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60 SAG-AFTRA | Summer 2019 | sagaftra.org Film star Jayne Mansfield, recent recipient of a Golden Globe award for 1957's Most Promising Newcomer and Jack Dales, Screen Actors Guild national executive secretary, at Guild headquarters at 7750 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, California. At far left is envious Screen Actor magazine editor Buck Harris. Snapshot by Valerie Yaros E mily Christine Schultze Holt was used to being the exception. When the newly created American Federation of Radio Artists' board of directors chose her to become head executive in 1937, she became what is believed to be the first woman to head an American Federation of Labor union. A graduate of Cornell University's Class of 1917, at age 20 she was the sole female law graduate in her class of 10 law majors, as well as the only female among the 14-member Board of Editors of Cornell's 1917 Class Book and Cornellian yearbook. In a world where the law profession was overwhelmingly male, Holt stood out. Hired as associate counsel by Actors' Equity in 1927, she was one of three female attorneys depicted in a 1928 newspaper article titled "Pretty Portias Win on Merit Alone," evoking Shakespeare's character from The Merchant of Venice who disguises herself as a male apprentice attorney. Her photo was captioned "Mrs. Emily Holt, associate counsel for the Actors' Equity, New York, is a striking example of a very pretty and successful young Portia." At a June 1934 hearing, Holt spoke bluntly to the all-male representatives of the Radio Code Committee of the National Recovery Administration's Code Authority, charged with setting working conditions in radio, for not taking Equity seriously: "[T]here is no probability that the Code Authority means to gather sufficient information to reflect existing conditions in radio with any accuracy. The only way in which performers can get anything done is to write into the Code the provisions formulated by Equity, with which I am familiar and with which I am in accord, and to let them stand an examination as to their fairness and practicability." Holt soon left Equity to join her lawyer husband, Harper Holt, in Texas, but would be lured back to New York to head AFRA in 1937 and co-negotiate the first contracts. Emily Holt was proud of AFRA's progress and addressed delegates at the inaugural convention in St. Louis in November 1938, painting a word picture of the young radio union's growth: "It is as though we started in the summer of 1937 as a small group of artists before a great blank wall on which we were to inscribe an enduring mural. Each in his own degree of contribution has added to the brushwork and the outline, until at the end of the year the mural emerges as a complete picture and we can see the figures, what they are doing and understand the theme and the underlying significance of our work." In April 1946, she resigned her position and was succeeded by AFRA's treasurer, George Heller. She passed away in 1976 at age 80. EMILY HOLT: FRONT AND CENTER As the executive secretary of AFRA, Emily Holt may have been the first woman to lead an American Federation of Labor union. In this photo, taken in Atlantic City on Aug. 10, 1939, she is seated, center, with the executive secretaries of three other organizations during an IATSE takeover dispute. From left, Leo Fischer, American Guild of Musical Artists; Alan Correlli, Theatre Authority; Kenneth Thomson, Screen Actors Guild; and Maida Reade, American Guild of Variety Artists. Snapshot by Valerie Yaros SAG-AFTRA SPECIAL COLLECTIONS