‘The Aviator and the Showman' Review: A Marriage in the Clouds
Earhart, who disappeared during an attempt to fly around the world in 1937, has long been admired as a trailblazing feminist. But as Laurie Gwen Shapiro, a journalist and filmmaker, shows in 'The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage That Made an American Icon,' this free spirit owed much of her success to the complicated ministrations of a man.
Putnam, a top executive in his family's publishing empire, plucked Earhart out of obscurity in the spring of 1928 when she was toiling away as a Boston social worker. While Earhart had received her pilot's license in 1923, she was still only a fledgling aviatrix. But as the publicity-savvy Putnam understood, if she were willing to accompany a male pilot on a flight across the Atlantic, he could likely turn her into a bestselling author, as he had done with Charles Lindbergh a year earlier.
Putnam's plan worked spectacularly well. That fall, a mere few months after her nearly 21-hour trans-Atlantic flight touched down in Wales, the ghostwritten book by the first female passenger to fly across the pond became a sensation. Putnam then helped Earhart relocate to Manhattan, where he got her a job at Cosmopolitan as the author of ghostwritten columns. While Earhart appreciated his efforts to boost her profile, she was also embarrassed by the sudden flurry of media attention. As she quipped about her widely celebrated 1928 flight: 'I'm just baggage.'
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Washington Post
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Associated Press
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CBS News
5 hours ago
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