Fred Noonan an interest in starting a navigation school. In March, he divorced his wife, Josie, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Two weeks later, he married Mary Beatrice Martinelli (born Passadori) of Oakland, California. Noonan was rumored to be a heavy drinker. That was fairly common during this era and there is no contemporary evidence Noonan was an alcoholic, although decades later, a few writers and others made some hearsay claims that he was. Amelia Earhart met Noonan through mutual connections in the Los Angeles aviation community and chose him to serve as her navigator on her World Flight in the Lockheed Electra
Tommy Noonan half-brother of actor John Ireland. Noonan was the son of Michael James Noonan and Grace Ferguson. His father was a vaudeville comedian and a native of Galway County, Ireland. His mother, a piano teacher, was from Glasgow, Scotland. He attended New York University. In 1934, Noonan and Ireland made their stage debuts with a New York-based experimental theater. They later appeared together in three films, including "I Shot Jesse James" (1949). Noonan had a repertory company of his own prior to World War II. On Broadway, Noonan appeared in "How to Make a Man" (1960) and "Men to the Sea"