Significant Others - George Palmer Putnam

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Significant Others, a podcast that takes a look at the less familiar side of history. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien, and today we learn about a man who created his wife's massive fame and may also have led to her demise. This time on Significant Others, meet George Palmer Putnam. to do with it. There's practically no mention of her anywhere that doesn't take note of her slender build, her cropped, tousled hair, and her androgynous prettiness. But the most crucial thing about the way she looked is that it reminded almost everyone in the world of someone else. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh was the most famous man alive, and Amelia Earhart looked a lot like him. Luckily for her, there was one person who knew exactly how to leverage this coincidence. Marrying him wasn't part of the plan, it's just what happened along the way.

Starting point is 00:01:21 George Palmer Putnam was born the picture of privilege in 1887. His grandfather founded the legendary publishing company. Teddy Roosevelt was a family friend. Putnam attended boarding school and matriculated at Harvard, but in 1907, at the age of 20, he was more enthralled to the natural world than the classroom. He wrote in his autobiography, he was more in thrall to the natural world than the classroom. He wrote in his autobiography,

Starting point is 00:01:50 After Harvard had endured me for a time, I tapered off my formal education at the University of California. This is as good an example as any of Putnam's greatest talent. He was a natural master of spin. Rather than framing this sputtering end of his educational career as a failure to earn a degree, or maybe some kind of rejection of legacy, or a subversion of his parents' expectations, he characterizes this sidestep as a measured, healthy choice. As if college is a thing that can, and maybe even should be, gradually removed from a person's life, like nicotine. And when you get down to it, who's to say he's wrong?

Starting point is 00:02:31 Clearly, this was the right path for him. Or maybe he just turned it into the right path. From Berkeley, he made his way to Bend, Oregon, one of the last bastions of the old frontier. Bend, Oregon, one of the last bastions of the old frontier. A town of 1,200, in 1909 when Putnam arrived, it had 12 saloons and no railway access, but its citizens were agitating for modernization. Putnam smelled opportunity. He set to work immediately as a freelance journalist, hiking through canyons to report on the coming railroad, and generally making a name for himself as a person who knew how to stoke enthusiasm for something, whether it was a business, a town, or himself. He also knew how to turn that enthusiasm into money.

Starting point is 00:03:19 According to his future wife's biographer, Mary Lovell, Putnam created a position for himself as secretary to the Bend Board of Trade. In that capacity, he created a flyer advertising the city of Bend and sent it around. He then promoted his own promotion, writing in the local paper, The Bulletin, Have you noticed the frequency with which Bend appears in the Portland newspapers lately? This town and section are receiving a world of good advertising these days. Whether he bought the bulletin before or after his articles started running on the front page is unclear. But he did succeed as owner in fulfilling the paper's previously unrealized potential as the fourth pillar of democracy. He took on political scandals, celebrated local color, and modernized production,

Starting point is 00:04:14 making the company both profitable and culturally valuable. As if that weren't enough, he also filed articles for non-local papers. Under several different names, I wrote for five city newspapers, three of them in Portland. The stories varied, and I rotated special yarns to keep my clients happy. Considerable imagination went into the correspondence. If stories were scant, I conjured them up. He's not talking about fake news. Rather, a satirical series about a made-up character

Starting point is 00:04:47 meant to lampoon a Portland-based writer who wrote about exploring the woods. When the Bulletin needed more ad revenue, Putnam crafted ads on spec for local businesses and took the mock-ups directly to the customers in order to sell the advertising space. By the age of 24, he was elected mayor. After serving in World War I, however, he decided not to return to Oregon, and instead moved with his wife and two young sons to New York in order to dive, finally, into the family business, in the wake of his elder brother's death from the flu. into the family business in the wake of his elder brother's death from the flu.

