Nora Holt, photographed with a marionette by Carl Van Vechten on August 29, 1937, was first African American to earn a master’s degree in music (Chicago Musical College, 1918) She was a music critic for two preeminent black newspapers, the Chicago Defender and the New York Amsterdam News. Married five (or more) times, she was also a regular in the gossip columns thanks to her scandalous love life. Ms. Holt was also said to be the inspiration for the “Lasca Sartoris” character in Van Vechten’s infamous, controversial novel, “N****r Heaven.” She died in Los Angeles in 1974. Photo: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Original caption: “Josephine Baker (L) receiving hug fr. columnist & friend Nora Ray Holt in her dressing room after her show at the Strand theater during her US tour.” Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt. Life magazine. Mar 10, 1951
SCREAMED when I saw this picture!
Vintage Iconoclasts! Josephine Baker hugging Nora Holt in her dressing room on March 10, 1951. Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life magazine.
Blues singer and gay pioneer Gladys Bentley, the multi-faceted Nora Holt and illustrator Prentiss Taylor photographed by Carl Van Vechten on February 27, 1932.
Nora Holt, one of my favorite iconoclasts, photographed by Carl Van Vechten on March 18, 1932.
Blues singer Gladys Bentley, the multi-faceted Nora Holt and illustrator Prentiss Taylor photographed by Carl Van Vechten on February 27, 1932.
Nora Holt, photographed by James Marquis Connely in 1930. Never easily definable, the Harlem Renaissance mainstay was the first black person to earn a master’s degree in music, a composer and a music critic, the owner of a Los Angeles beauty parlor in the 1940s and producer of her own weekly New York radio show, Nora Holt’s Concert Showcase, in the 1950s.
My aunt Margaret Tynes with Harlem Renaissance notable Nora Holt and opera star William Warfield photographed by Carl Van Vechten at a party Ms. Holt held in honor of singers that she championed.
The first African American to earn a master’s degree in music (Chicago Musical College, 1918) Nora Holt was a music critic for two preeminent black newspapers, the Chicago Defender and the New York Amsterdam News. Married five (or more) times, she was also a regular in the gossip columns thanks to her scandalous love life. She died in Los Angeles in 1974.
William Warfield, a baritone, was born in 1920 to a family of sharecroppers in Arkansas. Best known for his roles in Show Boat and Porgy and Bess, he was married for twenty-one years to opera legend Leontyne Price before they divorced in 1973. He spent the remainder of his life as a voice teacher and died in 2002.
