Granddaughter of Amelia Earhart’s husband, promoter, from Fort Pierce
October 23rd, 2009 by TCPalm.comFORT PIERCE — Two-time Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank might be the star of the upcoming movie Amelia, but Sally Chapman of Fort Pierce will be paying closer attention to co-stars Richard Gere and Virginia Madsen.
In the biopic about famed aviator Amelia Earhart, Gere portrays Chapman’s grandfather, George P. Putnam, and Madsen plays her grandmother, Dorothy Putnam.
A publishing mogul, George Putnam was the chief promoter of Earhart’s flying career. Dorothy Putnam was one of Earhart’s best friends, Chapman said. The Putnams divorced in 1929, and George Putnam married Earhart in 1931.
The movie opens nationwide today, but Chapman will be at the world premiere Tuesday night in New York, a special guest of the movie’s producers.
Chapman said both Gere and Madsen seem to be “perfectly cast.”
“When I saw Richard Gere in a preview,” said Chapman, 71, “his whole personality reminded me of my grandfather: soft-spoken and serious. And they’re both tall and slender.”
Chapman said Madsen, is, like Dorothy Putnam was, “very sophisticated, very gifted and very intelligent. I think she’ll have a great feel for the role. Although physically she doesn’t resemble my grandmother, she has the same style.”
Chapman, who wrote the book Whistled Like a Bird: The Untold Story of Dorothy Putnam, George Putnam and Amelia Earhart with Stephanie Mansfield based on Dorothy Putnam’s journals, noted that while George Putnam was having an affair with Earhart, Dorothy Putnam was having an affair with George Weymouth, a man 19 years her junior.
“My grandfather didn’t leave my grandmother for Amelia,” Chapman said. “My grandparents just had a bad marriage.”
But it’s an alleged affair — between Earhart and pilot Gene Vidal (played by Ewan McGregor) while Earhart was married to George Putnam that has Chapman upset about the movie.
“I’ve spoken to my family members and Amelia’s family members,” Chapman said, “and I’ve never heard about this affair.”
The story of the affair came from Gore Vidal, the writer and son of Gene Vidal, she said, “and he would have been all of 8 years old at the time. Even if it was true, which I don’t think it is, it’s unfortunate that the movie makers felt they had to put it in just to generate ticket sales.”
After divorcing George Putnam, Dorothy Putnam moved to Fort Pierce to be close to her father, Edwin Binney, the inventor of Crayola crayons who wintered in Fort Pierce. Dorothy Binney married three more times and built the Immokolee mansion west of town where Chapman and her husband, Jack Chapman, now live.
When Dorothy Putnam died in 1982 at age 93, a story in the News Tribune referred to her as “one of Fort Pierce’s most prominent benefactresses.”
By Tyler Treadway, TCPalm.com
Tags: actors, amelia earhart, family, granddaughter, movie
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October 23rd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Great piece of history with wonderful local ties. I enjoyed the story. Too bad about the alleged affair. Could be the truth and the family never knew or just Hollywood. We have some of our own family stories that we never knew about until we found evidence…so you just never know!