Starting point is 00:05:29 An avid explorer, he quickly carved out a niche for adventure books. He wrote a number of them himself, but for many others relied on what he called the fabricated book. In those first years of my publishing, I probably established a quantitative record for procuring the ghosting of books, which means arranging for a book to be written by someone other than the person whose name appears on the title page. So often people have good tales to tell without the ability to write them. It was certainly not the first instance of ghostwriting the world has ever seen, but it's possible he ushered in a new era for it. The practice seems to have surged in the mid-20th century, according to an article in a 1953 issue of American Scholar magazine, which proclaimed,

Starting point is 00:06:17 Ghostwriting, once a shady second cousin of plagiarism, has lately come into its own. Who knows what that journalist at American Scholar would have to say about the current book marketplace. A 2020 story from the website Medium claims modern publishing houses acknowledge 70% of their books are ghostwritten, which makes sense if you think about how many sports stars, entertainers, politicians, scandal survivors, and just plain old famous people are selling their stories in print. Either way, even if George Putnam didn't invent ghostwriting, he certainly leaned into it in an entrepreneurial way. And it worked. The company

Starting point is 00:07:00 printed and sold more books than ever before, and the practice spawned a side hustle for George in the form of a literary agency. Ghostwriting would lead to one of his stickiest professional moments, however, in an episode that would ultimately impact his entire future. Charles Lindbergh was a sensation. When his plane landed in France after completing the first solo flight across the Atlantic, 150,000 people rushed the airstrip. When New York got the news, it erupted into a honking, hugging frenzy in a celebration not seen since the end of World War I. Lindbergh was Time magazine's very first man of the year. The tall, blonde, patrician aviator was the perfect poster child for American exceptionalism, the triumph of the individual, and the promise of scientific progress. Putnam beat out a number of other publishers, with the help of a friend at the New York Times,

Starting point is 00:07:59 for the privilege of spending $100,000 to secure Lindbergh's book contract. In his usual fashion, Putnam selected a ghostwriter and then sent him to Europe to meet up with Lindbergh and conduct his interviews during the voyage home. The ghostwriter then embedded at Putnam's New York mansion with a fleet of typists so as to produce a manuscript as quickly as possible. Ten days later, the book was done. All that was left was to get Lindbergh's sign-off and go to press. But Lindbergh refused to approve it. He said he had thought it would be a third-person account, not one that was written by someone else but that listed his name as author. By this point, Putnam had already left for an Arctic expedition, his second, and had to manage this renegotiation from the literal hinterlands, leaving it to his team in

Starting point is 00:08:52 New York to explain that the contract was a done deal and that 100,000 orders were already waiting to be filled. In that case, Lindbergh said, he'd fulfill the contract by writing the book himself. Putnam knew the public's passion for the story would cool with each passing day, and he wanted not to waste a minute of momentum. But Lindbergh, not a professional author, was now sitting down to record his account in longhand. It took an excruciating, for Putnam, three weeks, but finally came through and sold more than half a million copies. The ghostwritten version was never published.

Starting point is 00:09:31 Putnam wasn't through irritating Charles Lindbergh, though. When a collector offered $30,000 for the leather-bound batch of original pages written in Lindbergh's hand, Putnam tried to say that, contractually, he might have a claim to half the proceedings. Unfazed, Lindbergh called his bluff, saying, If it's yours, do as you wish. If it isn't, I want it. The pages remained with their author. The person who came up with the scheme to put a woman in a plane across the Atlantic was, fittingly, a woman. Amy Phipps Guest, an American steel heiress who married a British aristocrat, had designs on setting the record herself until her husband shut her down.

Starting point is 00:10:17 He was afraid she'd be killed, which was a good likelihood for pretty much anyone who tried to fly across the Atlantic. good likelihood for pretty much anyone who tried to fly across the Atlantic. In the year after Lindbergh's successful flight, 14 flyers died trying to follow in his path. But Lindbergh's success had not only proved it was possible, it also revealed that the public's appetite for aviating heroes was unlike anything else. So Mrs. Guest decided if she were not destined to be the first woman to soar across the Atlantic, she'd bankroll someone else to do it. However, it had to be what she called the right sort of lady. She wanted a woman with a pilot's license, which narrowed the field to only a few. And one of the frontrunners, the flamboyant nouveau riche socialite and former actress Mabel Bull, called the Queen of Diamonds by the press for her habit of sporting massive gems at all times, represented a very different

Starting point is 00:11:12 type of heroine. Guest later told her daughter that Bull just wouldn't do. She wanted a female pilot who was well-educated, preferably with a college degree, physically attractive, and well-mannered enough to mingle in English society. Putnam heard about all this through the grapevine and asked his friend Hilton Raley to find out more. Eventually, a contact of Raley's led them to a young social worker who flies. I'm not sure how many hours she's had, but I do know that she's deeply interested in aviation and a thoroughly fine person. Call Denison House and ask for Amelia Earhart.

