It was the first American ballet company to tour Europe and the first to present a full-length (or three-act plus prologue) version of The Sleeping Beauty in the United States.

In addition to producing American-themed ballets such as Barn Dance, Terminal, Cafe Society and Ladies' Better Dresses, Littlefield choreographed Broadway musicals and Sonja Henie's professional ice skating shows.

Actress and singer Jeanette MacDonald and Ziegfeld Follies star Ann Pennington were members of this troupe as young girls.

As a preteen, Littlefield studied with C. Ellwood Carpenter, a third-generation member of a famous family of Philadelphia dancing masters.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Littlefield staged prologues and line shows at movie palaces around the city, including at the opulent Stanley and Mastbaum theaters.

Composed by Carlos Chavez and designed by Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, it concerned the relationship between the United States and Mexico, a fashionable subject at the time.

[5] After a brief stint as ballet mistress at New York's Roxy Theatre, Littlefield returned home and married Philadelphia lawyer/socialite Philip Ludwell Leidy.

She served as its director, choreographer, and premiere danseuse, while Dorothie (who had left Balanchine's employ to help her sister) and Littlefield's brother Carl, who had been convinced by Mommie to learn dancing, joined as soloists.

During the Philadelphia Ballet's six-year existence, it presented a wide range of works: a three-act Sleeping Beauty and a three-act Daphnis and Chloe; ballets with American subjects and music such as Barn Dance, Terminal, Cafe Society, and Ladies' Better Dresses; one-act narrative pieces such as The Minstrel, The Snow Maiden, and Viennese Waltz; a plotless one act called Classical Suite to music by Johann Sebastian Bach; an annual Christmas Die Puppenfee; and historical pageants such as The Rising Sun and Let the Righteous Be Glad.

Besides Littlefield and her siblings, the Philadelphia Ballet's leading dancers included Dolinoff, Thomas Cannon, Karen Conrad, Joan McCracken, Miriam Golden, Dania Krupska, and Norma Gentner.

Esteemed British critic Arnold Haskell declared that Littlefield's "Barn Dance [was] the first chapter in the history of American Ballet."

Her most ambitious and widely seen undertaking was American Jubilee, an historical pageant at the 1940 New York World's Fair that featured a 350-member cast of singers, actors, and dancers.

"[7] Kirstein praised the routine as a "clear if complex blending of human anatomy, solid geometry, and acrobatics offered as a symbolic demonstration of manners.

"[8] Throughout the 1940s, Littlefield also choreographed Broadway musicals, including Hold onto Your Hats, Crazy with the Heat, Follow the Girls, The Firebrand of Florence, and Sweethearts.

Toward the end of her life, Littlefield entered the field of television, staging skits for Jimmy Durante's Four-Star Revue, a variety show broadcast live by NBC.

[9] Among her family, friends, and close associates, Littlefield was warm, funny, and down to earth, while in professional situations she maintained her distance and radiated authority.

With her blue eyes, platinum blonde hair, fine jewelry and well-tailored clothes (including an ever-present floor-length fur coat), she cut a glamorous figure.

A musician like his mother, he formed and directed a nightclub orchestra and published his own songs, some of which were used in his older sister's ice shows at Centre Theatre.

The couple lived in a penthouse apartment overlooking the East River in New York and socialized frequently with theatrical and literary friends.

Besides her two husbands, Littlefield was romantically linked at different points in her life with singer/actor Nelson Eddy, ice skater Jimmy Caesar, and German emigre composer Kurt Weill.

[10] While Littlefield is best remembered for producing ballet Americana, she worked successfully in a wide variety of dance genres, including movie palace stage shows, Broadway musicals, stadium pageants, ice-skating routines, and television skits.

Critic Walter Terry summarized her versatility: "Catherine Littlefield is becoming a theater figure of the first rank, a girl who is leaving her mark in the revue, in the ballet and on ice.

The performance combined the Ferde Grofé ballet music Littlefield had commissioned with critic Ann Barzel's film footage and still photographs.