American Experience (1988–…): Season 6, Episode 3 - Amelia Earhart: The Price of Courage - full transcript
♪ ♪
(airplane motor humming)
NARRATOR:
On a summer day in 1932,
Amelia Earhart completed
another record-breaking flight.
A few weeks earlier,
she had made history
by being the first woman
to fly solo across the Atlantic.
Now she was a superstar
and her every move
fascinated the public.
Yesterday, I hopped off
from Los Angeles about noontime
and landed
in Newark this morning
after a nonstop,
transcontinental trip.
And what did you
carry on the trip?
You mean to eat?
Yeah, to eat and drink.
Well, I carried
some water, of course,
because my cockpit
is very warm,
and I carried
a sandwich in case--
I didn't eat it,
though.
I carried some
hot chocolate
and the old,
reliable tomato juice.
What kind
of a sandwich was it?
Chicken sandwich.
MAN:
I have walked the streets with
many famous people in my time,
from Greta Garbo
to Paul Newman,
to Eleanor Roosevelt.
No one got the crowd
that Amelia got.
She was... I must say,
it was beyond stardom.
It was a strange continuum
that she and Lindbergh occupied.
They were like gods
from outer space.
And people would just stand
and stare at her.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
Amelia Earhart was a legend,
the first modern
American heroine,
adored because she was daring
and successful in a man's world
and because she was
magnificently promoted
in the press
and newsreels of the time.
(crowd cheering)
Yet, Amelia Earhart,
the best-known woman in America,
would always remain
curiously remote.
"I don't know you at all,"
her closest friend wrote.
"I doubt anyone does."
WOMAN:
The one thing that she
really feared in life
was that nothing would happen.
She had to have
an important life
and that meant
you had to have adventure.
You had to try things
that were exciting
and that, all of her life,
there's no doubt
that she needed this
and believed this
was the way to live.
Better to die young, but live.
NARRATOR:
In 1937, Amelia Earhart
decided to go
for the one record in aviation
no one, man or woman,
had ever attempted before--
to fly around the world
at the equator.
It would be the most
dangerous flight of her life.
(jet engine roaring)
♪ ♪
To succeed, Earhart would need
months of preparation
and a lot of luck.
In the end, she had neither.
♪ Come, Josephine,
in my flying machine ♪
♪ Going up she goes ♪
♪ Up she goes ♪
♪ Balance yourself
like a bird on a beam ♪
♪ In the air she goes ♪
♪ Well, there she goes ♪
♪ Up, up, a little bit higher. ♪
BATES:
Like most Americans,
Amelia was fascinated
by the sheer novelty of flight.
On Christmas day, 1920,
when she was 23 years old,
her father took her
to the opening
of a new airfield
in Long Beach, California.
There she watched pilots
in wood and fabric machines
perform daredevil stunts.
A few days later, when she
paid $5.00 for her first ride,
she knew that flying was more
than a passing fancy.
"As soon as we left
the ground," she wrote,
"I knew I myself had to fly.
"'I think I'd like to fly'
"I told my family
casually that evening,
knowing full well
I'd die if I didn't."
Amelia Mary Earhart was raised
by her domineering mother
to be a proper
Victorian young lady--
but she never was.
When Earhart was seven years
old, she had a new sled
and she went to the top of
the hill with her sister Muriel,
and she,
instead of sitting on it,
as her grandmother
had said one must,
she flung herself in a manner
called bellyslamming
and went tearing down the hill.
A horse and wagon was crossing
on the cross street.
She went right
under that horse's belly.
She missed both sets of legs
and she emerged triumphant,
waving at her sister afterwards.
This is an indication that came
up again and again later in life
that she took
good luck for granted.
BATES:
Amelia was resilient in spite
of a difficult childhood.
Born in Kansas on July 24, 1897,
she and her younger sister
Muriel had an unstable life
shuttling back and forth
between their grandparents'
luxurious home in Atchison
and their parents' meager
existence in Kansas City.
Amelia's father, Edwin,
was a charming man
who earned a modest living
as a lawyer
but it was never enough
for Amelia's mother, Amy.
During the course
of their troubled marriage,
Edwin became an alcoholic.
When Amelia was 12,
the Earharts left Kansas,
moving around the Midwest,
settling wherever
Edwin could find work.
Amelia adored her father,
but he let her down so often
she learned early on
to be self-reliant.
♪ ♪
During high school,
she kept an unusual scrapbook
of articles about women
pioneering in new careers.
The scrapbook reveals a young
girl with unconventional dreams.
♪ ♪
WOMAN:
She was a loner, you know.
She had seen so much
change in her childhood--
she'd lived
in many different places,
she'd gone
to many different schools,
and naturally
this resulted in
a kind of restlessness.
I think Amelia
got easily bored.
BATES:
Sent to a finishing school
in Pennsylvania,
Amelia didn't fit the mold,
and was kicked out for stunts
like walking on the roof
in her nightgown.
She was a rebel
and had high ideals.
During World War I, she nursed
wounded veterans in Canada,
and briefly pursued
a career in medicine.
In her early 20s,
Earhart was living
in Los Angeles with her parents
when she discovered flying.
♪ ♪
At Kinner Airfield,
she met a young woman
who agreed to teach her
to fly for a dollar a minute.
Earhart regularly walked
the three miles to the airfield,
took menial jobs
to pay for lessons,
and drove a gravel truck
for a construction company
to raise money
to buy her own plane.
Amelia's mother demanded her
daughter stop driving a truck
and act like a lady.
Reluctantly, she helped Amelia
out, and by her 25th birthday
Earhart finally had
the cash she needed.
She bought a new biplane
and painted it bright yellow.
The amateur flyer
was also a novice poet.
In the spring of 1921,
she submitted several poems
to a journal under the pen name
"Emil A. Harte."
They were never published,
but one was
about her newest passion.
"From an Airplane"
"Even the watchful purple hills
that hold the lake
"Could not see so well as I
the stain of evening
creeping from its heart."
From the beginning, Earhart
saw herself in the vanguard.
She was a flyer, a poet
and an amateur photographer.
She was supporting herself,
and though there were suitors,
she rejected a traditional
marriage as too confining.
"I don't want anything
all of the time," she said.
♪ ♪
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
And my baby is plotting
the darndest revolution
in history.
"It won't be long now,"
announced the girls,
as they head from the polling
booth to the barber shop,
disregarding the warning
of an alarmed press...
BATES:
With the suffrage
battle behind them,
women like Earhart set out
to redefine themselves.
In keeping with the times,
she cut her hair.
but did it inch by inch
so her mother wouldn't notice.
In 1925, Amelia moved to Boston,
finding work
in a settlement house
with the children of Chinese
and Syrian immigrants.
Her supervisor
thought she was a natural
and promoted her quickly.
Earhart felt she
had found her true calling.
Flying was now a weekend hobby.
But in the spring of 1928,
George Palmer Putnam,
a successful publisher
and promoter known as "G.P."
came into Earhart's life.
MAN:
G.P. was a very
clever publisher.
Every series of years,
you have somebody who rises
to the top
of the publishing business
and then fades gently down,
and somebody else--
and there's a publisher
who is the top of the pile,
and in that moment Putnam's was,
and Putnam was always
in there at the kill
and always getting the number
one fellow to write the book.
BATES:
Putnam's best seller was
a book by Charles Lindbergh
about his historic Atlantic
solo flight the year before.
Now G.P. had a new book in mind.
He had been hired to find
the right sort of girl
to be the first woman
to fly across the Atlantic.
Earhart's name had surfaced
through Boston aviation circles
and she was invited
to New York to meet G.P.
Her own account of the meeting
reveals just how shrewd she was.
"If I were found wanting
on too many counts,
"I should be deprived of a trip.
"On the other hand,
if I were just too fascinating,
"the gallant gentleman
might be loath to drown me.
"It was therefore
necessary for me
to maintain an attitude
of impenetrable mediocrity."
And G.P. knew when he looked
at her that this was Lady Lindy,
this was going to be
the female Lindbergh.
BATES:
Earhart's remarkable
resemblance to Lindbergh,
the most famous man in America,
made her a publicist's dream.
♪ ♪
Putnam asked her to make
the transatlantic flight
not as the pilot,
but as a passenger.
Amelia jumped at the chance.
From this point on
she would be promoted
not only for her flying skill,
but also for her wholesome
beauty and personal appeal.
Nonetheless, the flight was
a very dangerous undertaking.
It did take great courage
to say yes to this proposition
to agree to fly the Atlantic.
I think 14 people
had been killed
just in the year
since Lindbergh had tried,
including three women.
So that when she took off on
that plane, even as a passenger,
she did not know
that she was going to make it.
She could have lost her life.
BATES:
"The Friendship flight,"
as it was called,
was planned in secrecy
both to capitalize
on the drama of the event
and to beat out two other women
contemplating the same mission.
On July 3, 1928, decked
in a fur-lined flight suit,
Amelia joined
pilot Wilmer Stultz
and mechanic Louis Gordon.
George Putnam was there
to see them off.
Without fanfare, the fuel-laden,
bright orange Friendship
took off from Boston Harbor
in the wee hours of the morning.
RICH:
The plane barely got off.
When it did it tipped,
and a door opened
and she went rolling across
the floor of the airplane,
managed to grab a fuel tank and
just steadied herself in time
while the engineer
leaped over and shut the door
and actually tied it shut
with a rope and off they went.
The whole Friendship flight
was pretty much one occasion
like this after another.