Starting point is 00:11:52 Earhart had had a need for speed since childhood. She proudly rode her sled like the boys did, face down and head first, and once steered her way neatly between the legs of a horse who happened to be walking across her path. In her 20s, she became addicted to flying the first time she tried it, after her family moved to California and she attended one of the air meets that were all the rage at the time. She bought her own planes, partly with money she made by working in a mailroom and driving a gravel truck, in addition to financing

Starting point is 00:12:25 provided by her parents, who likened it to buying her a pony. But flying was an expensive habit she would ultimately give her life trying to finance. By the time Hilton Raley found her, she had been flying for seven years, setting records and performing stunts at air shows, but had not been able to secure an income that would keep her aloft or out of debt. Putnam brokered a meeting between Earhart and the guest's lawyer, but made sure she met with him first. He wanted it to be clear she was his candidate, so he'd have the inside track on monetizing her publicity. He had her meet him first at his office,

Starting point is 00:13:05 but when she arrived, he was, as usual, in the midst of multiple projects, taking, as she put it, one phone call after another. So he kept her waiting. He later said this made her sore as a wet hen. But she kept her irritation to herself, knowing she needed to strike a delicate balance in order to get the gig. No one on this team knew what kind of pilot Earhart was, only that she was a pilot, which actually wouldn't matter because she was not going to be allowed to touch any of the controls during the flight, even though she was named in an ad hoc sort of contract as commander of the plane. The record she was chosen to set was simply cross the Atlantic by plane while simultaneously being a woman. She said, I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes. She was offered no money for her historic ride, but she didn't care.

Starting point is 00:14:16 Broke as she was, anything that got her in the air was worth the risk, even if that risk was death. Unbeknownst to her, was worth the risk, even if that risk was death. Unbeknownst to her, George Putnam knew just how to squeeze every dollar out of the phenomenon she was about to become. The only thing she had to do was survive. Putnam was perfectly placed to capitalize on Earhart's journey, Putnam was perfectly placed to capitalize on Earhart's journey, having already established himself as the publisher of adventure accounts even before Lindbergh's unprecedented success. And he wasted no time with Earhart,

Starting point is 00:14:54 selling the rights to a written account of the journey to the New York Times for $10,000 before the plane was even fully fitted for the flight. He pre-sold exclusive news coverage to Paramount, whose in-house photographer staged a top-secret photo shoot for the star-to-be, where he leveraged her physical similarities to Charles Lindbergh so thoroughly, she started to appear as Lady Lindy to the few who saw the results. Earhart hardly told anyone about the trip she was taking in the plane called Friendship in June of 1928. She got two weeks' leave from work and asked her fiancé Sam to tell her mother about it only after she had lifted off.

Starting point is 00:15:34 She made out a will and wrote letters to be mailed to her immediate family in the event she never made it back home. But the secret didn't hold. While the crew was grounded in Newfoundland waiting for the weather to clear, news got out. Earhart had to cable Putnam to quash reports she was doing it for the money. She wanted it made clear she was not getting paid. When Mabel Bowle, the woman deemed unseemly by Mrs. Guest, learned she had been passed over, she went to war in the press, announcing she would race Earhart's crew across the ocean in a plane everyone knew was much faster. As we all know now, Earhart's crew won

Starting point is 00:16:12 that race, though hindsight makes their success seem like more of a foregone conclusion than it ever was. After an excruciating two-week wait in Nova Scotia for weather to clear, they took off with a hungover pilot, a heavy plane, and storms on the horizon. Earhart later told Putnam that their departure felt like the most dangerous moment of her life. The flight was, in the words of Earhart biographer Susan Butler, 20 anxious hours of bad conditions, poor navigation aids, a busted radio, nearly wall-to-wall fog, and barely enough fuel to get where they were going on a route that had killed nearly everyone who had attempted it before them. But once they made it to Burryport, Wales, neither Amelia's life nor the world would ever be the same. When Earhart and her crew landed,

