Amelia Earhart's Closely Guarded Secret

Amelia Earhart may have been lost at sea more than 70 years ago, but she’s still making headlines.

The past few months have yielded numerous news stories in which The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) purported to have found her bone fragments. The research is still inconclusive.  National Geographic even has a team of scientists trying to retrieve a DNA sample from traces of saliva that may be on her old letters.

Before she lost her life and the mystery of her death became the preoccupation of millions for generations, she had already solidified her place in history.

Earhart was an icon before she was lost in the Pacific, and her emergence as the aviatrix célèbre of her time was not solely a function of her talent as a female pilot, her record-breaking flights, or even her unapologetic invasion of the ultimate boy’s club. 

"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," said author Gore Vidal of PBS's American Experience: Amelia Earhart.

It was a combination of so many factors that led Earhart to become the first human-turned-brand, but it wasn’t her idea.

Putnam’s pet project

Earhart’s recent resurgence of popularity also coincides with a new biography with a fresh perspective on Earhart’s life that debuted in December 2010. 

In Amelia Earhart: the Turbulent Life of an American Icon historian and pilot Kathleen Winters argues that the Earhart image was carefully constructed by Earhart’s husband, George Palmer Putnam.“George Putnam played a large part in coaching Amelia for her appearances…he instructed her on the style of clothes to wear, to smile with her lips closed to hide the gap in her front teeth, and proper methods of using a pointer, cards, and microphone.”

Turning Earhart into a brand was lucrative.  She was taking the country by storm during the Great Depression. Her popularity was the means by which she funded for her various endeavors and purchases, including the launch of her short-lived clothing line, funded by U.S. Rubber (Now Michelin, which owns BF Goodrich and Uniroyal). 

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Aeronautics Division also makes mention of Earhart's luggage line, "Earhart also designed a line of lightweight, canvas-covered plywood luggage sold by Orenstein Trunk of Newark, New Jersey. Earhart luggage was sold into the 1990s and featured an Amelia Earhart luggage key, prompting some people to believe they possessed her 'personal' aircraft or suitcase key."

As a result of these endeavors, Winters contends that “Amelia thus became the first celebrity designer.”  Earhart even relied on her fame and connections to secure her famous Lockheed Electra, a purchase that was made possible through a $50,000 donation from a trustee of Purdue University, and additional $30,000 in donations from companies such as Western Electric and Goodyear. 

Her image was a natural fit for major corporations usually associated with men.  It is no wonder that Roy Chapin, the chairman of Hudson Motor Company in Detroit, enlisted her help to promote their new car named the Essex Terraplane. Winters’ historic time-line glosses over her trip to Detroit and Grosse Pointe, despite the publicity. 

However, Earhart’s involvement in the christening of the new automobile was reported in papers the world over, and her carefully crafted image is apparent in the film of the christening.

On the surface Earhart’s trip to Detroit wasn’t the most memorable so perhaps that is why Winters omitted it from a long list of examples in Earhart’s biography.

Of course, there is a story about Earhart—one that has been passed down orally for years by a prominent Grosse Pointe family from generation to generation--that Winters didn't have. 

Earhart’s brand secret

It was at a holiday party, when Chapin’s son-in-law, Hugo Higbie, delighted the luncheon gathering at the  with this story about Earhart's visit to Detroit for the first time. According to Higbie, after the formal presentation of the Essex Terraplane in Detroit, Earhart was invited to be the guest of honor at the Chapin home on Lakeshore Road in Grosse Pointe Farms. 

The ladies had retired in the late afternoon to rest and to dress for the cocktail hour and dinner, when to Roy Chapin's wife, Inez Chapin’s surprise, she heard a knock at the door.  It was her maid, Gunta, there at the request of Earhart. Gunta poked her head in through the door and said, “Excuse me Mrs. Chapin, but Ms. Earhart would like to borrow your curling irons.  She did not pack one in her suitcase.” Inez Chapin was astounded. 

After a moment of silence she responded, “Her hair isn’t naturally curly?” An account of this story was shared in the biography of Roy D. Chapin by J.C. Long in 1945, in which Inez Chapin said of the incident, "Well, I almost fainted--it never occurred to me that she ever looked in the mirror.  I must say I liked her for it, but it was a surprise to me." She let Earhart borrow her curling irons but was shocked and disappointed.  "In those days natural curls were not only a marker of beauty, but it was as if you were in a better gene pool," said Mark Higbie, Inez Chapin's grandson. 

"The myth that Amelia Earhart was almost not human--this image she projected, was exposed.  My grandmother bought into this ideal of the invincible female aviatrix, when she found out Amelia's hair wasn't naturally curly she was just absolutely crestfallen."

Wait, she has to work at it?

The first to accomplish many things, Earhart was the first to make her name a brand. Her image was so carefully and meticulously crafted by Putnam that it hadn’t occurred to even the savviest socialites that she needed a curling iron to keep her bob picture perfect and camera ready.

Her image, coif and all, has stood the test of time, and has even served to inspire haute couture fashion lines.  The most recent Earhart-inspired line was produced by Jean Paul Gaultier for Hermes for the fall of 2009. This little known fact about Earhart may not be salacious by today’s standards, but it reminds us of the palpable power of branding, and further proves Winters assertions that Putnam crafted the Earhart that the public came to know, love, admire and emulate.

Despite being published in Chapin's biography, it would seem Earhart historians didn't follow up on the Chapin-Earhart connection, and this story about the curling iron never made into consumption by the general public. 

The Earhart hairdo continued to gain in popularity even after her death. The June 27, 1940 issue of the Grosse Pointe Review reported a new trend in hair styles for women dubbed “Vocational Coiffures.” 

There was a general consensus was that a woman’s hairstyle should reflect her position, “Paris hairdressers are designing coiffures which tell each woman’s occupation or position in life.”  And indeed, Earhart’s famous cropped cut was associated with a man’s work, and the basis behind the fashionable look for women at the time, “A woman doing a man’s work will have coiffure based on the short-cropped curls of a Greek athlete, much like the Amelia Earhart bob.”

Winters' asserts quite convincingly that Earhart, “was not the world’s most skilled woman pilot in her day, by any means, nor even the best in America.  She was not a ‘natural stick,’ in pilots’ parlance, and struggled during her flight training.  Despite this, George Palmer Putnam catapulted her to fame, controlling her image ferociously and orchestrating the illusion that indeed she was the best.” 

Who knew this assessment would be proved unequivocally true when she innocently asked to borrow a curling iron prior to a suburban soiree.  Indeed, Putnam controlled Earhart’s image down to the very last curl.