They had to land
first in Nova Scotia
and they waited 13 days
in the pouring rain.
In the meantime the pilot,
Wilmer Stultz,
proceeded to be dead-drunk
most of the time.
On the 13th night,
they sat down together
and they said, "No matter
what shape Stultz is in,
we're leaving tomorrow."
BATES:
Within hours after takeoff,
the plane was enveloped
by fog, then snow and ice.
The radio went dead.
They were flying blind.
With little fuel remaining,
they finally spotted land.
After 20 hours and 40 minutes,
the Friendship set down
in Burryport, Wales.
In no time at all, 2,000 people
were at the dock to greet her,
clamoring to shake her hand
and get her autograph.
WARE:
I don't think she had any idea
that she would encounter
the kind of celebrity
that she did
when she agreed to be part
of the Friendship crew.
I think she was just dumbfounded
that people were
so concerned about her.
She kept saying, "But the boys,
they did all the flying."
BATES:
But Stultz and Gordon
were ignored by the press.
The hero was the passenger.
When the Friendship
landed in England
for the official welcome,
another huge crowd waited
to see Amelia.
Just weeks earlier
Earhart was earning
$60 a month as a social worker.
Now she was having tea
with George Bernard Shaw,
dancing with the
Prince of Wales,
and dining with Lady Astor.
George Putnam
had picked a winner.
♪ ♪
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Here you see Lady Lindy,
whose triumphant flight
across the Atlantic
is the admiration
of the whole world.
What a wonderful woman,
and isn't she like Lindbergh?
BATES:
Back home, the flyers
received America's version
of a royal welcome-- a New York
City ticker tape parade.
Amelia was always quick to note
she didn't deserve the credit,
and said she had merely been
a "sack of potatoes
who kept the log,"
but nobody seemed to listen.
(applause)
After New York,
Amelia was honored
in celebrations
around the country
all arranged by the consummate
promoter, George Palmer Putnam.
I never knew anybody
who liked George Palmer Putnam.
It was quite interesting.
Everybody who knew
him disliked him.
Some people disliked
him more than others
and some people disliked him
and found him amusing,
and some people disliked him
and found him unamusing.
RICH:
He was superb editor
and a better publicist.
Could be enormously charming
and be totally insulting
at times to people.
His language ranged
from the erudite
to really ugly profanity.
He was just a very
complex, driven man.
BATES:
In the summer of 1928,
at the age of 31,
Earhart was set up in G.P.'s
elegant home in Rye, New York,
to write what G.P. hoped
would be his next best-seller,
"20 Hours, 40 Minutes,"
the story
of the Friendship flight.
In the fall, Amelia took off
on a month-long trip
around the country
in a small biplane
Putnam had bought her,
giving hundreds of speeches and
interviews G.P. had scheduled.
In effect,
he became her manager.
He told her not to wear hats
because they obscured
her tousled hair.
He told her to close her mouth
when she smiled
to hide the space between
her two front teeth.
Amelia and G.P. were inseparable
and there were rumors
of an affair.
I think that my grandfather
and my grandmother
had not been happy
for some time,
and when Amelia
came into the picture,
my grandfather, of course,
became busier
and busier with her
and started spending
less time and less time
at home with my grandmother.
One thing led to another
and a relationship did develop.
What can I say,
that's what happened.
BATES:
Being Lady Lindy
was a full-time job.
"Here I am jumping
through hoops," she wrote,
"just like the little
white horse in the circus."
But Earhart was ambitious
and willing to pay the price.
G.P. scheduled a growing number
of appearances, lectures,
and product endorsements.
He also arranged
a position for her
as the aviation editor
of "Cosmopolitan" magazine.
Her celebrity status
made her invaluable
to the emerging
airline industry.
She became fast friends
with one of its pioneers,
Eugene Vidal, Gore's father,
and together they helped launch
the country's first
passenger airline--
Transcontinental Air Transport.
(fanfare playing on newsreel)
ANNOUNCER:
The big tri-motor, all-metal
plane is ready and waiting,
equipped like a Pullman car.
Its roomy cabin is well-lighted
and heated in wintertime.
Seated in our
comfortable chairs...
VIDAL:
And my mother was probably
the first airline stewardess
just to make sure that
the people were contented
and what would they eat,
let us say.
She was always dieting
and very grand.
She thought consommé
would be perfect.
Well, they were all scalded
on that flight.
The planes would be going up
and down like that
and the fumes from the gas
were terrible inside,
and in front of every seat
there'd be this huge
ice cream cardboard cylinder
in which people
would vomit during the flight
and it was a mess.
BATES:
At the dawn of aviation,
women were not trusted
to pilot passenger planes.
Earhart's contribution was
confined to public relations.
We've had
a marvelous trip--
I'm going back
the same way.
I'm glad to hear it.
♪ ♪
BATES:
To stay in the limelight,
Earhart needed another
high-profile event.
Just before her 32nd birthday,
Amelia and George
used the proceeds
from her lectures
and endorsements
to buy a bigger
and faster plane.
Flying her new Lockheed Vega,
she could now compete
with the top pilots
in the first cross-country
women's air derby.
(derby announcer
speaking inaudibly)
In the summer of 1929, Earhart
was one of 20 contestants
to enter the derby.
Bobbi Trout was another.
TROUT:
We were characters
and a different breed.
That was all there was to it.
I think that most women
who really took up flying
knew that it was
a dangerous business
in those days,
in the early days,
but it was such an interesting
and such a wonderful thing to do
and so... mmm, well, it was
like a magnet, you know,
it just drew people to it.
DERBY ANNOUNCER:
In ship number six, it's the
world-famous Amelia Earhart--
the first woman to fly
across the Atlantic Ocean.
She is flying a Lockheed Vega...
(airplane engine roaring)
BATES:
But Earhart's flying ability
had not caught up with her fame,
and some of the other
flyers knew it.
WOMAN:
It was a skill.
It was not like today, where you
can almost do it on the numbers.
So you had to fly
every single day.
Maybe Amelia
would have been a natural
had she had
the proper instruction
and the amount of practice
that went into it,
but she never seemed to
practice, to really stick at it.
(derby announcer
speaking inaudibly)
BATES:
After eight days,
15 women crossed
the finish line in Cleveland.
Amelia came in a distant third.
SMITH:
That was the fastest
and the most powered
airplane in that race.
She still couldn't land it in
Cleveland in front of everybody.
Just kaboom, kaboom,
kaboom, kaboom,
all the way across the airport.
BATES:
After the air derby, Amelia
was thrown into emotional chaos.
She was supporting
her mother and sister.
Her father had died of cancer
and G.P., who had finally
gotten a divorce,
was pressuring her to marry him.
Speculation about
a possible marriage
was front-page news for weeks.
When asked about her plans
by a reporter,
Amelia answered,
"Sometime in the next 50 years
I may be married."
But privately,
Amelia had made her decision.
TROUT:
The reason that I think
Amelia gave in to G.P.
and married him was because
he was a darn good promoter
and after all, all the promotion
that he did would bring in money
and that was hard to get
during the Depression,
and she was smart enough
to know that.
This is what she wanted.
When she met him, she knew
that this man could help her
get this job done,
and he knew when he met her
that this was going to provide
him with a new future.
So it was an incredible
combination
these two people together.
She was marrying her manager.
This is what great actresses do.
At some point, every great
actress marries the manager
or settles down in a
relationship with the manager.
She settled down
with her manager.
He made life very easy
for her in many ways
and heaven knows he was
a hustler-- he was a promoter--
and she was ambitious.
BATES:
Whatever her reasons
for agreeing to marry G.P.,
Amelia had not resolved
her ambivalence.
On the morning of the wedding,
she presented him
with a startling letter.
"Dear Gyp, you must know
again my reluctance to marry.
"I feel the move just now as
foolish as anything I could do.
"I may have to keep some place
"where I can go to be
myself now and then.
"I cannot guarantee to endure
at all times the confinement
"of even an attractive cage.
"I must exact a cruel promise
"and that is that you will
let me go in a year
if we find
no happiness together."
Wearing a tailored brown suit,
Amelia Earhart
married George Putnam
at a small private ceremony
on February 7, 1931.
As if to assure herself
and the world
that marriage wasn't a cage,
she took no honeymoon and was
back at work the next day.
I christen thee
"Essex Taraplane."
(cheering)
BATES:
Before long, Earhart and Putnam
were secretly planning
another flight.
Amelia wanted to be
the first person
to fly the Atlantic alone
since Lindbergh.
This time she would
pilot the plane
and finally prove
her flying ability.
But that wasn't the only reason.
RICH:
She was beginning to understand
what G.P. was teaching her--
that you don't stay in the
cheadlines forever for one deed.
That there must be
a continuing--
and accelerated almost-- series
in which you prove
again and again
and more so, if possible,
how good you are.
BATES:
But when Amelia announced
the Atlantic flight,
even she seemed to have trouble
believing she could do it.
I think I am ready
for a transatlantic hop.
I've chosen to use a plane
with which I am familiar,
having flown it
at least three years.
I think I couldn't have
undertaken this trip
unless I had confidence
in the plane, the engine
and perhaps my own experience.
How's the weather
now, Bert?
BATES:
Delayed for weeks
because of bad weather,
Amelia was ready to take off
from New Jersey.
G.P. arranged for newsreel
cameras to cover the takeoff.
Well, you're off.
Hey, how's it look
in there?
Everything is ready.