Starting point is 00:17:07 everyone wanted to touch her. No one had the least bit of interest in Lou Gordon or Bill Stoltz, the two men who had actually piloted the plane. She was, quite literally, almost crushed by the crowd that formed around her. Exhausted and overwhelmed, she couldn't help noting, I am caught in a situation where very little of me is free. I am being moved instead of moving. It really makes me a little resentful that the mere fact that I am a woman apparently overshadows the tremendous feat of flying Bill Stoltz has just accomplished. Thanks to the lucrative newspaper contract Putnam had arranged for her, she wrote a series of front-page articles for immediate release,

Starting point is 00:17:49 finishing the first one in the hours after she landed. Recalling their rocky takeoff, she wrote, When we started, there was such a burst of spray that the outside motors started cutting out. I was afraid we had made another false start, but the motors picked up again, and although they stammered once in a while on the flight when coated with snow, I never had a moment of real trepidation about them and never doubted that we should arrive. I did not do much. I did not handle the controls once, although I have had more than 500 hours solo flying and once held the women's altitude record. Earhart cared about flying and hoped the flight would help bolster the industry.

Starting point is 00:18:28 Perhaps some people have been thinking this was just another stunt flight, but it was not. We have come to a place in aviation where the need is for technical advancement more than spectacular stunts. She also cared in particular about flying as a sport in which there was no inborn advantage to either sex. She hoped women would take to it and men would make room for them.

Starting point is 00:18:50 Whether the flight means anything to women, it is perhaps more difficult to say. It was a marvelous experience for one woman who was merely so much baggage for two great aviators, but it was awfully uncomfortable. If it helps quicken the interest of women in flying, it will help forward the time when flying will be more comfortable because women will demand planes not only comfortable but luxurious. And when women demand them, men will probably build them. Her vision was still some way from being realized. As late as 1941, two army doctors wrote a handbook that included the wisdom, During the menstrual period, women tend to become emotionally upset, and it is believed that several aircraft accidents have been due to this cause.

Starting point is 00:19:38 It also should be obvious that a woman who is pregnant should not be allowed to pilot an aircraft. A 1942 handbook for Medical Examiners proclaimed, And in 1943, Air Transport Command ordered its women pilots grounded for the week they menstruated, but the men were too afraid to ask when that week was, so the order sort of evaporated. Indeed, true parity has yet to be achieved for female pilots. In 2019, Newsweek listed pilots at the top of a gender-based pay gap report, with male pilots earning, on average, 26.6% more than their female colleagues. But at least we have equal opportunity to be, as Earhart herself was in 1928, baggage. Once the friendship had completed its historic flight, Amelia Earhart became a

Starting point is 00:20:41 full-fledged celebrity. After completing grand victory laps in London and New York, she returned home to Boston, where more than a quarter of a million people came to see her at the airfield when she landed. She fully intended to return to her job as a social worker, or so she claimed, but first she had to write the book George Putnam had optioned before the trip even began.

Starting point is 00:21:05 To do it, she did what Lindbergh's would-be ghostwriter had done. In July, she moved into the Putnam manse with the family to stay while she worked. They all got on very well. Earhart even dedicated her book to Putnam's wife Dorothy. But by December, Amelia had ditched her fiancé, and less than a year after that, Dorothy Binnie Putnam was moving out. It wasn't all Amelia's fault. Dorothy had been chafing at the constraints of marriage for a few years. Marriage is a stupid idea. It seems to me its main purpose is to keep together people who don't love each other,

Starting point is 00:21:45 for people who do love each other are going to keep together anyway. She shared her husband's love of adventure, but her love for him had stalled out somewhere along the course of their 18-year marriage. She started an affair with a college sophomore the year before any of them even heard the name Amelia Earhart. And as Putnam's life began to revolve around Earhart, planning and managing her appearances, arranging her endorsements,

Starting point is 00:22:11 pitching products that would bear her name, Dorothy began the process of letting him go. George's obsession for A.E. and his clamor to be with her every minute, all day, every day, on one pretext or another will give me the very excuse I need for a separation, if not a divorce. Eight years ago, April, I asked for a break, anything, as long as I didn't have to live with him. And he broke down and cried and swore he couldn't imagine living without me. I wish, almost, I cared. But it would be many confused and tortured months before they formally ended it.

