In the 1920s, in “The Crack-Up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald declared, people “thought of their old best dreams. Maybe there was a way out by flying, maybe our restless blood could find frontiers in the illimitable air.”
Born in 1897 in Atchison, Kan. — a small town with limited opportunities, especially for women — Amelia Earhart decided aviation could satisfy her restless blood. In 1928, she became the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an airplane.
Four years later, Earhart cemented her status as a national celebrity by becoming the first woman to make a solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic. In 1937, during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe, she disappeared near Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean. Neither her plane nor her body has ever been found, fueling speculation about her fate that continues to this day.
In “The Aviator And The Showman,” Laurie Gwen Shapiro, a journalist, documentary filmmaker and author of “The Stowaway,” revisits Earhart’s life through the lens of her relationship with publisher George Putnam. A charming, charismatic and well-connected promoter, he brought a slew of bestsellers to G.P. Putnam’s Sons, including, “We,” Charles Lindbergh’s account of his flight from New York to Paris.
“The Aviator And The Showman” is, alas, not well-written. And a more attentive editor might have pruned digressions about, for example, Newfoundlanders’ favorite foods, the carved wooden chest George gave Amelia and the couple’s attendance at movie premieres. Most important, Shapiro relies heavily on interviews with acquaintances, friends and family members — often conducted decades after Amelia disappeared — whose claims are difficult or impossible to confirm.
Shapiro’s Putnam is a cad and a con man. Married when he met Amelia, he was — and remained — a narcissistic adulterer. According to an author of a book Putnam published, George was ”always calculating, always figuring out how to make use of people, always with a commercial end in mind." Elinor Smith, an aviator, deemed him an egomaniacal liar.
Familiar with Amelia’s assertion that George would “do anything he thinks will protect my interests,” Smith maintained that there’s a difference “between protecting interests and sick and twisted intimidation.” “Many would agree today,” Shapiro adds. Acknowledging that Putnam was genuinely devoted to Earhart, Shapiro suggests that he pushed her to make what turned out to be her last flight, in anticipation of a big pay day, even though she wasn’t adequately prepared.
The relationship between Putnam and Earhart, Shapiro demonstrates, “was a complex mix of love, tension, and mutual ambition.” A decade older than Amelia, George may have been a father figure for her, Shapiro speculates. Muriel Earhart maintained that her sister loved him, but also believed the marriage would “allow her to keep flying.”