Good-bye.
Good-bye.
BATES:
Amelia was too embarrassed
to kiss G.P. good-bye,
so there was a second take.
Please don't
forget to phone
just the minute
you get there.
I will.
Good-bye.
So long.
♪ ♪
(propellers whirring)
BATES:
On the fifth anniversary
of Lindbergh's flight,
the Vega was ready.
Ten people had died
trying to cross the Atlantic
since Lindbergh,
and Earhart's mechanic thought
she had a one-in-a-hundred
chance of surviving.
A poem Amelia wrote
reveals her feelings
about taking such a risk.
"Courage is the price that life
exacts for granting peace.
"The soul that knows it not
"knows no release
from little things.
"Knows not the livid
loneliness of fear
"nor mountain heights
where bitter joy
can hear the sound of wings."
RICH:
She was four hours out
when she ran into a storm.
She would go high
and then the plane would ice.
Then she'd go down
until she could see the waves
to get the ice off.
She had no radio contact
with anyone.
The manifold on her engine broke
and the flames from the backfire
from it were coming out.
There was a gas gauge
over her head that began to leak
and the gasoline was dripping
down over her forehead
and into one eye.
BATES:
Earhart's navigation was off
and she almost missed
the northern tip of Ireland.
But after 15 hours in the air,
she landed safely in an
isolated field in Londonderry.
The next day, G.P. sent in
the newsreel cameras
and Amelia restaged her arrival.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Journey's end.
Here she is safe and sound
on a farm in Ireland,
having just completed
the first flight
by a woman across the Atlantic.
And here, the good farmer folk
Amelia gave the surprise
of their lives.
Those messages she holds
are congratulations
from all parts of the world.
BATES:
In London, Paris and Rome,
Earhart was a sensation.
Everywhere she went,
she was treated like royalty.
G.P. met Amelia in Paris.
Thousands of spectators
lined the route to her hotel
and others shouted
below her balcony
until she and G.P.
came out to greet them.
(cheering, applause)
In New York, the ticker tape
parade was for Amelia alone
and this time,
she deserved all the credit.
SINGER:
♪ You took a notion
to fly 'cross the ocean ♪
♪ Our American girl ♪
♪ Finding your way in the dark ♪
♪ American Joan of Arc ♪
♪ Everybody thinks
you're wonderful... ♪
VIDAL:
In the Depression,
people wanted idols, of course,
to distract them
from everyday reality.
Aviation was an alternative.
Aviation was literally heavenly
compared to what was
going on on earth,
so she was very much part of
that.
She showed what a woman could do
and that a woman
was no different from a man
when it came to flying
an airplane.
BATES:
Earhart's style
was a unique blend
of the masculine and feminine,
and it made her
enormously appealing.
(newsreel projector whirs)
♪ ♪
WARE:
The technology, I think,
that affected Amelia the most
was the newsreel.
They were like the movies;
they were still very new.
And for people to go
into a darkened movie theater
and see these images
from Paris or Ireland--
a place they had never been--
a lot of what Amelia did
was similar
to being a Hollywood star.
She tried to keep her name
before the public
and to keep them interested
in her, and they responded,
and that's very similar
to what a Katharine Hepburn
or a Bette Davis was doing.
BATES:
G.P. was now an executive
at Paramount Pictures.
He and Amelia
courted celebrities
because it was good business.
And business was
the name of the game.
To keep her name
on the front pages,
to finance her expensive flights
and to support
their lavish lifestyle,
Earhart depended
on the lecture circuit.
In a good week,
she could earn over $2,400,
the equivalent
of $30,000 a week today.
RICH:
It was a treadmill,
an unbelievable treadmill
of lecture after lecture,
night after night.
The ladies' committee
sometimes asked for breakfast,
certainly for lunch.
Then she gave a speech
that afternoon.
Then that night
to the Chamber of Commerce
she gave another speech, and
then back in the car at midnight
and on to the next town.
And this would go on
for four months in a row.
BATES:
Earhart had a strong
social conscience
and now used her fame
to promote her causes.
She preached pacifism
to the Daughters
of the American Revolution.
She spoke out on behalf
of commercial aviation,
even enlisting her good friend
Eleanor Roosevelt in the effort.
And everywhere she went,
Amelia crusaded for women.
I've had practical experience
and know the discrimination
against women
in various forms of industry.
A pilot's a pilot.
I hope that such equality could
be carried out in other fields
so that men and women
may achieve equally
in any endeavor they set out.
BATES:
There was precious little time
for her private life.
Whenever she could, she would
retreat to Rye, New York.
Amelia wrote to her mother,
"I am much happier
than I ever expected I could be.
I believe the whole thing
was for the best."
RICH:
They seem to have been--
at least for the first five
or six years of marriage--
a good match.
She seemed to find him
very attractive.
At the same time,
there was not the sort of warmth
that one expects
in a so-called happy marriage.
There wasn't evidence of it.
When Amelia and my grandfather
were in public,
they were very businesslike.
But the minute they stepped
inside their home,
they became a married couple.
She was caring and so was he,
but never in public.
♪ ♪
BATES:
By 1935, Earhart's public image
was losing its luster,
and the demand for her on the
lecture circuit was drying up.
In the winter,
she set a world record
flying from Hawaii
to the mainland.
Throngs of people waited
to greet her.
But Earhart and Putnam
were criticized by the press
for financing the flight
with money from Hawaiian
business interests.
BATES:
Emotionally and
physically exhausted,
Amelia was hospitalized
with a severe sinus infection
and then bedridden for weeks
with back problems.
RICH:
Earhart was a truly...
a frail woman all of her life,
assailed by a considerable
amount of illness
and that it was sheer willpower
that kept her going.
Always when she flew,
she was sick to her stomach.
She was delicate.
I christen thee Resolute.
(bottle shattering)
MAN:
You're all right that time.
MAN: You get better every time!
(laughter)
BATES:
When she recovered,
Amelia went back to work
and to whatever publicity stunts
she and G.P. could manufacture.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Something really new--
a captive parachute
and famous Amelia Earhart
is going to make her first jump.
BATES:
Though Amelia certainly
didn't need another record,
she just couldn't stop.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Look out below!
(Earhart screams)
I think there was a certain
amount of insecurity in her,
and a determination
to prove herself
to herself and to the world.
And I think she used flying
to accomplish that,
but I don't think she was
ever really satisfied.
I don't think there was ever
a flight that made her feel
like she had done everything
she needed to be for herself.
BATES:
In 1936, Amelia Earhart
announced
the most ambitious flight
of her life.
The contemplated course covers
about 27,000 miles.
It will be the first flight,
if successful,
which approximates the equator.
Indeed, I cross the equator
four times.
I hope to fly from Oakland to
Honolulu, then Howland Island,
then to the northern tip
of Australia...
BATES:
Whatever her motives
for taking this flight,
Amelia Earhart wanted it
to be her last.
"I have the feeling
"there's just one more
good flight left in my system,
and I hope this is it,"
Amelia told a good friend.
"It is my swan song as far
as record flying is concerned,
my frosting on the cake."
TROUT:
She had to make this world
flight for the record-- one.
Next is she could have made
enough on that flight
from the advertising
and all that,
she wouldn't have had to work
anymore during her lifetime.
BATES:
The world flight was
an expensive undertaking.
The plane alone cost
a staggering $80,000.
G.P. was able to raise
most of the money
from Purdue University
in Indiana,
where Earhart was
an aviation advisor
and a career counselor to women.
The Lockheed Electra was the
most advanced aircraft to date.
It was overhauled
for the long flight
by replacing the passenger seats
with extra fuel tanks.
To deflect criticism that this
flight was a self-serving stunt,
Earhart presented her Electra
as a laboratory
for aviation research.
It's a real flying laboratory,
equipped with the latest
of instruments
and I hope to accomplish
something really worthwhile
in aviation scientifically.
I hope the experiments
will include altitude flying
and also long-distance work.
It had no scientific value.
It had... all of the legs of it
had been flown
at one time or another.
The airplane was certainly
tested and retested
and had been flown commercially,
so there was no
real reason for it
but, again, G.P. could see
the publicity value of it.
BATES:
Amelia and G.P. needed all
the publicity they could get.
With few aviation records
left to break,
Earhart had to work
harder and harder.
In addition to preparing
for the world flight,
she was supervising
the construction
of a lavish new house
in Hollywood,
campaigning for Roosevelt,
and promoting a new franchise,
Amelia Earhart luggage.
RICH:
There was a lack of focus
in this whole undertaking,
and the longer it went on--
the preparations went on--
the more unfocused she became.
She was physically
and emotionally exhausted,
which had much to do
with the failure of it.
She... she simply was not
preparing properly for it.
VIDAL:
It's hard work
being Amelia Earhart,
and eventually,
it's monotonous work.
It is the same number
you must play
and some people get tired
of their own legends.
I don't think she was eager
to take that flight.
She was pretty sick of it all.
She was certainly sick of G.P.,
her husband,
who was constantly pushing her.
Right after that he had a--
I don't know--
a lecture tour for her.
He had this, he had that.
She was to endorse 32 products.
I mean, she was like a rock star
and she was being pushed
and pushed and pushed.
I think it's believed
that she was the pilot
and he was the pushy promoter,
but in fact she was an equal
part of this business team.
She knew what she wanted,
she knew the flights she wanted
to take,
she knew the sponsors
she wanted to get,
and between the two of them
they accomplished it.
