Amelia Earhart (1897--1937), the aviatrix who broke records and hearts, had an aerodynamic "shingle" bob and a streamlined figure. She was built for the speed, altitude and endurance records she set. Given her celebrity during her lifetime and her influence on the pilots, male and female, who flew in her slipstream, it's curious that her first fullscale big-screen biography is Mira Nair's barnstormer Amelia (opening October 23), starring a weedy Hilary Swank. (Pictured, right, next to the real-life Earhart.) Maybe this is Earhart 's renaissance year, as she also figured (played by Amy Adams) in A Night at the Museum 2: The Battle for the Smithsonian earlier in 2009.
Though Earhart was the subject of two movies-of-the-week, Amelia Earhart (1976) with Susan Clark and Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight (1994) with Diane Keaton, her life was more often the stuff of fictionalized accounts of modern adventuresses. Most famous was Dorothy Arzner's Christopher Strong (1933) with Katharine Hepburn as Lady Cynthia, a dashing aviatrix who gets involved with a married member of Parliament and contrives a unique way to put an end to the affair. (Memorably, Hepburn dons a sleek silvery jumpsuit that makes her resemble a moth drawn to the flame of love.) There was also Women in the Wind (1939) with Kay Francis as the flier trying to earn prize money to pay for her brother's surgery. After Earhart's demise, Rosalind Russell played an Amelia-inspired pilot lost in the South Pacific while doing covert intelligence work for the U.S. Navy.
I'm guessing that this year's Earhart revival has less to do with the aviatrix than it does with filmmakers -- such as Anne Fontaine who directed Audrey Tautou in Coco Before Chanel and Nora Ephron who helmed Meryl Streep in the Julia Child film Julie & Julia -- interested in 20th-century heroines who trailblazed new careers for women. Your thoughts?
Carrie, I'm too cynical about Hollywood: my guess is that someone saw how Scorcese's "The Aviator" did OK box office and garnered Oscar nominations and thought, hey, I need to make an historical aviation film, who's left???— jonc- I think it's just a good story that allows freedom in story telling because it's a mystery-biography. And it's a quasi-remake, which Hollywood loves. I must say I don't like the way Hilary Swank looks at all. Just so fake.— ccjroberts
- Swank did another recent movie about a "20th-century heroine who trailblazed new careers for women," to use your words: the really terrific HBO bio-pic, "Iron Jawed Angels" (2004), about Alice Paul's efforts to secure the vote for women in America. I thoroughly enjoyed that one, would be happy if "Amelia" is anywhere near as good, and find the prospect of more interesting movies about trailblazing 20th century women to be an exciting one. From your description, it sounds as though the Katherine Hepburn movie, "Christopher Strong," was probably also a fictionalized account of Amy Johnson, a famous English flyer of the period, who was the first to fly from London to Moscow in one day (along with her husband, a fellow aviator). She died while serving her country in World War II.— wwolfe
- Wwolfe: Thanks for reminding us of "Iron-Jawed Angels," a terrific movie. Alice Paul was an admirer of Earhart's efforts to bring women into aviation.— carrierickey
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