Amelia and Eleanor's Excellent Adventure [from Very Special Episodes]

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1:37Dana Schwartz:The food was notoriously bad in FDR's White House. After all, it was the Great Depression when his presidency began. And one of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's tasks was to economize the kitchen. Suddenly, White House china was being used to serve gelatin salads. Prune pudding was another common menu item. Eleanor even encouraged the housekeeper to use milk orno, a lab-made powder aptly named for its ingredients of dried skim milk and cornmeal. Visitors who had joined the Roosevelts for a meal sometimes shared a word to the wise. Eat before you arrive. Ernest Hemingway even sent a letter after he dined in the White House detailing the worst meal of his life.

2:33Dana Schwartz:He wrote,

2:47Dana Schwartz:Perhaps while digesting post-meal, it must have clicked for Hemingway why his companion that evening had scarfed down a few sandwiches on the way over. So maybe it was yet another dreary menu that had diners itching to get away from the table on April 20th, 1933. The guests that evening included the First Lady's brother and a couple big shots in the aviation industry, an airline president as well as the soon-to-be leader of government work on aeronautics. FDR himself was out of town, but there was one more influential figure sitting at the table, subjected to rubbery meat and whatever a combination salad is.

3:36Dana Schwartz:It was Amelia Earhart. She was as big a celebrity as any in 1933, admired most for her daring solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean the year before. So maybe it was the thrill of sitting next to a world record breaker that made the others eager to abandon their plates for something more audacious. Whatever the reason, Amelia delivered on giving them the ultimate excuse to leave the table. She was going to take them all on a joyride. Amelia, Eleanor, and the rest of the party drove to the local airport. They climbed aboard an Eastern Air Transport twin-engine Curtis Condor. It looked how you might imagine an old-timey plane looks, with two wings stacked on top of each other, only big enough to fit a dozen or so people.

4:31Dana Schwartz:These passengers were part of an elite group. In the early 30s, practically no Americans had ever even set foot in a plane. Now in the air and looking down, they could see the Washington Monument and the White House lit up against the dark sky. It was absolutely magical. They flew to Baltimore and back. Amelia steered the plane. Eleanor was in the control cabin with her, where she said she felt, quote, on top of the world with an unobstructed view. Another newspaper quoted Mrs. Roosevelt as saying, It does mark an epoch, doesn't it, when a girl in an evening dress and slippers can pilot a plane at night.

5:15Dana Schwartz:The two women looked picture perfect, still in their dinner party attire. They were wearing long gowns and evening wraps. Eleanor was in a hat. Amelia had white gloves on. This was the pinnacle of glamour and excitement, a spectacle heightened by the depression the country was facing. It wasn't every day that the First Lady and the First Lady of the Air just hopped in an airplane. This was an adventure for the ages. The event was first documented in the papers and newsreels, and now it's written into books and strewn across the internet. The story is often recounted as an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment decision to sneak away from dinner and take a wild ride.

6:05Dana Schwartz:But today's episode isn't about being caught up in the moment. It's actually about being calculated. Because Eleanor and Amelia's flight of fancy may have just been a PR stunt. Welcome to Very Special Episodes, an iHeart Original Podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is The Joyride.

6:37Welcome back to Very Special Episodes. I'm Jason English. Very lucky, as always, to be here with Dana Schwartz and Zarin Burnett. Hey, what's up, guys?

6:45Dana Schwartz:Hey, hey. What up, Dana? What up, Jason? This one, I have to say, is very, very special for me because in third grade, I don't want to brag, but I did play Eleanor Roosevelt in our school's interactive wax museum. Hell yeah. So I feel a particular kinship to this episode. So we've got casting already. We don't have to do that later. You could play all the parts. I'll reprise my role. The so-called night flight that Eleanor and Amelia took, it was so swanky, so spirited. From the outside looking in, it really seemed to be... A joyride, a skylark, a wonderful adventure. Susan Ware studies 20th century U.S.

7:31Dana Schwartz:history and women's biography. She knows a lot about Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart. They are kind of hard to miss in 20th century American history. They knew it, too. And standing by the plane's door on that 1933 spring evening, Eleanor and Amelia made it clear to the press that they were embarking on something special. Mrs. Roosevelt, won't you go for a ride tonight over Washington? It's really lovely from the air at night. I'd be very glad to go for a ride over water. I like going at night and seeing the lights very, very. In this clip, they're already on the tarmac, ready to go. But they're talking as if their decision to take the flight is being made right there, right then.

8:19Dana Schwartz:A little feigned surprise never hurt anyone, right? But for the record... It can't have been totally spontaneous, because you just don't leave the White House and go to an airport and commandeer a plane. Susan's right. Amelia had arranged a plane before they left the White House. Press was notified and gathered to see them take off. There were even journalists on board. And if we're getting technical about things, Amelia was in control of the plane for part of the flight, but not the whole time. A male pilot took off and landed the plane, probably for legal reasons. That didn't take away from the triumph of this event, but it did mean that it wasn't low-key.