♪ ♪
BATES:
From the outset,
Amelia had imagined this flight
as a solo adventure,
but in the course
of preparation,
she realized that
she would need a navigator,
especially for the most
dangerous leg of the trip--
a 2,500-mile journey across
the Pacific to Howland Island,
a tiny atoll
only a mile and a half wide.
Brad Washburn was interviewed
for the job.
WASHBURN:
Amelia spread all her maps
out on the floor
and G.P. sat down,
like I'm sitting here,
and we were...
we were on the floor in
front of him with all these maps
and we chatted our way all
the way around the world almost.
When she began to describe
her long flight, as I recollect
it was a couple of thousand
miles to Howland Island.
You've got to remember
that Howland Island--
as I recollect,
I wish I had a map of it here,
but I have a pretty good visual
picture of the damn thing--
and it was a little sliver
about a mile and a quarter long
and very narrow.
You either hit Howland Island
or you don't hit nothing.
♪ ♪
BATES:
Earhart planned
to hit Howland Island
using a compass course
and celestial navigation,
but for such a long flight
over water out of reach of land,
new, sophisticated
radio equipment
would also be essential.
RICH:
She did not like
radio communication.
There's absolutely
no doubt about it.
She not only
didn't bother to learn it,
but she didn't really
find it necessary.
There is a hint here of the ego
that all great explorers
and adventurers have.
They have a certain faith
that they're going to make it.
BATES:
Ultimately, Earhart assembled
a stellar team.
She hired stunt pilot
and friend Paul Mantz
as her technical advisor,
Harry Manning,
an experienced marine navigator
and expert radio man,
and Fred Noonan, formerly
a navigator with Pan Am.
On March 20, 1937,
Earhart and the crew
started to take off from Hawaii
on the first leg
of the world flight.
But at the far end
of the runway,
Amelia lost control
of the plane.
The Electra crashed.
RICH:
After she cracked up the plane
in Honolulu,
she felt fear
for the first time, definitely.
The immensity of the project
suddenly hit her.
She knew that if she lost
that plane or failed in this,
they were dead broke,
both of them.
♪ ♪
BATES:
George and Amelia were under
a great deal of strain.
There were rumors the marriage
was falling apart.
Amelia even confided
to several friends
that she was fed up with G.P.
But a letter he wrote to her
leaves a different impression.
"We both recognize the hazards,
and I love you dearly.
"I don't want you to run risks
and I don't want to run the risk
"of perhaps having to go on
without you--
"that makes me terribly
sorry for myself!
"(Entirely disregarding
your end of it!)
"But gosh, once this is
out of your hair,
"what a very happy,
interesting time we can have.
We can have it, too, should you
for any reason decide to quit."
But Earhart didn't quit.
Together, Amelia and G.P.
raised $34,000
to repair the damaged Electra.
Because of changing
weather conditions,
they had to map out a new route
and rearrange visas, landing
permissions, and ground crews
in more than 20 countries.
And then there were problems
with the crew.
Harry Manning, the only one with
radio experience, dropped out,
some say because he had
lost faith in Amelia.
Fred Noonan would now be
Earhart's navigator.
He was the best in the business,
but he was also a heavy drinker.
Throughout the planning
of the flight,
G.P. and Paul Mantz,
Earhart's technical advisor,
constantly argued over money.
A few days before departure,
Mantz was edged out.
That left G.P.,
who knew nothing about flying,
in charge of the preparations.
With Mantz gone,
Amelia made several
critical decisions on her own.
She chose not to take
a vital piece of equipment--
a trailing wire antenna
that she found awkward to use.
She also left behind
her Morse code key,
because she'd never learned
to operate it properly.
Some of Amelia's friends,
concerned about
her mental state,
advised her not to go forward
with the flight.
WASHBURN:
This whole array
of information, on the one hand,
and what she did with it,
and how she ignored so many
fundamentally important things
made you really think
that she was...
was pathologically optimistic.
♪ ♪
BATES:
Before the flight,
Amelia and George spent the day
with his son
and daughter-in-law.
CHAP:
Mom and Dad
and Grandpa George and Amelia
had been together
the night before,
they were staying
in the same hotel together.
They got in the car together
and they drove to the airport,
and she said it was very quiet.
They touched each other a lot,
they held hands--
it was a very tender time.
BATES:
The morning of June 1, 1937,
Earhart and Fred Noonan
took off from Miami.
At the last minute,
Amelia left behind
her parachute, her life raft,
and even her good luck charm,
an elephant hair bracelet.
♪ ♪
For six days,
she flew along the coast
of Central and South America
and then across
the South Atlantic to Africa.
Gore Vidal recalls talking
to Amelia beforehand
about that part of the flight.
VIDAL:
She was showing us the flight
and I said, "What part
bothers you the most?"
"Oh," she said, "Africa.
"That terrifies me.
"If you were forced down
in those jungles
they would never find you."
And there's a lot of--
when you look at the equator,
there's an awful lot of Africa.
It's very fat.
And I said, "Well,
what about the Pacific?
That's even fatter."
And she said,
"You can't miss an island,
no matter where you are
at that latitude."
BATES:
Earhart flew over Africa
without incident
and continued over Arabia
to Karachi and Calcutta.
She fought monsoons that beat
the paint off her airplane
en route to Singapore.
Then, in Java,
she took a short rest
before flying on to Australia,
and finally to Lae, New Guinea.
This would be her last stop
before the long Pacific leg
to Howland Island.
Amelia called the "Herald
Tribune" office in New York,
where G.P. and Gene Vidal
were waiting to hear from her.
VIDAL:
Well, just the night before the
final flight, she reported in
and they had a code phrase
"personnel problems,"
which meant Noonan
was back drinking.
And my father said, "Just stop
it right now and come home."
And G.P. agreed and said,
"Come back, abort the flight,
forget it, come home."
And then she said, "Oh, no."
And, "I think it'll be all
right," something like that.
So you may put that
down to invincible optimism,
or it may have been, uh...
huge pessimism.
RICH:
By the time Amelia
arrived in Lae,
which was almost three quarters
of her entire journey,
she had been flying
for more than 40 days,
she'd had five hours
of sleep a night,
uh, she had had stomach attacks
and more and more attacks
of diarrhea.
She was totally, totally
run down, but so hopeful by then
that perhaps if she could
just make it to Howland,
everything would be all right.
♪ ♪
BATES:
On July 2, 1937,
Earhart and Noonan took off
from Lae, New Guinea.
(engine puttering)
♪ ♪
Only luck could guide them
to Howland Island.
She had no Morse code key
or trailing wire antenna.
Celestial navigation
wouldn't help,
because the location of Howland
Island on her charts was off
by five and a half miles.
And neither she nor Noonan knew
much about radio communication.
This was fundamentally
her downfall--
that if either she
or that navigator
should have known a lot
about radio.
She'd never been as dependent
on these other flights on radio.
Remember, if you fly to Europe
or fly from Europe to United
States, you can't get lost.
But there's something very,
very lonely about that Pacific.
BATES:
Standing off Howland Island was
the Coast Guard cutter Itasca,
waiting to provide
radio assistance.
But there had been
a serious lack of communication
between Earhart, G.P.
and the Coast Guard
about which frequency she should
use to talk to the ship.
In the end, they could hear her,
but she could never hear them.
The Itasca logs indicate
that Amelia and Noonan came
very close to Howland Island
on the morning of July 2,
but could not find it.
At 7:42, she radioed, "We must
be on you, but cannot see you,
"but gas is running low.
Been unable to reach you
by radio."
Minutes later, another report:
"Calling Itasca.
We are circling
but cannot hear you."
At 8:43, Amelia's voice,
shrill and breathless:
"We are on the line 157.337.
"We will repeat message.
"We will repeat.
We are running on line
north and south."
The Coast Guard
continued to listen
and to transmit
on every possible frequency,
but her voice
was not heard again.
Amelia Earhart never arrived
at Howland Island,
where a cabin and a bed
had been prepared for her.
♪ ♪
MORSE:
All we had was what appeared
in the papers
and on the radio.
And... I remember
sitting up at night
and listening
and listening and listening.
BATES:
Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan
were the object
of the most extensive search
ever mounted for a lost plane.
The government sent ten ships
and 65 airplanes
to comb the Pacific
for more than two weeks.
George Putnam,
using his own money,
frantically continued
to look for Amelia
long after the government
had stopped,
but three weeks before her
40th birthday, Amelia was gone.
VIDAL:
Amelia Earhart came
of humble birth,
and it was rather startling
that she would make
this huge leap into glory,
and in a man's world
and in a man's field,
and she was beloved for that.
But it was...
it was the disappearance of
Amelia that created the legend,
combined with the whole--
what they call
"the gospel of flight"--
so she's part
of these divine beings
and one of the divine beings
vanishes over the Pacific.
Well, that is the stuff
of legend.
BATES:
Amelia Earhart lived
as if she were invincible,
yet an unfinished poem
reveals her clear understanding
that death was never far away.
"Merciless life laughs
in the burning sun.
And only death,
slow circling down."
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
Next time, she shot to stardom.
MAN:
She never missed.
NARRATOR:
And became an American icon.
WOMAN:
There's never been anybody
like Annie Oakley.
WOMAN:
This sweet person,
but with this big bang gun.
(gunshot)
NARRATOR:
But at the height
of her popularity,
scandal threatened
to bring her down.
"Annie Oakley," next time,
on "American Experience."
