♪ ♪
(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.
