Amelia Earhart mystery is personal

Even after more than 70 years, the mystery of Amelia Earhart lingers.

The movie "Amelia," which debuts today with Hilary Swank and Richard Gere, will only add more conjecture to the mystery that has befuddled writers, scholars and researchers.

What happened to Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan in 1937 when their plane disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean as they attempted to be the first to circumnavigate the globe in an airplane?

It held the attention of my dad, Paul L. Briand Jr., for much of his adult life.

In 1960 he was one of the first, in a biography about Earhart entitled "Daughter of the Sky," to offer a conclusion based on his research: That she crash-landed off the island of Saipan and survived, but that she and Noonan were captured by the Japanese military stationed there in violation of a League of Nations agreement, and that they were shot as spies.

In the years since, other researchers and writers offered other ideas about Earhart's fate:

• That she was on a spy mission at the request of President Franklin Roosevelt;
• That she was captured but spent the war years in Japan as "Tokyo Rose"'
• That she ultimately returned to the United States and lived to old age as Irene Bolam;
• That she simply crashed into the expanse of ocean and disappeared.

No theory has been proven to be true.

High-tech has come into play in recent years, particularly in the form of the research vessels deployed by TIGHAR for its Earhart Project.

TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) has taken a scientific approach to its search for Earhart and believes, according to its web site, that "Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan landed, and eventually died, on Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro in the Republic of Kiribati. Archival research and nine expeditions have uncovered a compelling body of supporting evidence. Archaeological excavations during the next expedition, scheduled for May/June 2010, will aim to recover artifacts from which Earhart’s DNA can be extracted. The expedition will also include a deep water search off the atoll’s fringing reef for the wreckage of the airplane."

For my dad's part, he got the opportunity after he wrote the Earhart biography to view Navy documents on Earhart and he wrote a follow-up, "Requiem for Amelia," published here for the first time.

At the time of the original biography and until just after he wrote "Requiem," he was a U.S. Air Force officer, a scholar teaching at the U.S. Air Force Academy, a researcher consumed by the passion of Earhart's life as a woman pilot.

His study of the Navy's official file was revealing. He wrote:

"Amelia Earhart was not on a spy mission for her government, she did not crash-land on Saipan; she was not taken as a prisoner; she was not executed as a spy or allowed to die. These are the conclusions of the Navy in the official report I was allowed to read. Considering their evidence, they could reach no other conclusions."

But he remained unconvinced, offering in "Requiem" his belief from information he received from corroborating witnesses on Saipan that she crash-landed there and died at the hands of the Japanese military, not because she was a spy, but because she was mistaken for one.

My dad pursued the Earhart mystery up until his death in 1986, never satisfied that he or anyone had found what he called "the truth."

Can the Hilary Swank-led epic of "Amelia" provide any answers, any flight path to the truth? No, it only deepens the mystery even more.

History as movie fiction

You've probably heard the comment: Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

We in the news business are often accused of just such a thing, though I can honestly say I've never been party to a story where facts were dismissed or overlooked in order to make the story better. But I can't say the same about some movies.

That struck me recently as my wife Jane and I watched "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" with Cate Blanchett in the title role. You'd think you were watching history, when upon closer inspection you are watching a good story that didn't let the facts of history get in its way.

Maybe it's me, and the fact that when I read a book or newspaper or watch a television show or movie I tend to see it through the eyes of the editor that I was. I expect good writing and editing, truth and accuracy. I accept that entertainment often involves the suspension of belief, but I can't give a pass to entertainment that presents itself off as lifted from the headlines or lifted from the pages of history when in fact it is created from imagination.

I was intrigued by "Elizabeth" when I saw it at the local Blockbuster because in December I had visited London, where, with the help of my son who had spent a semester there, I totally immersed myself in British history.

"Elizabeth" -- for which Blanchett received a well-deserved best-actress Oscar nomination -- tells her majesty's story as England, having divorced itself from the Catholic Church, faced invasion from the very Catholic Spanish King Phillip II and his famous armada in 1588. We learn of her relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh, and her relationship with Mary Stuart -- Mary, Queen of Scots.

The movie will have you believe that, in relatively quick succession: 1) she was smitten by Raleigh at a time when she was weighing her options to pick a husband, then was enraged when Raleigh took up with her maid of honor, 2) Raleigh had a direct hand in the events that ultimately led to the defeat of the Spanish Armada off the English coast, 3) Mary was beheaded as a direct result of an assassination plot tied to the invasion, and 4) that England lived happily ever after as a result of Elizabeth's enlightened rule.

But history tells us that it didn't quite go down this way.

Raleigh regularly fell in and out of favor with the queen and with the royal court. After Elizabeth's death, he questioned her defense of England against, and was beheaded by her successor in 1618. His relationship with the queen's maid of honor took place years after the events related in the movie. Raleigh likely had nothing to do with the sinking of the Spanish Armada in the English Channel. The execution of Mary Stuart, again had nothing to do with events related to the Spanish invasion.

Did I enjoy the movie for what it was? Sure. I just have to apply more disbelief, accept entertainment for entertainment's sake, and stay away from the history books afterwards.

Wall Street Journal writer Cynthia Crossen in a recent "Deja Vu" column spoke of fiction and ruses in what we assume is a factual story. She cited early 20th century newspaper columnist Heywood Broun, who wrote that the minstrel never preceded his story to royalty of the fiction he was about to relate. And, if someone should pipe up that "it never happened," said Broun, "...it was the custom to take that man and drop him in the moat; for ancient man was not disposed to let any factualist spoil a good story."

I should keep my mouth shut, lest I end up in the moat.