ANNOUNCER:
Made possible in part
by Liberty Mutual Insurance.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
(airplane motor humming)
NARRATOR:
On a summer day in 1932,
Amelia Earhart completed
another record-breaking flight.
A few weeks earlier,
she had made history
by being the first woman
to fly solo across the Atlantic.
Now she was a superstar
and her every move
fascinated the public.
Yesterday, I hopped off
from Los Angeles about noontime
and landed
in Newark this morning
after a nonstop,
transcontinental trip.
And what did you
carry on the trip?
You mean to eat?
Yeah, to eat and drink.
Well, I carried
some water, of course,
because my cockpit
is very warm,
and I carried
a sandwich in case--
I didn't eat it,
though.
I carried some
hot chocolate
and the old,
reliable tomato juice.
What kind
of a sandwich was it?
Chicken sandwich.
MAN:
I have walked the streets with
many famous people in my time,
from Greta Garbo
to Paul Newman,
to Eleanor Roosevelt.
No one got the crowd
that Amelia got.
She was... I must say,
it was beyond stardom.
It was a strange continuum
that she and Lindbergh occupied.
They were like gods
from outer space.
And people would just stand
and stare at her.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
Amelia Earhart was a legend,
the first modern
American heroine,
adored because she was daring
and successful in a man's world
and because she was
magnificently promoted
in the press
and newsreels of the time.
(crowd cheering)
Yet, Amelia Earhart,
the best-known woman in America,
would always remain
curiously remote.
"I don't know you at all,"
her closest friend wrote.
"I doubt anyone does."
WOMAN:
The one thing that she
really feared in life
was that nothing would happen.
She had to have
an important life
and that meant
you had to have adventure.
You had to try things
that were exciting
and that, all of her life,
there's no doubt
that she needed this
and believed this
was the way to live.
Better to die young, but live.
NARRATOR:
In 1937, Amelia Earhart
decided to go
for the one record in aviation
no one, man or woman,
had ever attempted before--
to fly around the world
at the equator.
It would be the most
dangerous flight of her life.
(jet engine roaring)
♪ ♪
To succeed, Earhart would need
months of preparation
and a lot of luck.
In the end, she had neither.
♪ Come, Josephine,
in my flying machine ♪
♪ Going up she goes ♪
♪ Up she goes ♪
♪ Balance yourself
like a bird on a beam ♪
♪ In the air she goes ♪
♪ Well, there she goes ♪
♪ Up, up, a little bit higher. ♪
BATES:
Like most Americans,
Amelia was fascinated
by the sheer novelty of flight.
On Christmas day, 1920,
when she was 23 years old,
her father took her
to the opening
of a new airfield
in Long Beach, California.
There she watched pilots
in wood and fabric machines
perform daredevil stunts.
A few days later, when she
paid $5.00 for her first ride,
she knew that flying was more
than a passing fancy.
"As soon as we left
the ground," she wrote,
"I knew I myself had to fly.
"'I think I'd like to fly'
"I told my family
casually that evening,
knowing full well
I'd die if I didn't."
Amelia Mary Earhart was raised
by her domineering mother
to be a proper
Victorian young lady--
but she never was.
When Earhart was seven years
old, she had a new sled
and she went to the top of
the hill with her sister Muriel,
and she,
instead of sitting on it,
as her grandmother
had said one must,
she flung herself in a manner
called bellyslamming
and went tearing down the hill.
A horse and wagon was crossing
on the cross street.
She went right
under that horse's belly.
She missed both sets of legs
and she emerged triumphant,
waving at her sister afterwards.
This is an indication that came
up again and again later in life
that she took
good luck for granted.
BATES:
Amelia was resilient in spite
of a difficult childhood.
Born in Kansas on July 24, 1897,
she and her younger sister
Muriel had an unstable life
shuttling back and forth
between their grandparents'
luxurious home in Atchison
and their parents' meager
existence in Kansas City.
Amelia's father, Edwin,
was a charming man
who earned a modest living
as a lawyer
but it was never enough
for Amelia's mother, Amy.
During the course
of their troubled marriage,
Edwin became an alcoholic.
When Amelia was 12,
the Earharts left Kansas,
moving around the Midwest,
settling wherever
Edwin could find work.
Amelia adored her father,
but he let her down so often
she learned early on
to be self-reliant.
♪ ♪
During high school,
she kept an unusual scrapbook
of articles about women
pioneering in new careers.
The scrapbook reveals a young
girl with unconventional dreams.
♪ ♪
WOMAN:
She was a loner, you know.
She had seen so much
change in her childhood--
she'd lived
in many different places,
she'd gone
to many different schools,
and naturally
this resulted in
a kind of restlessness.
I think Amelia
got easily bored.
BATES:
Sent to a finishing school
in Pennsylvania,
Amelia didn't fit the mold,
and was kicked out for stunts
like walking on the roof
in her nightgown.
She was a rebel
and had high ideals.
During World War I, she nursed
wounded veterans in Canada,
and briefly pursued
a career in medicine.
In her early 20s,
Earhart was living
in Los Angeles with her parents
when she discovered flying.
♪ ♪
At Kinner Airfield,
she met a young woman
who agreed to teach her
to fly for a dollar a minute.
Earhart regularly walked
the three miles to the airfield,
took menial jobs
to pay for lessons,
and drove a gravel truck
for a construction company
to raise money
to buy her own plane.
Amelia's mother demanded her
daughter stop driving a truck
and act like a lady.
Reluctantly, she helped Amelia
out, and by her 25th birthday
Earhart finally had
the cash she needed.
She bought a new biplane
and painted it bright yellow.
The amateur flyer
was also a novice poet.
In the spring of 1921,
she submitted several poems
to a journal under the pen name
"Emil A. Harte."
They were never published,
but one was
about her newest passion.
"From an Airplane"
"Even the watchful purple hills
that hold the lake
"Could not see so well as I
the stain of evening
creeping from its heart."
From the beginning, Earhart
saw herself in the vanguard.
She was a flyer, a poet
and an amateur photographer.
She was supporting herself,
and though there were suitors,
she rejected a traditional
marriage as too confining.
"I don't want anything
all of the time," she said.
♪ ♪
NEWSREEL NARRATOR:
And my baby is plotting
the darndest revolution
in history.
"It won't be long now,"
announced the girls,
as they head from the polling
booth to the barber shop,
disregarding the warning
of an alarmed press...
BATES:
With the suffrage
battle behind them,
women like Earhart set out
to redefine themselves.
In keeping with the times,
she cut her hair.
but did it inch by inch
so her mother wouldn't notice.
In 1925, Amelia moved to Boston,
finding work
in a settlement house
with the children of Chinese
and Syrian immigrants.
Her supervisor
thought she was a natural
and promoted her quickly.
Earhart felt she
had found her true calling.
Flying was now a weekend hobby.
But in the spring of 1928,
George Palmer Putnam,
a successful publisher
and promoter known as "G.P."
came into Earhart's life.
MAN:
G.P. was a very
clever publisher.
Every series of years,
you have somebody who rises
to the top
of the publishing business
and then fades gently down,
and somebody else--
and there's a publisher
who is the top of the pile,
and in that moment Putnam's was,
and Putnam was always
in there at the kill
and always getting the number
one fellow to write the book.
BATES:
Putnam's best seller was
a book by Charles Lindbergh
about his historic Atlantic
solo flight the year before.
Now G.P. had a new book in mind.
He had been hired to find
the right sort of girl
to be the first woman
to fly across the Atlantic.
Earhart's name had surfaced
through Boston aviation circles
and she was invited
to New York to meet G.P.
Her own account of the meeting
reveals just how shrewd she was.
"If I were found wanting
on too many counts,
"I should be deprived of a trip.
"On the other hand,
if I were just too fascinating,
"the gallant gentleman
might be loath to drown me.
"It was therefore
necessary for me
to maintain an attitude
of impenetrable mediocrity."
And G.P. knew when he looked
at her that this was Lady Lindy,
this was going to be
the female Lindbergh.
BATES:
Earhart's remarkable
resemblance to Lindbergh,
the most famous man in America,
made her a publicist's dream.
♪ ♪
Putnam asked her to make
the transatlantic flight
not as the pilot,
but as a passenger.
Amelia jumped at the chance.
From this point on
she would be promoted
not only for her flying skill,
but also for her wholesome
beauty and personal appeal.
Nonetheless, the flight was
a very dangerous undertaking.
It did take great courage
to say yes to this proposition
to agree to fly the Atlantic.
I think 14 people
had been killed
just in the year
since Lindbergh had tried,
including three women.
So that when she took off on
that plane, even as a passenger,
she did not know
that she was going to make it.
She could have lost her life.
BATES:
"The Friendship flight,"
as it was called,
was planned in secrecy
both to capitalize
on the drama of the event
and to beat out two other women
contemplating the same mission.
On July 3, 1928, decked
in a fur-lined flight suit,
Amelia joined
pilot Wilmer Stultz
and mechanic Louis Gordon.
George Putnam was there
to see them off.
Without fanfare, the fuel-laden,
bright orange Friendship
took off from Boston Harbor
in the wee hours of the morning.
RICH:
The plane barely got off.
When it did it tipped,
and a door opened
and she went rolling across
the floor of the airplane,
managed to grab a fuel tank and
just steadied herself in time
while the engineer
leaped over and shut the door
and actually tied it shut
with a rope and off they went.
The whole Friendship flight
was pretty much one occasion
like this after another.
