The high-flying life, and love of ‘it’ girl adventurer Amelia Earhart

She was the first woman to fly over the Atlantic Ocean, and the first to accomplish that feat solo. 

She was a superstar, the most famous woman in the world. She was a pilot, “it” girl, author, adventurer, fashion designer, evangelist and martyr all in one. Her mysterious and shocking disappearance over the Pacific Ocean in 1937, while attempting to fly around the world, only heightened her legend.

Nearly 100 years after her first transatlantic flight, she’s still the most famous aviatrix who ever lived: a feminist hero and inspiration to little girls (and boys) everywhere who dream of a daring life.

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She’s Amelia Earhart. But, as Laurie Gwen Shapiro reveals in a new biography, there’s a lot about her that we don’t know.

“More people have gotten Amelia Earhart wrong than perhaps any other person in the last century,” Shapiro writes in her new book, “The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon” (Viking, July 15). 

“Wrong ‘facts’ about every single aspect of her life. Wrong conclusions about her personality, her career, her goals, her sexuality. And her disappearance.”

Shapiro’s 450-page tome paints a more complicated portrait of the pilot — specifically through the lens of her controversial relationship with her manager, publisher and (eventual) husband, George Putnam. 

Known as the P.T. Barnum of book publishing, Putnam made Earhart into a star: He chose her to fly across the Atlantic as the first woman to make the journey by plane — and to have her write about it.

He got her lucrative endorsement deals and speaking gigs. He taught her to close her mouth for pictures to hide the gap between her teeth and advised her on her insouciant tousled hairdo, telling her to cut her bob shorter so she resembled famous pilot Charles Lindbergh. 

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He relentlessly promoted her and talked her up to the press. He blew up his marriage to a wealthy heiress for her.

Yet Putnam notoriously pushed his authors to extreme lengths for the sake of publicity and sales. And he took special advantage of Earhart’s easygoing, eager-to-please nature. He overscheduled her, booking her for endless talks and galas throughout the country.

He scoffed at her need to practice flying and gain proper training and skills. (She was supposed to be the best pilot ever, he reasoned, why would she need more training!) He encouraged her recklessness, setting up dangerous stunts for a quick buck or a sensational headline. 

Earhart went along with it. On one hand, she was fiercely independent; a staunch feminist, she insisted that she and Putnam keep their finances separate and their marriage open after she finally accepted his proposal. Yet she let him control her time, her obligations and her public image. And she seemed, despite his oafishness, to love him.

His rapaciousness catapulted Earhart into the stratosphere. Did it also cause her downfall?

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All Amelia Earhart knew when she arrived at George Putnam’s office in the spring of 1928 was that someone in New York City wanted to talk with her about a possible flying venture.

The 31-year-old Atchison, Kan., native had fallen in love with aviation while volunteering with the Red Cross in a Toronto hospital during World War I. There, she befriended some officers from the Royal Flying Corps.

Watching her pilot friends in the air thrilled her. “Despite my long hours, I made time for the flying fields,” she wrote. “[The pilots’] youth, their charisma, those takeoffs — it all left an impression.”

In 1921 — after a stint at Columbia University in New York City — she moved to Los Angeles and began taking flying lessons, scrimping and saving every penny she made through odd jobs, including driving a Mack truck, which horrified her Victorian mother. 

Earhart, it seems, had several suitors during her time in California, including a long-suffering fiancé who followed her to Boston. But she was more interested in reaching new heights than in settling down.

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She continued her aerial adventures on the East Coast, exhibiting a flair for promotion. A photo of her soaring over Boston while air-dropping admission passes to a carnival at the settlement house where she worked made the local papers. While performing in “air rodeos” out West, she cultivated her uniform: sleeping in her leather jacket to achieve the perfect amount of rugged cool.

Putnam, meanwhile, was looking for his next bestseller. The publisher had previously struck gold commissioning (usually ghostwritten) memoirs from Arctic explorers, intrepid Boy Scouts and other adventurers embarking on life-threatening journeys. Now, he was on the hunt for a woman for a secret flying mission across the Atlantic — and the publishing rights to her tale. 

Earhart wasn’t the best pilot, but she had innate charisma, passion and drive. She also was striking, lissome with almond-shaped eyes and a wide, inviting smile. She combined an all-American earnestness (she didn’t drink and rarely smoked) with the liberated mind and fashion sense of the modern Jazz Age woman. The married Putnam was smitten.

As his friend who arranged the meeting recalled years later: “It was love at first sight.”

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Earhart, along with pilot Wilmer Stultz and mechanic and co-pilot Louis Gordon, set off to Europe on June 3, 1928. The press went wild.

They wanted to know everything about this intrepid female flier, tracking down her family members and her on-again-off-again fiancé — much to Putnam’s surprise. After they had to land in Newfoundland, due to weather, the trio made it to Wales on June 5. 

Earhart was celebrated and feted, but it was a bittersweet moment. She did not get to touch the controls of the plane even once — and, maybe more embarrassing, she realized that if she had, she did not possess the skill to maneuver a heavy aircraft in such rough conditions. 

Worse, writes Shapiro, she felt like a “faker” due to “George’s excessive promotion of her as a pilot.” She resolved to really work on her flying skills when she got back home. 

Yet, Putnam had other plans. He had her go to England, where she borrowed fancy gowns and went to endless parties, meeting Winston Churchill and Lady Astor. Then, once back in the States, he had her stay at his family’s house in Rye, NY, to work on her book. He also booked her for appearances and conferences and took her out to eat and to the theater — often with his wife. 

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Even after the book was published, Putnam made sure Earhart did everything but fly. He got her an aviation column for Cosmopolitan magazine. He secured endorsement deals for Lucky Strike. He had her launch her own fashion, stationary and luggage lines. Even after they married, in 1931, he continued taking a 10% commission on all the endorsements and speaking engagements. 

“We thought he was taking advantage of Amelia,” one friend said. “She was his meal ticket.”

When she set out to do the Atlantic crossing again, this time by herself, many of her colleagues worried. Yet, in 1932, she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic solo. Maybe Earhart wasn’t just really brave. Maybe she was becoming a really great pilot.

Earhart famously died in 1937 while attempting to make her most spectacular flight yet — around the world on her own. Before that fateful flight, Shapiro recounts, the 39-year-old pilot told a reporter, ironically, that she had one fear: “growing old.”