Starting point is 00:22:53 On December 20th, 1929, Dorothy wrote in her diary, So, I released him, just so he could marry her. She's to get my husband, my house, my lovely garden, but not my furniture. Odd fate. The country has been whispering with suspicious gossip. Now, it's over. Less than one month later, Dorothy married some whole other guy who was, at least, age-appropriate. But it would be many more months before Putnam and Earhart made good on the rumors that had been swirling since the fall of 1928. Legend has it that George proposed to Amelia six times before she said yes.

Starting point is 00:23:41 He himself said it was... Twice, at least. What's clear is that she was deeply conflicted about marriage in general. When the day finally came in 1931, nearly three years after he first kept her waiting in his office, she handed him a letter. She called him by his initials, GPP, or Jip. Dear Jip, There are some things which should be writ before we are married, things we have talked over before, most of them. You must know, again, my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work, which means most to me. I feel the move just now as foolish as anything I could do. I know there may be compensations, but have no heart to look ahead. On our life together, I want you to understand,

Starting point is 00:24:31 I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. If we can be honest, I think the difficulties which arise may best be avoided should you or I become interested deeply or in passing in anyone else. Please let us not interfere with the other's work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements. In this connection, I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage.

Starting point is 00:25:08 I must exact a cruel promise, and that is that you will let me go in a year if we find no happiness together. I will try to do my best in every way and give you that part of me you know and seem to want. A.E. Adventurer that he was, George Palmer Putnam did not shy from the challenge.

Starting point is 00:25:32 He also didn't miss a moment of capitalizing on his wife's marketability. Speaking engagements, masthead positions, endorsements, there wasn't an angle he wouldn't work on Earhart's behalf, and he was often working two or more at once. When Lucky Strike Cigarettes offered to pay $1,500 to each member of the Friendship crew for an endorsement of their product, Putnam arranged for Earhart, who did not smoke, to publicly donate her payment to help sponsor a South Pole expedition that Putnam was also promoting. This had the intended effect of boosting the South Pole trip in the public

Starting point is 00:26:11 consciousness and drawing in even more funding, but it also scuttled a position he had set up for her at McCall's magazine, which didn't want to be associated with a woman who would associate herself with cigarettes. Cosmopolitan took her on instead. Putnam had always been a hustler. He wooed authors for his agency by claiming to have sold projects for them already. He inundated a newspaper with fake fan letters for a client's comic that arrived before the strip ever even appeared in print. that arrived before the strip ever even appeared in print. An author he tried to court said about him, He was a skilled conjurer who could palm an author, pull a bestseller out of a hat,

Starting point is 00:26:56 flourish his wand and transform a channel swimmer or explorer or aviator into a national sensation. He was always calculating, always figuring out how to make use of people, always with the commercial end in mind. Everything was for sale. I think he was the loneliest man I ever met. Lonely might not be quite right, as his home was always a social hub. But social doesn't always mean likable. Gore Vidal, for whom Earhart was a treasured mother figure, said, I never knew anybody who liked George Palmer Putnam.

Starting point is 00:27:31 It was quite interesting. Everybody who knew him disliked him. Some people disliked him more than others. Some people disliked him and found him amusing. And some people disliked him and found him amusing, and some people disliked him and found him unamusing. A historian who went on the first of his Arctic expeditions said, George was a businessman. Even worse, he was a publisher with a chronic wanderlust. His was a triple personality.

Starting point is 00:28:03 Jacqueline Cochran, the first woman to break the sound barrier, described him as the dullest person I've ever been around. Eleanor Smith, the pilot whose license had been signed when she was 16 by none other than Orville Wright, informed Earhart over lunch that she would, as soon as see her hooked up with Genghis Khan as Mary Putnam. But marry him, she did. And he served her well. He managed her career brilliantly, first crafting her superstardom and then making sure she held on to it. He coached her on giving speeches, which became her bread and butter. Get a pointer. Always talk into your microphone. Remember, too, your tendency is to let your voice drop at the end of sentences.

Starting point is 00:28:51 He gave her fashion tips. Your hats. They are a public menace. Some of them are cataclysms. But I hasten to add the Pittsburgh bonnet is a peach, as are several of the floppy ones with brims. He wasn't criticizing so much as helping. A husband who tells his wife to keep her mouth closed in photographs because there's a gap between her teeth might seem callous unless we consider that the wife appreciated the feedback.