They had to land
first in Nova Scotia
and they waited 13 days
in the pouring rain.
In the meantime the pilot,
Wilmer Stultz,
proceeded to be dead-drunk
most of the time.
On the 13th night,
they sat down together
and they said, "No matter
what shape Stultz is in,
we're leaving tomorrow."
BATES:
Within hours after takeoff,
the plane was enveloped
by fog, then snow and ice.
The radio went dead.
They were flying blind.
With little fuel remaining,
they finally spotted land.
After 20 hours and 40 minutes,
the Friendship set down
in Burryport, Wales.
In no time at all, 2,000 people
were at the dock to greet her,
clamoring to shake her hand
and get her autograph.
WARE:
I don't think she had any idea
that she would encounter
the kind of celebrity
that she did
when she agreed to be part
of the Friendship crew.
I think she was just dumbfounded
that people were
so concerned about her.
She kept saying, "But the boys,
they did all the flying."
BATES:
But Stultz and Gordon
were ignored by the press.
The hero was the passenger.
When the Friendship
landed in England
for the official welcome,
another huge crowd waited
to see Amelia.
Just weeks earlier
Earhart was earning
$60 a month as a social worker.
Now she was having tea
with George Bernard Shaw,
dancing with the
Prince of Wales,
and dining with Lady Astor.
George Putnam
had picked a winner.
♪ ♪
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Here you see Lady Lindy,
whose triumphant flight
across the Atlantic
is the admiration
of the whole world.
What a wonderful woman,
and isn't she like Lindbergh?
BATES:
Back home, the flyers
received America's version
of a royal welcome-- a New York
City ticker tape parade.
Amelia was always quick to note
she didn't deserve the credit,
and said she had merely been
a "sack of potatoes
who kept the log,"
but nobody seemed to listen.
(applause)
After New York,
Amelia was honored
in celebrations
around the country
all arranged by the consummate
promoter, George Palmer Putnam.
I never knew anybody
who liked George Palmer Putnam.
It was quite interesting.
Everybody who knew
him disliked him.
Some people disliked
him more than others
and some people disliked him
and found him amusing,
and some people disliked him
and found him unamusing.
RICH:
He was superb editor
and a better publicist.
Could be enormously charming
and be totally insulting
at times to people.
His language ranged
from the erudite
to really ugly profanity.
He was just a very
complex, driven man.
BATES:
In the summer of 1928,
at the age of 31,
Earhart was set up in G.P.'s
elegant home in Rye, New York,
to write what G.P. hoped
would be his next best-seller,
"20 Hours, 40 Minutes,"
the story
of the Friendship flight.
In the fall, Amelia took off
on a month-long trip
around the country
in a small biplane
Putnam had bought her,
giving hundreds of speeches and
interviews G.P. had scheduled.
In effect,
he became her manager.
He told her not to wear hats
because they obscured
her tousled hair.
He told her to close her mouth
when she smiled
to hide the space between
her two front teeth.
Amelia and G.P. were inseparable
and there were rumors
of an affair.
I think that my grandfather
and my grandmother
had not been happy
for some time,
and when Amelia
came into the picture,
my grandfather, of course,
became busier
and busier with her
and started spending
less time and less time
at home with my grandmother.
One thing led to another
and a relationship did develop.
What can I say,
that's what happened.
BATES:
Being Lady Lindy
was a full-time job.
"Here I am jumping
through hoops," she wrote,
"just like the little
white horse in the circus."
But Earhart was ambitious
and willing to pay the price.
G.P. scheduled a growing number
of appearances, lectures,
and product endorsements.
He also arranged
a position for her
as the aviation editor
of "Cosmopolitan" magazine.
Her celebrity status
made her invaluable
to the emerging
airline industry.
She became fast friends
with one of its pioneers,
Eugene Vidal, Gore's father,
and together they helped launch
the country's first
passenger airline--
Transcontinental Air Transport.
(fanfare playing on newsreel)
ANNOUNCER:
The big tri-motor, all-metal
plane is ready and waiting,
equipped like a Pullman car.
Its roomy cabin is well-lighted
and heated in wintertime.
Seated in our
comfortable chairs...
VIDAL:
And my mother was probably
the first airline stewardess
just to make sure that
the people were contented
and what would they eat,
let us say.
She was always dieting
and very grand.
She thought consommé
would be perfect.
Well, they were all scalded
on that flight.
The planes would be going up
and down like that
and the fumes from the gas
were terrible inside,
and in front of every seat
there'd be this huge
ice cream cardboard cylinder
in which people
would vomit during the flight
and it was a mess.
BATES:
At the dawn of aviation,
women were not trusted
to pilot passenger planes.
Earhart's contribution was
confined to public relations.
We've had
a marvelous trip--
I'm going back
the same way.
I'm glad to hear it.
♪ ♪
BATES:
To stay in the limelight,
Earhart needed another
high-profile event.
Just before her 32nd birthday,
Amelia and George
used the proceeds
from her lectures
and endorsements
to buy a bigger
and faster plane.
Flying her new Lockheed Vega,
she could now compete
with the top pilots
in the first cross-country
women's air derby.
(derby announcer
speaking inaudibly)
In the summer of 1929, Earhart
was one of 20 contestants
to enter the derby.
Bobbi Trout was another.
TROUT:
We were characters
and a different breed.
That was all there was to it.
I think that most women
who really took up flying
knew that it was
a dangerous business
in those days,
in the early days,
but it was such an interesting
and such a wonderful thing to do
and so... mmm, well, it was
like a magnet, you know,
it just drew people to it.
DERBY ANNOUNCER:
In ship number six, it's the
world-famous Amelia Earhart--
the first woman to fly
across the Atlantic Ocean.
She is flying a Lockheed Vega...
(airplane engine roaring)
BATES:
But Earhart's flying ability
had not caught up with her fame,
and some of the other
flyers knew it.
WOMAN:
It was a skill.
It was not like today, where you
can almost do it on the numbers.
So you had to fly
every single day.
Maybe Amelia
would have been a natural
had she had
the proper instruction
and the amount of practice
that went into it,
but she never seemed to
practice, to really stick at it.
(derby announcer
speaking inaudibly)
BATES:
After eight days,
15 women crossed
the finish line in Cleveland.
Amelia came in a distant third.
SMITH:
That was the fastest
and the most powered
airplane in that race.
She still couldn't land it in
Cleveland in front of everybody.
Just kaboom, kaboom,
kaboom, kaboom,
all the way across the airport.
BATES:
After the air derby, Amelia
was thrown into emotional chaos.
She was supporting
her mother and sister.
Her father had died of cancer
and G.P., who had finally
gotten a divorce,
was pressuring her to marry him.
Speculation about
a possible marriage
was front-page news for weeks.
When asked about her plans
by a reporter,
Amelia answered,
"Sometime in the next 50 years
I may be married."
But privately,
Amelia had made her decision.
TROUT:
The reason that I think
Amelia gave in to G.P.
and married him was because
he was a darn good promoter
and after all, all the promotion
that he did would bring in money
and that was hard to get
during the Depression,
and she was smart enough
to know that.
This is what she wanted.
When she met him, she knew
that this man could help her
get this job done,
and he knew when he met her
that this was going to provide
him with a new future.
So it was an incredible
combination
these two people together.
She was marrying her manager.
This is what great actresses do.
At some point, every great
actress marries the manager
or settles down in a
relationship with the manager.
She settled down
with her manager.
He made life very easy
for her in many ways
and heaven knows he was
a hustler-- he was a promoter--
and she was ambitious.
BATES:
Whatever her reasons
for agreeing to marry G.P.,
Amelia had not resolved
her ambivalence.
On the morning of the wedding,
she presented him
with a startling letter.
"Dear Gyp, you must know
again my reluctance to marry.
"I feel the move just now as
foolish as anything I could do.
"I may have to keep some place
"where I can go to be
myself now and then.
"I cannot guarantee to endure
at all times the confinement
"of even an attractive cage.
"I must exact a cruel promise
"and that is that you will
let me go in a year
if we find
no happiness together."
Wearing a tailored brown suit,
Amelia Earhart
married George Putnam
at a small private ceremony
on February 7, 1931.
As if to assure herself
and the world
that marriage wasn't a cage,
she took no honeymoon and was
back at work the next day.
I christen thee
"Essex Taraplane."
(cheering)
BATES:
Before long, Earhart and Putnam
were secretly planning
another flight.
Amelia wanted to be
the first person
to fly the Atlantic alone
since Lindbergh.
This time she would
pilot the plane
and finally prove
her flying ability.
But that wasn't the only reason.
RICH:
She was beginning to understand
what G.P. was teaching her--
that you don't stay in the
cheadlines forever for one deed.
That there must be
a continuing--
and accelerated almost-- series
in which you prove
again and again
and more so, if possible,
how good you are.
BATES:
But when Amelia announced
the Atlantic flight,
even she seemed to have trouble
believing she could do it.
I think I am ready
for a transatlantic hop.
I've chosen to use a plane
with which I am familiar,
having flown it
at least three years.
I think I couldn't have
undertaken this trip
unless I had confidence
in the plane, the engine
and perhaps my own experience.
How's the weather
now, Bert?
BATES:
Delayed for weeks
because of bad weather,
Amelia was ready to take off
from New Jersey.
G.P. arranged for newsreel
cameras to cover the takeoff.
Well, you're off.
Hey, how's it look
in there?
Everything is ready.
Good-bye.
Good-bye.
