She eventually became a theater critic at the New York Tribune and freelanced at National Geographic. According to her brief 1975 obituary in the New York Times, Solano was “the first woman to hold such a post” at a major American daily. Solano had begun her career as a reporter for the Boston Herald-Traveler, but was later promoted to drama editor and critic. She claimed she got the new one from a Spanish grandmother, but Wineapple writes, “there is no record of such a person.” Around this time, she chose to change her given name, which she strongly disliked. But the marriage was unhappy, possibly even violent, and Solano decided to leave. Over the course of four years, Filley and his young bride spent time in China, Japan, and the Philippines, even becoming members of high society in Manila.
According to Brenda Wineapple’s biography of Flanner, Solano “passed her first sixteen years rather gloomily among the Wilkinsons of Troy.”Īs a teenager, she married an engineer named Oliver Filley, with whom she traveled to Asia. But she started her life as Sarah Wilkinson and was raised modestly in Troy, New York, where she attended the well known Emma Willard School and then a stricter school, Sacred Heart Convent, which her conventional parents hoped would tame her wild spirit.
(Library of Congress)īy the time she made it to Paris, Solano was a glamorous global traveler with a severe, slightly asymmetrical black bob and jewel-like blue eyes. Solita Solano, full-length portrait wearing long white dress and hat, circa 1920. Living simply in the pursuit of a joyful, bohemian life of the mind, Solano and Flanner became a defining force in the creative expat scene in Paris. The Left Bank of Paris was witnessing the flowering of artistic and sexual experimentation - qualities the pair came to embody - and though many were living on a shoestring, it was worth it to be in the epicenter of such a thriving creativity. The Napoleon was smack dab in the middle of literary Paris, near the Saint Germain des Pres and the famous Cafe de Flore, where artists and intellectuals hobnobbed over cups of espresso. “It cost a dollar a day, and was near the Seine, the Louvre, and the auto buses.” The pair had come to Paris, according to Solano, to “learn all about art and write our first novels.” But their choice of accommodations wasn’t simply economical. “The Hotel Napoleon Bonaparte was perfect for our purposes,” wrote theater critic Solita Solano of the Parisian establishment where she and her partner Janet Flanner made their home in the 1920s. The French capital in the '20s was home to a burgeoning literary lesbian scene.(Fototeca Gilardi/Getty Images)
Gerda Wegener’s “The Paradise of Women,” illustration for le Sourire, Paris 1925.