9:06Dana Schwartz:But really, almost nothing these women did was low-key. It really can't be overstated how famous they were. Well, I think this is the first time I've ever been asked to compare Amelia Earhart to Taylor Swift. But there is a way in which both of these women are figures that everybody knows about. And I think it's at that level, the kind of Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift. It's up there in the stratosphere. In 1928, Amelia was the first woman to cross the Atlantic in a plane called Friendship. The flight turned her into an overnight celebrity. After it, she needed four secretaries to deal with all the fan mail she received.

9:53Dana Schwartz:But Amelia wasn't actually the pilot on the friendship. She was just a passenger, which she compared to feeling like a, quote, sack of potatoes. So a few years later, in 1932, she made the trip on her own. Four years ago, I was here after the friendship. This time, I tried to justify that flight by going alone. This trek made her the second person ever, and the first woman, to fly across the Atlantic solo. It took nearly 15 hours. Just her and a single engine. Not even two engines in case one goes out. We all know that she disappeared on her last flight trying to do a round-the-world flight in 1937.

10:41And so in many ways, that's people's image of Amelia Earhart. But I think if that hadn't happened, what we would remember her for is this 1932 flight. It's true.

10:53Dana Schwartz:After this solo flight, the public became enamored by her. People wanted to know everything, even the mundane details of the journeys she took. What did you carry on the trip? You mean to eat? Yeah, to eat and drink. Well, I carried some water, of course, because my cockpit is very warm, and I carried a sandwich in case. I didn't eat it, though. I carried some hot chocolate and the all-reliable tomato juice. What kind of a sandwich was it? Chicken sandwich. Amelia's fame was reaching new heights, and the Roosevelts were ascending to new levels of power, too, As the world opened up before these women, they eventually crossed paths.

11:41Dana Schwartz:And they really hit it off. They became friends. They were like kindred spirits. And they maintained that really for the rest of the 30s while Amelia Earhart was still alive. She was always connecting with Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt would also mention Amelia Earhart. There was this kind of reciprocity that wasn't false or forced. This friendship carried into the Roosevelt transition from the New York governor's mansion to the White House. Initially, Eleanor was reluctant about taking on the role of first lady. As she later reflected, quote, I knew what traditionally should lie before me, and I cannot say that I was pleased at the prospect.

12:28Dana Schwartz:The turmoil in my heart and mind was rather great. I think she was very concerned that it might clip her wings, to use a nice aviation metaphor, and that she wouldn't be able to be the free person that she was and she might get trapped in this role of First Lady. Well, we know that didn't happen, and she in fact expanded the role dramatically.

12:57March 1933. Eleanor Roosevelt is swept up in the whirlwind of activities surrounding the first days of Franklin Roosevelt's administration. From the very beginning, Mrs. Roosevelt makes it clear that she intends to be more than a mere ornament on the White House reception line. She is sent on a tour of the country by FDR. He wants her to serve as his eyes and legs. She seems to be perpetually on the move. Writes a weary reporter traveling with her, please make Eleanor tired, just for one day.

13:31Dana Schwartz:The joyride with Amelia happened in April, less than two months after Eleanor's arrival at the White House. It was another way of saying, I'm not your traditional first lady. I'm making my own way. But the flight had a very literal message as well. Aviation was a very young industry in 1933, especially commercial aviation. And so the idea that somebody other than just a World War I pilot or a stunt pilot, that there could be regularly scheduled airlines that you could fly from Washington to New York. These things are all very new at the time. And to many people, they seemed kind of, well, it's just such a weird idea.

14:21Dana Schwartz:Both Amelia and Eleanor had a passion for aviation. They really believed flying was the future. Eleanor got a student pilot license at one point, although FDR nixed the idea before it went very far. And in a women's magazine column, Amelia even suggested all mothers should become pilots. so that they be good parents and help their kids when they're flying around all the time. Because obviously, in the future, that's how we'd be getting around day to day. So it was important to them to get other women involved in this world, as pilots and as passengers. Eleanor made sure to point out how at ease she was on the night flight with Amelia.

15:12Dana Schwartz:She was quoted saying she felt just as safe with a woman in the cockpit as she would have with a man. And that was a big deal. There's a sense of them both being ambassadors for aviation. And they're also ambassadors for opening opportunities for women. And so here is this joyride that combines all of those things. And so it's this kind of combination of, it seems very spontaneous, but you get a sense that everyone is very aware of the larger symbolism of it. Remember, it wasn't too long before this that women didn't have the constitutional right to vote. They didn't have many formalized rights in the 30s.

15:59Dana Schwartz:There were major concerns about women in aviation, that they were too scatterbrained to use the technology, too emotional to handle possible crises. Male pilots worried about training women because of the potential backlash should a member of the fairer sex die in an accident. Amelia and Eleanor had a message to share with the country, and they put on quite the show to do it. They made sure the press was there to jot down their quotes and snap photographs. These women were no strangers to PR. And if a headline-grabbing opportunity didn't arise on its own, they could always create the perfect scenario themselves.