Starting point is 00:29:22 Image mattered to George, but it mattered to Amelia, too. She was vain about her hands, wore pants instead of skirts to hide her thick ankles, and hesitated to bob her hair because she didn't want to look too, in her word, eccentric. Before she left on her first Atlantic flight, she carefully and secretly curled her hair. She wanted, or needed, to be pretty, but had to look as if she was not trying. Putnam got her the publicity she needed to fuel her passion, which in turn brought more publicity. And when it came to publicity, nothing was sacred to him. He sold their story like he sold everything, as quickly and as shrewdly as possible.

Starting point is 00:30:06 their story like he sold everything, as quickly and as shrewdly as possible. She canceled their wedding at least once because he leaked it to the press. After it happened, he likely wrote the coverage of the top-secret event for the New York Times, taking such liberties in describing the scenery that locals still find it amusing today. After her final flight, he wrote a biography of Earhart called Soaring Wings, which continued to build the myth of her even after she was gone. Earhart was clear-eyed about his opportunistic nature. She teasingly called him Simkin after a cat in a children's story for whom one mouse is never enough. But to stick with the metaphor, she needed those mice. But to stick with the metaphor, she needed those mice.

Starting point is 00:30:48 It was only thanks to Putnam that she could finally do what she had long hoped for, pay her own debts, send money to her mother, and continue to fly. But by 1931, there was something else that was nagging at her. Legitimacy. Even though she continued to set records in the years following her transatlantic ride, she had been made famous for a feat that required no skill beyond sheer willingness to try. Now she was determined to make good on what she had hinted at in her very first article. Maybe someday I'll try it alone. In the run-up to Earhart's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1932, Putnam oversaw the retrofitting of her plane while she learned to

Starting point is 00:31:26 fly blind, all while making sure the press didn't catch on. Others were gunning for the same goal, and it wasn't just Earhart's pride that was on the line, it was her status too. Success would cement her fame, but if some other woman beat her across, she might lose her valuable spot in the public's affection. Ever the showman, Putnam picked May 19th for her departure, with the hope that she would land in Paris on May 20th, five years to the day after Lindbergh's triumph. This time, they succeeded in keeping things secret until after takeoff, but like the previous time, the flight could easily have been a disaster. Her altimeter broke almost immediately, the weather fouled, she saw flames emanating from the manifold, and a fuel gauge turned out to be faulty. Gasoline ran down the side of her neck

Starting point is 00:32:19 for most of the trip. She craftily managed her position mid-air, prompting a fellow pilot to say, when he heard about it later, Doggone it, I don't know many pilots, that is, many men pilots, who would have had sense enough to do that, let alone a gal. By the time she put down in a cow field in Ireland, making it to Paris was clearly out of the question, but that hardly mattered. She was officially the first woman to have flown the Atlantic alone, and the only person to have flown across it twice. Now, she was beyond a celebrity. Gore Vidal put it this way.

Starting point is 00:32:57 I have walked the streets with many famous people in my time, from Greta Garbo to Paul Newman to Eleanor Roosevelt. No one got the crowd that Amelia got. She was, I must say, it was beyond stardom. It was a strange continuum that she and Lindbergh occupied. They were like gods from outer space. Her husband harnessed this to the hilt with sponsorships, a clothing line, and a newly crafted position for her at Purdue University. He never stopped finding innovative ways to finance her flying, nor did he ever stop image building for her, making sure she was always credited with piloting any plane she flew in, even if she didn't actually take the controls. He ran interference with the press to the point where reporters began to complain that to get a few words from Earhart,

Starting point is 00:33:51 they had to listen to hundreds from Putnam. They called him a lens louse because he tried to horn his way into every photo. His management of her was, in a word, ruthless. He intimidated and marginalized her competitors, always with his eye on branding her the best female pilot in the world. This could all seem, well, gross, but for the fact that everything he did was in service of what she wanted. Building her image was his way of empowering her. He put himself completely at her disposal, running the business of her famous persona and trying to caretake her as a husband when she would let him. But she was more interested in breaking records than being his compatriot.

