big Jim teaches horsemanship to wealthy men at private riding clubs. Catherine becomes a Ziegfeld dancer and performs in Sally and the Ziegfeld Follies. In New York, she studies with Italian pedagogue Luigi Albertieri. She leaves Ziegfeld’s employ and she and Mommie take their first trip to Paris. Big Jim forms News Reel Laboratory with partner Louis Kellman. Mommie opens a Littlefield School at 1415 Locust Street across from the Academy of Music. Catherine teaches there and raises its standards. She also serves as Mommie’s première danseuse. Mommie directs the “America” pageant at the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition.

“The whole family was so enthusiastic and so colorful and so interesting.”

Catherine Littlefield is born on September 16, 1905, and takes her first dancing lessons from Caroline (Mommie) at the PRR-YMCA in 1908. Mommie also teaches Jeanette MacDonald and stages recitals along with her husband (Big Jim). The Littlefields live for a time in Ambler, Pennsylvania, and later in Philadelphia, and have three more children: Jimmie, Dorothie, and Carl. As a young girl, Catherine also takes lessons with Philadelphia dancing master C. Ellwood Carpenter and performs in his ballet corps. Mommie helps Carpenter teach. Big Jim works as a lifeguard in Ocean City, New Jersey, and operates the Littlefield Riding Academy in Philadelphia. The Littlefields move to Llanerch, Pennsylvania. Big Jim serves with the YMCA in World War I.

“I had never had a dancing lesson in my life, but somehow, I knew I could train those other children, and I did.”

Catherine Littlefield’s great-grandparents, Gottlieb and Catherine Doebele, are German immigrants who settle in Philadelphia in the 1850s and raise six children. Gottlieb dies from injuries sustained while serving with a German regiment in the Civil War, and Catherine Doebele becomes a surrogate parent to her granddaughter, Caroline Doebele, after the girl’s parents divorce. Catherine Doebele (Grandma Doebele) is very religious and disapproves of Caroline’s early interest in dancing but provides her with piano lessons instead. James H. Littlefield, born and raised in Maine, serves in the US Cavalry and later takes a job with the PRR-YMCA in Philadelphia. He loves music and theater and meets Caroline. They marry in 1904.

Epilogue

Exactly two months before Catherine died, Lois gave birth to a daughter. Two days after Catherine died, Dorothie also gave birth to a daughter. Both babies were named Catherine after their aunt, although the first one was called Cathy and the second one Kate. They were the fourth generation of Catherines in the extended Doebele clan, following matriarch Christiana Catharina (Grandma Doebele), loyal Aunt Kate, and the family’s most radiant star, Catherine Minnie Littlefield....

“She was 9/10ths a performer and 1/10th a wife.”

Catherine briefly choreographs dances at the Roxy Theatre in New York. Dorothie Littlefield performs in Europe with various ensembles, and Catherine returns home to Philadelphia to stage ballets at the Robin Hood Dell. Jimmie Littlefield forms an orchestra, while Carl Littlefield begins taking dancing lessons at the Littlefield School at the behest of Mommie. Catherine marries wealthy socialite lawyer Philip Leidy, a great-nephew of renowned naturalist Joseph Leidy, on June 8, 1933. The couple moves to an apartment at the fashionable Barclay Hotel on Rittenhouse Square. Catherine has all the pieces in place—dancers, audience, and funding—to establish her long-dreamed-of professional ballet company.

“It is only 8 o’clock—the sun is streaming in and God is good.”

Catherine directs dances for the 1945 Broadway musical The Firebrand of Florence and develops a close relationship with its composer, Kurt Weill. Jimmie Littlefield dies on his Zacata farm, devastating the Littlefield family. While choreographing the Broadway comedy Sweethearts, Catherine, newly divorced from Philip, meets journalist Sterling Noel. They marry and move into a penthouse apartment in Manhattan overlooking the East River. She choreographs Sonja Henie’s last American film, The Countess of Monte Cristo and becomes dance director for the Jimmy Durante television show on NBC. She dies from breast cancer in Chicago at age forty-six after finishing work on the Hollywood Ice Revue of 1952.

“For Broadway one must be clever and Catherine Littlefield is very clever.”

Catherine earns Sonja Henie’s trust and helps make her skating more balletic. She also adapts ballets to ice for the Center Theatre shows. She moves to Manhattan and dates barrel jumper Jimmy Caesar for several years. She choreographs more Broadway shows, including Follow the Girls, a musical comedy starring Jackie Gleason and Russian ballerina Irina Baronova. Follow the Girls is a hit, but its revue-like formula will soon be eclipsed in popularity by the musical play genre as represented by Agnes de Mille’s Oklahoma! In 1944, Ballet Theatre revives Barn Dance. It is not successful, as the vogue for ballet Americana has begun to fade. The Littlefields open a studio in New York, where Dorothie teaches. Carl flies seventy combat missions as a pilot in World War II and receives medals for his heroism.

“Her ballet, Barn Dance, was the first truly American balletic composition that we have ever seen.”

Catherine dismisses agent Arnold Meckel because she anticipates many prestigious engagements in light of her company’s European triumphs. Although these engagements fail to materialize, she secures some bookings on her own and premieres new ballets such as Classical Suite, a neoclassical piece set to music by Bach. She hires agent Michael Myerberg, who secures a contract with the Chicago City Opera for the 1938 fall season. She wins over Chicagoans who were initially upset at her displacement of Chicago dancer/choreographer Ruth Page. In Chicago, Catherine changes the name of her company back to the Littlefield Ballet and premieres her ballet Americana pieces Café Society and Ladies’ Better Dresses. Karen Conrad leaves the Littlefields to join Mikhail Mordkin’s troupe, which becomes Ballet Theatre. Miriam Golden and others also join Ballet Theatre. Catherine is passed over for the Philadelphia Award.

“Here came these five beautiful Littlefield girls, good dancers all.”

Lincoln Kirstein brings George Balanchine to America to start a ballet school (SAB) and professional company (the American Ballet). Needing dancers, Balanchine visits the Littlefield School and successfully recruits seven Littlefield students and Dorothie Littlefield to take part in his ballet initiatives in New York. Holly Howard becomes his first American muse and Dorothie becomes the first American and first woman to teach at SAB. Dorothie leaves SAB because of unrequited love for Balanchine and unhappiness with his casting of her. Big Jim dies unexpectedly in 1934 and Mommie moves to a modest Cobbs Creek row house. In the summer of 1935, Catherine premieres the third scene of her first major original ballet, Daphnis and Chloe.