Amelia Earhart

Universal TV film directed by George Schaefer (Pendulum), filmed by Ted Voigtlander (Little House in the Prairie), written by Carol Sobieski (Sunshine) and produced by George Eckstein (Banacek), with a music by David Shire (Saturday Night Fever), the first of the several biopics about the American aviatrix Amelia Earhart, after the fictionalized 1943 Flight for Freedom.

The film opens on her first failed world tour attempt in Hawaii. Then we jump from time to time and place to place to explore her full life, with her youth and years of apprenticeship before fame. In this beginning of the 20th century, in Kansas, the young Amelia (as a child Kim Diamond, Pete's Dragon) plays the daredevil with her younger and more reserved sister Pidge (the child Elizabeth Cheshire, The Family Holvak).

Now grown up, Amelia (Susan Clark, Skullduggery) has still her complicity with Pidge (Catherine Burns, Red Sky at Morning), and shows her volunteer spirit by serving as a nurse for WW1 wounded soldiers in Canada. She begins medicine studies in New York, but has also to take care of her family now in California, alongside a drunk but comprehensive father (Charles Aidman, Kotch) and a caring but traditional mother (Jane Wyatt, Lost Horizon). Could she find there the occasion to found her own family with her boyfriend Allen (Kip Niven, Midway)?

Amelia decides rather to start learning to fly with the pioneer Neta Snook (Susan Oliver, Ginger in the Morning). There she watches the acrobatics of the pilot Paul Mantz (Stephen Macht, Raid on Entebbe). The aerial sequences of the film are staged by the actual former Mantz's colleague Frank Tallman (It's a mad mad mad mad world).

Amelia's breakthrough comes in 1927, when while working in Boston as a social worker for Miss Perkins (Florida Friebus, Miles to Go Before I Sleep), captain Railey (Robert Ridgely, The Great Lester Boggs), the publisher George Putnam (John Forsythe, Topaz) and his communication partner Sid (Ed Barth, Thunder and Lightning) propose her to "sell her to the American public" as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. She takes off with her copilots Billy Stultz (Jack Colvin, The Incredible Hulk) and Slim Gordon (Steve Kanaly, My Name is Nobody). Will their attempt be successful?

So it's Amelia's career which takes off, flying now from record to new record, "pushing back the frontiers". Her sponsor Putnam proposes to marry her, as "a husband who has enough power to keep her in the machinery she wants". What should be such a relationship for a free woman? A real marriage or a mere partnership? Should she rather get involved in a love affair with the seducing Paul?

At the top of her glory, Amelia has to make her final choices of life. Should she, having "nothing more to prove" as "the First Lady of the Sky", settle down at last as a flying instructor to pass on her own experience? But George pushes her forward by offering her a new Lockheed monoplane, "a flying laboratory", to attempt for 1937 a world tour "on the longest way along the Equator". After the first failed occasion of the prologue, Amelia starts again from California to Miami with her navigator Fred Noonan (Bill Vint, The Other Side of the Mountain), "risking all to attempt what has never been done before".

Amelia and Fred arrive at Lae, in the Australian Territory of New Guinea, while George and Paul stay in Oakland to follow their journey. But Paul is reluctant as he thinks the essay is not sufficiently well technically prepared. They advise Amelia she should postpone to wait for further communication equipements. As the monsoon approaches, will Amelia accept to delay her flight? Will she be able to reach the tiny Howland island in the very middle of the great Pacific? Will she be able to communicate with the US Coast Guard ship led by its Commander (Jack Bannon, Little Big Man), whose radio operator (David Huffman, The Onion Field) is due to guide her properly?

The movie is interesting, played by compelling actors, managing to get thrill through these historical events. It portrays a free woman whose ideas were in advance for her time, criticized then for being "an example of the disintegrating moral fiber of American womanhood", just wanting in fact to fly for "the fun of it", to reach "a fierce and wild happiness", and to realize herself, "enjoying the challenge of life", through her own accomplishments.

My memory spanning 23 years recalls Susan Clark doing fairly well in this bio of Amelia Earhart. In as much as I haven't seen a rerun of this film, and I have seen other bio films about Amelia, I cannot comment much more except I thought it pretty good at the time. I'll try to follow my own advice and try to see this one again. I gave it an 8.

This 1976 TV movie, not surprisingly, is not as good as "Amelia" (2009), and it is a bit too long, but it does a decent job. The TV movie tries to cover more of the famous flyer's life than "Amelia" does, and so one may learn some additional information from the older movie, especially about Earhart's childhood. The acting in the TV movie is pretty good, and the airplane scenes are better than you might expect from a TV movie of the time.

Interestingly, the TV movie portrays George Putnam in a less flattering light than the 2009 movie (with the Richard Gere role being played here by John Forsythe of "Dynasty" and "Charlie's Angels" fame). Also, the TV movie replaces "Amelia's" focus on secondary male lead of Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor) with flying instructor Paul Mantz (Stephen Macht). I've written more about the 2009 movie on my website (www.chimesfreedom.com). I'm not sure which movie is more accurate about the personal relationships, but if you're looking to watch an interesting movie, I'd recommend "Amelia" over the TV movie. But if you're curious about learning more after watching that movie, check out this movie too.

Outstanding biography teaming John Forsythe and Susan Clark in the title roles of the producer, twice married, who took a chance and married the famous aviator.

Both give tremendous performances and this was certainly one of Forsyth's greatest triumphs in his professional career. He sure came a long way from "Bachelor Father."

Clark has the right spirit and is consumed in passion for her desire to fly early on in life. She makes a complex character come alive in a totally mesmerizing performance. This woman was certainly ahead of her time with regard to her ideas about the roles of women in life and in particular marriage.

With a wonderful supporting cast, this film is memorable. It dealt correctly with her tragic disappearance in 1937 since we never knew exactly what happened. Did she see something that imperial Japan didn't want her to see and pay for it with her life? No one shall ever know.