Starting point is 00:34:36 She was also, it seems, in love with another man. Eugene Vidal, Gore Vidal's father, was a dashing divorcee who spent nearly as much time with Amelia as her husband did. Earhart leveraged her friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt to lobby for Vidal's appointment as head of the newly formed aeronautics branch of the Department of Commerce, and to ensure he kept it when that appointment was in political jeopardy. This might reveal as much about Eleanor Roosevelt's affection for Amelia than anything else. Gore Vidal believes the First Lady was in love with her, and whether Earhart realized that or not, she did not hesitate to lean on that relationship for high-level favors. On the subject of Jean Vidal, biographers are torn. Some say there's no evidence of anything but a friendship between

Starting point is 00:35:25 them. Others say their romance was indubitable. But Gore was certain, even though he was a child at the time, that his father and Amelia Earhart were in love. According to Gore, Jean told him that she wore his underwear when she flew. Exactly which forces were at play when Earhart decided to attempt to fly the circumference of the globe can only be a matter of speculation. Hilton Raley, the man who first brought Earhart's name to George Putnam, said, She was caught up in the hero racket. Her age likely factored in as well. Almost no one knew her 40th birthday was looming because she had been lying about her age since her college years.

Starting point is 00:36:10 She saw herself as almost washed up, telling a friend in 1936, I have the feeling there's just one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this is it. It is my swan song as far as record flying is concerned, my frosting on the cake. Also, she needed the money. In typical Putnam fashion, the flight was being financed by a number of sources, including some promises that could only be made good after the fact, like written accounts and speeches. Toward the conclusion of the historic attempt, nearly a month after Earhart had left the starting point, George let her know by telegram that there was a deadline of sorts. her know by telegram that there was a deadline of sorts. As concerned as he was for his wife's well-being, he also wanted her home by July 4th, likely so as to harness the patriotic moment.

Starting point is 00:37:13 Confidential. Want you to know, very important radio commitment, Monday night. Did this pressure her into rushing the final portion of it? Possibly. But contrary to what some have said, it was not his idea for her to go in the first place. The inspiration for the trip was hers alone. You know I sympathize fully with your ambition and will abet it. And 98% I know you'll get away with it. But we both recognize the hazards.

Starting point is 00:37:48 And I love you dearly. The failures of the flight were ultimately a combination of mechanical and personal. The plane was not equipped with the right kind of radio to communicate with Howland Island, the tiny atoll she had chosen as her refueling stop. It has also been said that her navigator, Fred Noonan, was an alcoholic who may have been struggling with his illness during the journey. Noonan's alcoholism has been disputed, although Earhart did rather cryptically cite what she called personnel unfitness in her last telegram to Putnam, which explained a delay in their progress. Gore Vidal claims that that phrase was the code

Starting point is 00:38:31 Earhart, George, and Jean used to refer to Noonan's drinking, but it's unclear. The possibility also exists that Earhart was referring to herself. The trip was physically grueling and likely intimidating, even for the bravest of daredevils. In the end, Earhart's luck, which had served her spectacularly every other time she took a chance, simply ran out. When she failed to arrive at Howland, George, who had been monitoring the flight from the Coast Guard station in San Francisco, George, who had been monitoring the flight from the Coast Guard station in San Francisco, stayed there, thoroughly exhausting himself, scouring radio waves and endless other reports day and night for word of his missing wife. It was only after a year had passed and multiple searches had been conducted that he finally agreed to consider the thought that she was gone for good. to consider the thought that she was gone for good.

Starting point is 00:39:26 In the wake of her disappearance, he ran into money trouble, fought with a ghostwriter he hired to finesse Earhart's papers into a posthumous book, wrestled with Earhart's mother over her estate, and married twice more. It is easy to consider the union between George Palmer Putnam and Amelia Earhart with a cynical eye.

Starting point is 00:39:46 Gore Vidal said she married her manager. A colleague of Putnam's said, He couldn't manage her, so he married her. And then, he couldn't manage her. The phrase publicity stunt does come to mind. But their relationship was not purely transactional, at least not for him. He worried over her constantly when she was hurling herself through the air, and people who knew them report having seen moments of real affection between them.

