Amelia Earhart | |
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TV Guide promotional photo
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Genre | Biography Drama |
Written by | Carol Sobieski |
Directed by | George Schaefer |
Starring |
Susan Clark John Forsythe Stephen Macht Jane Wyatt |
Music by | David Shire |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language(s) | English |
Production | |
Producer(s) | George Eckstein |
Location(s) |
Pope Valley, California (airport) Camarillo Airport - 555 Airport Way, Camarillo, California Goat Rock Beach, California |
Cinematography | Ted Voigtlander |
Editor(s) | Jim Benson |
Running time | 150 minutes |
Production company(s) | Universal Television |
Distributor | NBC |
Release | |
Original network | NBC |
Original release | October 25, 1976 |
Amelia Earhart is a 1976 American three-hour made-for-television biographical film starring Susan Clark and John Forsythe and directed by George Schaefer. Unlike more recent depictions of Earhart's life, this film makes an attempt to cover her entire life from her childhood on a Kansas farm, her nursing during World War I, an early boyfriend, employment at a Boston children's orphanage, her interest and exploits in aviation, her marriage to publisher G.P. Putnam and her famous disappearance in 1937.
The film was the first dramatization of Earhart's life and co-starred a parade of well-known actors of the time and originally premiered on NBC Monday Night at the Movies on October 25, 1976.
In 1907, when Amelia Earhart was nine years old growing up on a Kansas farm, she was an intelligent, precocious child and builds a play aircraft with her sister "Pidge". Later, as America enters World War I in 1917, Amelia is a college student, working in a doctor's office. She decides to join the war effort and become a nurse. One night on the roof of her building, while on break with a coworker, she sees an aircraft which re-sparks her childhood interest in aviation. In 1921, young Earhart (Susan Clark) has her first training flight, with female flight instructor, Neta Snook (Susan Oliver). That same year she buys her first aircraft, a Kinner "Canary" with the blessing of her father(Charles Aidman) who has become a chronic alcoholic. In 1924, she and her mother (Jane Wyatt) drive from coast to coast, Los Angeles to Boston, in an open roadster, arguing some of the way. In Boston Earhart has an off-and-on relationship with a young man and later goes to work in a children's orphanage. What little money she saves subsidizes her flying.
In 1928, while in employ at the orphanage, Earhart is invited to become the first woman ever to fly the Atlantic in an aircraft, the Fokker "Friendship", albeit as a passenger, while pilot Wilmer Stultz (Jack Colvin) and copilot Lou Gordon (Steve Kanaly) are at the controls. That same year she flies her Avro Avian biplane in a coast-to-coast, stop-and-go flight where some southern locals recognize her from the transatlantic Friendship flight. Her marriage to media tycoon George Palmer Putnam (John Forsythe) and a series of record-breaking flights, propel her to international fame as a long-distance flyer. Despite her open and frequently strained relationship with Putnam, she develops a close relationship with his son David (Lance Kerwin). With help from a close friend and adviser, Paul Mantz (Stephen Macht), Earhart plans her longest flight ever, a round-the-world attempt in 1937. The disappearance of Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan (Bill Vint) during the last stage of the flight, leads to a massive search effort that eventually proves fruitless, but solidifies Earhart as an aviation icon.