Weekly Program: Newly Discovered Amelia Earhart Film Reignites Mystery
Nearly 80 years after her final flight, the mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance endures.
Recently discovered footage showing Earhart preparing for one of her last flights is going viral online, reigniting interest in the woman who was first to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
The grainy film, believed to have been shot in May 1937, shows Earhart posing for photographer Albert Bresnik, climbing into the cockpit of her twin-engine Electra and walking on a tarmac in California. Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, took their final flight on July 2 of that year from New Guinea, as part of an attempt to fly around the world.
Found by Bresnik’s nephew, the film had sat on his father’s shelf for more than 50 years. It accompanies a new e-book published by The Paragon Agency called “Amelia Earhart’s Last Photo Shoot.” We talked to the author, Nicole Swinford, about what this footage means for the Earhart enigma.
Does this footage offer anything new for our understanding of Earhart's Amelia’s last flight?
You do notice differences in this moment at the beginning of the flight versus photos that we see throughout the [final] flight with the plane. You start to notice that she had been making changes specifically to radio equipment in the antennas. And you ask, why did she do these things? Because looking back, we see that these choices inhibited her communication ability. It significantly shortened the range that she was able to communicate with. It could have been the difference between a success and failure.
The film, "Amelia Earhart's Last Photo Shoot," is being released this month by The Paragon Agency publishing house, along with an 80-page book of the same name that documents a journey that ended tragically short of the finish line when Earhart's plane vanished somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
A downloadable copy of the film is being provided to those who buy the book. Paragon publisher Doug Westfall said he eventually plans to donate the fragile original given to him by John Bresnik's son to an archive or museum.
The film, taken with a 16-milimeter camera, sat on a shelf in the office of his father for more than 50 years until his death in 1992, said Bresnik's son, also named John. After that, it sat in the younger man's home in Escondido, California, for about 20 more years.
"I didn't even know what was on the film until my dad died and I took it home and watched it," Bresnik said recently. "It just always sat it in a plain box on a shelf in his office, and on the outside it said, 'Amelia Earhart, Burbank Airport, 1937.' "
The following is a long video about Amelia Earhart which I hope you enjoy. Please watch as much as you have time to dedicate to this program.
Published on Aug 6, 2014