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 (1944). After serving in the U.S. Navy, Noonan made his film debut in "George White's Scandals" (1945). He teamed with Peter Marshall to form a comedy team in the late 1940s. The team's performances were limited because they continued their individual careers, "working together only when both were available at the same time". Working as Noonan and Marshall, they appeared on television, nightclubs, and in the films "Starlift" (1951), "FBI Girl" (1951) (in a brief appearance), "The Rookie" (1959), and "Swingin' Along" (1962). The duo went their separate ways after the release of "Swingin' Along". In 1953, Noonan appeared in