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18:54Dana Schwartz:In the years surrounding the night flight, Amelia and Eleanor weren't just famous, they were a brand new kind of celebrity. So you had actresses in the news here in the 1930s, and then the other way in which women established themselves in the news was in the social realm. That's why I went into the Women's and Society pages. But you just didn't see many women of activity and accomplishment in the news. This is Maureen Beasley. I'm a professor emerita of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland at College Park. For years, I've been interested in the careers of women journalists starting way back when.

19:42Dana Schwartz:She's studied the ways Eleanor in particular got attention from the press. And Eleanor Roosevelt definitely was a media celebrity. She recognized the importance of the media in all of its forms. Eleanor set up these press conferences for women reporters only because she wanted to give them news that men couldn't get. Eleanor had her first press conference just two days after entering the White House. That was before FDR had his first press conference as president. She didn't know exactly how to handle herself at first. It is said that she walked around with a box of candied fruit and, you know, sort of acted like a hostess.

20:28Dana Schwartz:As awkward as that first press conference may have been, it didn't take her long to find her footing. Eleanor had a strong sense for what the country cared about. She held many causes near and dear to her heart, and she realized these were the kind of stories she could share with women journalists. Within a few weeks, she was ready to show them and the public what she was made of. She invited Amelia to dinner at the White House. It was a way of courting the public through taking part in an event that did make news. Here you had two of the most notable women of the era, and she took along some of her favorite reporters on this flight over Washington.

21:16You have to have a sense of drama if you're going to be in the public eye.

21:20Dana Schwartz:The night flight shows us how this virtuous press cycle worked. Women journalists got to come along, they got the byline in the papers the next day, and of course Eleanor got the headlines. First Lady in night flight. First Lady goes on night air trip. First Lady of land flies with First Lady of the air. We may take for granted today that the First Lady is a public figure with a platform and press coverage, but that wasn't really the case before Eleanor. Earlier, First Ladies didn't think it was too feminine to court publicity. Certainly Eleanor's predecessor, Lou Henry Hoover, although an extremely educated and accomplished woman, didn't want much press attention, even to the point that when she had a Christmas party at the White House for Girl Scouts, she wouldn't allow the press in, if you can imagine such a thing.

22:22So Eleanor came in and she was quite willing to focus attention on herself. Here you have a first lady for the first time is seeking to be in the news.

22:33Dana Schwartz:The night flight wasn't the last of her exploits to captivate the press. There was the time she was driven two miles into a coal mine, showing her support for the workers hit hard during the Depression. The papers captured how wearing a, quote, borrowed gray overcoat, and a miner's cap, Eleanor emerged from the mine to a cheering crowd 2 ,500 strong. And her month-long journey to the South Pacific during World War II certainly didn't escape the news cycle either. Eleanor's connection to the press ran deep. In fact, Eleanor did so much press, she actually thought of herself as part of the press corps.

23:19What people don't seem to realize about her is that she actually considered herself a journalist on her income tax returns.

23:27Dana Schwartz:And in a way, that makes sense. Because in addition to providing quotes and posing for photo ops, she started covering the adventures she took herself. During her time in the White House, Eleanor made nearly the same number of radio appearances as her husband, the president. She hosted her own programs. She wrote a number of books and hundreds of articles, including a daily column for many years. It was called My Day, and it was syndicated in 90 newspapers. It had millions of readers. And Amelia Earhart picked up a thing or two from Eleanor's success. She quickly learns to do what Eleanor Roosevelt, I think, had already learned to do, which is to use her celebrity to promote the causes that she cares about.

24:20Historian Susan Ware again. You really have to keep the name out there if you're going to maintain your celebrity. It is this kind of nitty-gritty of the lecture circuit and the grinding out the articles and the appearing on newsreels and all these things.

24:38Dana Schwartz:Like Eleanor, Amelia did her own share of stunts to garner attention and intrigue. It wasn't just her record-breaking flights, either. There was the time she tried out deep-sea diving, or demonstrated a new device to help pilots with parachute jump training. To sustain her flying and her advocacy, she had to sustain her fame. In her own words, no pay, no fly, and no work, no play. Flying was expensive, and planes just don't pay for themselves. And so she really had to work at bringing in an income. The press coverage that those women in that night flight got, it had financial benefits. Exclusive articles after Amelia's flight could pay big bucks.

25:29Dana Schwartz:The New York Times paid$20 ,000 in 1928 for a story of the friendship flight. The lecture circuits also paid. And all the attention led to brand deals for Amelia, with a car company, Kodak film, an engine company. She also designed and modeled her own line of clothing and luggage. Her designs were advertised in the pages of Vogue and featured in a Macy's window display, decked out with a model of her pilot's cabin. This was the precursor to the celebrity brands we all know today, whether it's Kim Kardashian's Skims or Fenty Beauty by Rihanna. The flight was important in a commercial way to both of these women.