Amelia Earhart the aircraft came close. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by." By 1919 Earhart prepared to enter Smith College but changed her mind and enrolled at Columbia University, in a course in medical studies among other programs. She quit a year later to be with her parents, who had reunited in California. In Long Beach, on December 28, 1920, Earhart and her father visited an airfield where Frank Hawks (who later gained fame as an air racer) gave her a ride that
Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight as her husband George Putnam. In 1928, Amelia Earhart gains fame by undertaking a transatlantic flight, albeit as a passenger. Her marriage to media tycoon George Palmer Putnam and a series of record-breaking flights propel her to international fame as a long-distance flyer. With help from a close friend and adviser, Paul Mantz, Earhart and her navigator, the hard-drinking Fred Noonan, undertake her longest flight ever: a round-the-world attempt in 1937. The airplane disappears, and a massive search effort is unsuccessful, but solidifies Earhart as an aviation icon. As appearing in screen credits (main roles identified): Cast overview, first billed