Starting point is 00:40:14 He pushed her around in a wheelbarrow and made her laugh. She turned to him for a hug before heading off on her daring adventures. He was openly infatuated with her and deeply affected by her disappearance. If Amelia Earhart the icon was the creation of George Putnam, it was a labor of love as much as business. For her, it was a little bit different. All she wanted was to fly. And it is ironic that the man who granted her that freedom

Starting point is 00:40:43 was the same man who wanted to tie her down. Biographer Susan Butler notes that just a few years before Earhart was lecturing Purdue students on the importance of wives' independence, Yalies were marching behind a banner that read, Marry them early, tell them nothing, treat them rough. Earhart cautioned the women at Purdue about not relying only on the sex drive that passes for love. She told them, If we begin to think and respond as capable human beings,

Starting point is 00:41:15 able to deal with and even enjoy the challenges of life, then we surely will have something more to contribute to marriage than our bodies. She was wary of marriage, not only because her own parents had had a rocky one, but because she was expected to subsume herself to her husband. But rather than simply capitulating to convention or refusing to try at all, she had the imagination to propose a new kind of arrangement and the courage to be honest about what she wanted. There was no template for anything she did,

Starting point is 00:41:48 marriage least of all. Her navigation of her commitment to her husband is strikingly delicate and, in a way, as admirable as any of her accomplishments. Before going through with the wedding, she asked two male reporter friends if they thought it was a mistake. She told another friend that their marriage was one of convenience and necessity. But a couple

Starting point is 00:42:11 of years later, she said publicly, the more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home and love and understanding companionship. However compromised her choice was to get married, it suited her enough to keep her from leaving. And Putnam deserves appreciation for backing her up. When the New York Times praised Mrs. Putnam for her record-setting solo flight across the Atlantic, Putnam for her record-setting solo flight across the Atlantic, she wrote a letter to the publisher. have no principle to uphold in asking that I be called by my professional name in print. However, it is for many reasons more convenient for both of us to be simply Amelia Earhart. After all, here may be a principle, I believe flyers should be permitted the same privileges as writers or actresses. I have written Mrs. Sulzberger to thank her for sending me the lovely orchids, and here are my thanks to you.

Starting point is 00:43:25 It was pleasant, indeed, to be so remembered. Sincerely yours, Amelia Earhart. Earhart's affections are difficult to parse. She was unsentimental about marriage, clear-eyed about finances, and impatient with anyone, like her mother and sister, who let love compromise their circumstances. She was not a romantic, but a pragmatist. There was no one to whom she maintained an intimate connection, Putnam, Vidal, or Roosevelt, who was not useful to her career. Putnam created her, the First Lady fast-tracked her requests, and Jean Vidal got the government to build her an airstrip in the South Pacific.

Starting point is 00:44:07 The boxers and briefs she borrowed from George and Jean were not so much love tokens as practical workarounds for making use of the facilities and planes, which consisted of a funnel not designed for use with women's undergarments. Her real love affair was with flying. But her husband was a true partner to her. She said he was, A practicing believer in wives doing what they do best. An improving and helpful partner in all my projects. He had the power, but she got what she wanted, even in death. Before her final flight, she was quoted as saying,

Starting point is 00:44:46 As far as I know, I've only got one obsession, a small and probably typically feminine horror of growing old. So I won't feel completely cheated if I fail to come back. Thank you. Miles Gross, Nev O'Brien, Conan O'Brien, and many Team Coco staffers for lending their voices to this story. Finally, I'd like to thank my significant other for never being in too big of a rush to get anywhere. Join me tomorrow for a conversation with ghostwriter Hillary Lifton to go a little deeper into George Palmer Putnam's favorite type of author. Significant Others is written and read by me, Liza Powell O'Brien. I'm not a historian, and I'm greatly indebted to the work of those who are.

Starting point is 00:45:56 In some cases, I use diaries or newspapers or court records as sources, but most often I draw from biographies and autobiographies and articles which represent countless hours of work by people who are far more knowledgeable than I. Sources for each episode are listed in the show notes. If you hear something interesting and you want to know more, please consider ordering these books from your independent bookseller. And if you are a historian or someone who knows something about the people I'm talking about, and you'd like to take issue with an impression I've made or a conclusion I've drawn, I welcome the dialogue. Finally, if you have an episode suggestion, let us know at significantpod at gmail.com. History is filled

Starting point is 00:46:42 with characters, and we tend to focus on just a few of them. Significant Others is produced by Thank you.

Significant Others - George Palmer Putnam

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