BATES:
Amelia was too embarrassed
to kiss G.P. good-bye,
so there was a second take.
Please don't
forget to phone
just the minute
you get there.
I will.
Good-bye.
So long.
♪ ♪
(propellers whirring)
BATES:
On the fifth anniversary
of Lindbergh's flight,
the Vega was ready.
Ten people had died
trying to cross the Atlantic
since Lindbergh,
and Earhart's mechanic thought
she had a one-in-a-hundred
chance of surviving.
A poem Amelia wrote
reveals her feelings
about taking such a risk.
"Courage is the price that life
exacts for granting peace.
"The soul that knows it not
"knows no release
from little things.
"Knows not the livid
loneliness of fear
"nor mountain heights
where bitter joy
can hear the sound of wings."
RICH:
She was four hours out
when she ran into a storm.
She would go high
and then the plane would ice.
Then she'd go down
until she could see the waves
to get the ice off.
She had no radio contact
with anyone.
The manifold on her engine broke
and the flames from the backfire
from it were coming out.
There was a gas gauge
over her head that began to leak
and the gasoline was dripping
down over her forehead
and into one eye.
BATES:
Earhart's navigation was off
and she almost missed
the northern tip of Ireland.
But after 15 hours in the air,
she landed safely in an
isolated field in Londonderry.
The next day, G.P. sent in
the newsreel cameras
and Amelia restaged her arrival.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Journey's end.
Here she is safe and sound
on a farm in Ireland,
having just completed
the first flight
by a woman across the Atlantic.
And here, the good farmer folk
Amelia gave the surprise
of their lives.
Those messages she holds
are congratulations
from all parts of the world.
BATES:
In London, Paris and Rome,
Earhart was a sensation.
Everywhere she went,
she was treated like royalty.
G.P. met Amelia in Paris.
Thousands of spectators
lined the route to her hotel
and others shouted
below her balcony
until she and G.P.
came out to greet them.
(cheering, applause)
In New York, the ticker tape
parade was for Amelia alone
and this time,
she deserved all the credit.
SINGER:
♪ You took a notion
to fly 'cross the ocean ♪
♪ Our American girl ♪
♪ Finding your way in the dark ♪
♪ American Joan of Arc ♪
♪ Everybody thinks
you're wonderful... ♪
VIDAL:
In the Depression,
people wanted idols, of course,
to distract them
from everyday reality.
Aviation was an alternative.
Aviation was literally heavenly
compared to what was
going on on earth,
so she was very much part of
that.
She showed what a woman could do
and that a woman
was no different from a man
when it came to flying
an airplane.
BATES:
Earhart's style
was a unique blend
of the masculine and feminine,
and it made her
enormously appealing.
(newsreel projector whirs)
♪ ♪
WARE:
The technology, I think,
that affected Amelia the most
was the newsreel.
They were like the movies;
they were still very new.
And for people to go
into a darkened movie theater
and see these images
from Paris or Ireland--
a place they had never been--
a lot of what Amelia did
was similar
to being a Hollywood star.
She tried to keep her name
before the public
and to keep them interested
in her, and they responded,
and that's very similar
to what a Katharine Hepburn
or a Bette Davis was doing.
BATES:
G.P. was now an executive
at Paramount Pictures.
He and Amelia
courted celebrities
because it was good business.
And business was
the name of the game.
To keep her name
on the front pages,
to finance her expensive flights
and to support
their lavish lifestyle,
Earhart depended
on the lecture circuit.
In a good week,
she could earn over $2,400,
the equivalent
of $30,000 a week today.
RICH:
It was a treadmill,
an unbelievable treadmill
of lecture after lecture,
night after night.
The ladies' committee
sometimes asked for breakfast,
certainly for lunch.
Then she gave a speech
that afternoon.
Then that night
to the Chamber of Commerce
she gave another speech, and
then back in the car at midnight
and on to the next town.
And this would go on
for four months in a row.
BATES:
Earhart had a strong
social conscience
and now used her fame
to promote her causes.
She preached pacifism
to the Daughters
of the American Revolution.
She spoke out on behalf
of commercial aviation,
even enlisting her good friend
Eleanor Roosevelt in the effort.
And everywhere she went,
Amelia crusaded for women.
I've had practical experience
and know the discrimination
against women
in various forms of industry.
A pilot's a pilot.
I hope that such equality could
be carried out in other fields
so that men and women
may achieve equally
in any endeavor they set out.
BATES:
There was precious little time
for her private life.
Whenever she could, she would
retreat to Rye, New York.
Amelia wrote to her mother,
"I am much happier
than I ever expected I could be.
I believe the whole thing
was for the best."
RICH:
They seem to have been--
at least for the first five
or six years of marriage--
a good match.
She seemed to find him
very attractive.
At the same time,
there was not the sort of warmth
that one expects
in a so-called happy marriage.
There wasn't evidence of it.
When Amelia and my grandfather
were in public,
they were very businesslike.
But the minute they stepped
inside their home,
they became a married couple.
She was caring and so was he,
but never in public.
♪ ♪
BATES:
By 1935, Earhart's public image
was losing its luster,
and the demand for her on the
lecture circuit was drying up.
In the winter,
she set a world record
flying from Hawaii
to the mainland.
Throngs of people waited
to greet her.
But Earhart and Putnam
were criticized by the press
for financing the flight
with money from Hawaiian
business interests.
BATES:
Emotionally and
physically exhausted,
Amelia was hospitalized
with a severe sinus infection
and then bedridden for weeks
with back problems.
RICH:
Earhart was a truly...
a frail woman all of her life,
assailed by a considerable
amount of illness
and that it was sheer willpower
that kept her going.
Always when she flew,
she was sick to her stomach.
She was delicate.
I christen thee Resolute.
(bottle shattering)
MAN:
You're all right that time.
MAN: You get better every time!
(laughter)
BATES:
When she recovered,
Amelia went back to work
and to whatever publicity stunts
she and G.P. could manufacture.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Something really new--
a captive parachute
and famous Amelia Earhart
is going to make her first jump.
BATES:
Though Amelia certainly
didn't need another record,
she just couldn't stop.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER:
Look out below!
(Earhart screams)
I think there was a certain
amount of insecurity in her,
and a determination
to prove herself
to herself and to the world.
And I think she used flying
to accomplish that,
but I don't think she was
ever really satisfied.
I don't think there was ever
a flight that made her feel
like she had done everything
she needed to be for herself.
BATES:
In 1936, Amelia Earhart
announced
the most ambitious flight
of her life.
The contemplated course covers
about 27,000 miles.
It will be the first flight,
if successful,
which approximates the equator.
Indeed, I cross the equator
four times.
I hope to fly from Oakland to
Honolulu, then Howland Island,
then to the northern tip
of Australia...
BATES:
Whatever her motives
for taking this flight,
Amelia Earhart wanted it
to be her last.
"I have the feeling
"there's just one more
good flight left in my system,
and I hope this is it,"
Amelia told a good friend.
"It is my swan song as far
as record flying is concerned,
my frosting on the cake."
TROUT:
She had to make this world
flight for the record-- one.
Next is she could have made
enough on that flight
from the advertising
and all that,
she wouldn't have had to work
anymore during her lifetime.
BATES:
The world flight was
an expensive undertaking.
The plane alone cost
a staggering $80,000.
G.P. was able to raise
most of the money
from Purdue University
in Indiana,
where Earhart was
an aviation advisor
and a career counselor to women.
The Lockheed Electra was the
most advanced aircraft to date.
It was overhauled
for the long flight
by replacing the passenger seats
with extra fuel tanks.
To deflect criticism that this
flight was a self-serving stunt,
Earhart presented her Electra
as a laboratory
for aviation research.
It's a real flying laboratory,
equipped with the latest
of instruments
and I hope to accomplish
something really worthwhile
in aviation scientifically.
I hope the experiments
will include altitude flying
and also long-distance work.
It had no scientific value.
It had... all of the legs of it
had been flown
at one time or another.
The airplane was certainly
tested and retested
and had been flown commercially,
so there was no
real reason for it
but, again, G.P. could see
the publicity value of it.
BATES:
Amelia and G.P. needed all
the publicity they could get.
With few aviation records
left to break,
Earhart had to work
harder and harder.
In addition to preparing
for the world flight,
she was supervising
the construction
of a lavish new house
in Hollywood,
campaigning for Roosevelt,
and promoting a new franchise,
Amelia Earhart luggage.
RICH:
There was a lack of focus
in this whole undertaking,
and the longer it went on--
the preparations went on--
the more unfocused she became.
She was physically
and emotionally exhausted,
which had much to do
with the failure of it.
She... she simply was not
preparing properly for it.
VIDAL:
It's hard work
being Amelia Earhart,
and eventually,
it's monotonous work.
It is the same number
you must play
and some people get tired
of their own legends.
I don't think she was eager
to take that flight.
She was pretty sick of it all.
She was certainly sick of G.P.,
her husband,
who was constantly pushing her.
Right after that he had a--
I don't know--
a lecture tour for her.
He had this, he had that.
She was to endorse 32 products.
I mean, she was like a rock star
and she was being pushed
and pushed and pushed.
I think it's believed
that she was the pilot
and he was the pushy promoter,
but in fact she was an equal
part of this business team.
She knew what she wanted,
she knew the flights she wanted
to take,
she knew the sponsors
she wanted to get,
and between the two of them
they accomplished it.
