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
Fred Noonan in "The 37s", an episode of "". The character of an aircraft pilot named Fred Noonan is portrayed by actor Eddie Firestone in "The Long Train", a 1961 episode of the television series "The Untouchables". Both a baseball stadium and an aircraft rental agency are named after Fred Noonan. A 1990 episode of "Unsolved Mysteries" featured Mark Stitham as Noonan. In addition, Rutger Hauer has portrayed Noonan in the TV movie "" (1994) starring Diane Keaton, and Christopher Eccleston portrayed Noonan in the 2009 biographical movie "Amelia" (2009). It is also possible that the character of Freddy Noonan in the