♪ ♪
BATES:
From the outset,
Amelia had imagined this flight
as a solo adventure,
but in the course
of preparation,
she realized that
she would need a navigator,
especially for the most
dangerous leg of the trip--
a 2,500-mile journey across
the Pacific to Howland Island,
a tiny atoll
only a mile and a half wide.
Brad Washburn was interviewed
for the job.
WASHBURN:
Amelia spread all her maps
out on the floor
and G.P. sat down,
like I'm sitting here,
and we were...
we were on the floor in
front of him with all these maps
and we chatted our way all
the way around the world almost.
When she began to describe
her long flight, as I recollect
it was a couple of thousand
miles to Howland Island.
You've got to remember
that Howland Island--
as I recollect,
I wish I had a map of it here,
but I have a pretty good visual
picture of the damn thing--
and it was a little sliver
about a mile and a quarter long
and very narrow.
You either hit Howland Island
or you don't hit nothing.
♪ ♪
BATES:
Earhart planned
to hit Howland Island
using a compass course
and celestial navigation,
but for such a long flight
over water out of reach of land,
new, sophisticated
radio equipment
would also be essential.
RICH:
She did not like
radio communication.
There's absolutely
no doubt about it.
She not only
didn't bother to learn it,
but she didn't really
find it necessary.
There is a hint here of the ego
that all great explorers
and adventurers have.
They have a certain faith
that they're going to make it.
BATES:
Ultimately, Earhart assembled
a stellar team.
She hired stunt pilot
and friend Paul Mantz
as her technical advisor,
Harry Manning,
an experienced marine navigator
and expert radio man,
and Fred Noonan, formerly
a navigator with Pan Am.
On March 20, 1937,
Earhart and the crew
started to take off from Hawaii
on the first leg
of the world flight.
But at the far end
of the runway,
Amelia lost control
of the plane.
The Electra crashed.
RICH:
After she cracked up the plane
in Honolulu,
she felt fear
for the first time, definitely.
The immensity of the project
suddenly hit her.
She knew that if she lost
that plane or failed in this,
they were dead broke,
both of them.
♪ ♪
BATES:
George and Amelia were under
a great deal of strain.
There were rumors the marriage
was falling apart.
Amelia even confided
to several friends
that she was fed up with G.P.
But a letter he wrote to her
leaves a different impression.
"We both recognize the hazards,
and I love you dearly.
"I don't want you to run risks
and I don't want to run the risk
"of perhaps having to go on
without you--
"that makes me terribly
sorry for myself!
"(Entirely disregarding
your end of it!)
"But gosh, once this is
out of your hair,
"what a very happy,
interesting time we can have.
We can have it, too, should you
for any reason decide to quit."
But Earhart didn't quit.
Together, Amelia and G.P.
raised $34,000
to repair the damaged Electra.
Because of changing
weather conditions,
they had to map out a new route
and rearrange visas, landing
permissions, and ground crews
in more than 20 countries.
And then there were problems
with the crew.
Harry Manning, the only one with
radio experience, dropped out,
some say because he had
lost faith in Amelia.
Fred Noonan would now be
Earhart's navigator.
He was the best in the business,
but he was also a heavy drinker.
Throughout the planning
of the flight,
G.P. and Paul Mantz,
Earhart's technical advisor,
constantly argued over money.
A few days before departure,
Mantz was edged out.
That left G.P.,
who knew nothing about flying,
in charge of the preparations.
With Mantz gone,
Amelia made several
critical decisions on her own.
She chose not to take
a vital piece of equipment--
a trailing wire antenna
that she found awkward to use.
She also left behind
her Morse code key,
because she'd never learned
to operate it properly.
Some of Amelia's friends,
concerned about
her mental state,
advised her not to go forward
with the flight.
WASHBURN:
This whole array
of information, on the one hand,
and what she did with it,
and how she ignored so many
fundamentally important things
made you really think
that she was...
was pathologically optimistic.
♪ ♪
BATES:
Before the flight,
Amelia and George spent the day
with his son
and daughter-in-law.
CHAP:
Mom and Dad
and Grandpa George and Amelia
had been together
the night before,
they were staying
in the same hotel together.
They got in the car together
and they drove to the airport,
and she said it was very quiet.
They touched each other a lot,
they held hands--
it was a very tender time.
BATES:
The morning of June 1, 1937,
Earhart and Fred Noonan
took off from Miami.
At the last minute,
Amelia left behind
her parachute, her life raft,
and even her good luck charm,
an elephant hair bracelet.
♪ ♪
For six days,
she flew along the coast
of Central and South America
and then across
the South Atlantic to Africa.
Gore Vidal recalls talking
to Amelia beforehand
about that part of the flight.
VIDAL:
She was showing us the flight
and I said, "What part
bothers you the most?"
"Oh," she said, "Africa.
"That terrifies me.
"If you were forced down
in those jungles
they would never find you."
And there's a lot of--
when you look at the equator,
there's an awful lot of Africa.
It's very fat.
And I said, "Well,
what about the Pacific?
That's even fatter."
And she said,
"You can't miss an island,
no matter where you are
at that latitude."
BATES:
Earhart flew over Africa
without incident
and continued over Arabia
to Karachi and Calcutta.
She fought monsoons that beat
the paint off her airplane
en route to Singapore.
Then, in Java,
she took a short rest
before flying on to Australia,
and finally to Lae, New Guinea.
This would be her last stop
before the long Pacific leg
to Howland Island.
Amelia called the "Herald
Tribune" office in New York,
where G.P. and Gene Vidal
were waiting to hear from her.
VIDAL:
Well, just the night before the
final flight, she reported in
and they had a code phrase
"personnel problems,"
which meant Noonan
was back drinking.
And my father said, "Just stop
it right now and come home."
And G.P. agreed and said,
"Come back, abort the flight,
forget it, come home."
And then she said, "Oh, no."
And, "I think it'll be all
right," something like that.
So you may put that
down to invincible optimism,
or it may have been, uh...
huge pessimism.
RICH:
By the time Amelia
arrived in Lae,
which was almost three quarters
of her entire journey,
she had been flying
for more than 40 days,
she'd had five hours
of sleep a night,
uh, she had had stomach attacks
and more and more attacks
of diarrhea.
She was totally, totally
run down, but so hopeful by then
that perhaps if she could
just make it to Howland,
everything would be all right.
♪ ♪
BATES:
On July 2, 1937,
Earhart and Noonan took off
from Lae, New Guinea.
(engine puttering)
♪ ♪
Only luck could guide them
to Howland Island.
She had no Morse code key
or trailing wire antenna.
Celestial navigation
wouldn't help,
because the location of Howland
Island on her charts was off
by five and a half miles.
And neither she nor Noonan knew
much about radio communication.
This was fundamentally
her downfall--
that if either she
or that navigator
should have known a lot
about radio.
She'd never been as dependent
on these other flights on radio.
Remember, if you fly to Europe
or fly from Europe to United
States, you can't get lost.
But there's something very,
very lonely about that Pacific.
BATES:
Standing off Howland Island was
the Coast Guard cutter Itasca,
waiting to provide
radio assistance.
But there had been
a serious lack of communication
between Earhart, G.P.
and the Coast Guard
about which frequency she should
use to talk to the ship.
In the end, they could hear her,
but she could never hear them.
The Itasca logs indicate
that Amelia and Noonan came
very close to Howland Island
on the morning of July 2,
but could not find it.
At 7:42, she radioed, "We must
be on you, but cannot see you,
"but gas is running low.
Been unable to reach you
by radio."
Minutes later, another report:
"Calling Itasca.
We are circling
but cannot hear you."
At 8:43, Amelia's voice,
shrill and breathless:
"We are on the line 157.337.
"We will repeat message.
"We will repeat.
We are running on line
north and south."
The Coast Guard
continued to listen
and to transmit
on every possible frequency,
but her voice
was not heard again.
Amelia Earhart never arrived
at Howland Island,
where a cabin and a bed
had been prepared for her.
♪ ♪
MORSE:
All we had was what appeared
in the papers
and on the radio.
And... I remember
sitting up at night
and listening
and listening and listening.
BATES:
Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan
were the object
of the most extensive search
ever mounted for a lost plane.
The government sent ten ships
and 65 airplanes
to comb the Pacific
for more than two weeks.
George Putnam,
using his own money,
frantically continued
to look for Amelia
long after the government
had stopped,
but three weeks before her
40th birthday, Amelia was gone.
VIDAL:
Amelia Earhart came
of humble birth,
and it was rather startling
that she would make
this huge leap into glory,
and in a man's world
and in a man's field,
and she was beloved for that.
But it was...
it was the disappearance of
Amelia that created the legend,
combined with the whole--
what they call
"the gospel of flight"--
so she's part
of these divine beings
and one of the divine beings
vanishes over the Pacific.
Well, that is the stuff
of legend.
BATES:
Amelia Earhart lived
as if she were invincible,
yet an unfinished poem
reveals her clear understanding
that death was never far away.
"Merciless life laughs
in the burning sun.
And only death,
slow circling down."
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
Next time, she shot to stardom.
MAN:
She never missed.
NARRATOR:
And became an American icon.
WOMAN:
There's never been anybody
like Annie Oakley.
WOMAN:
This sweet person,
but with this big bang gun.
(gunshot)
NARRATOR:
But at the height
of her popularity,
scandal threatened
to bring her down.
"Annie Oakley," next time,
on "American Experience."
ANNOUNCER:
Made possible in part
by Liberty Mutual Insurance.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