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Bend's 'Amelia' link
Last modified: October 30. 2009 4:52AM PST
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George P. Putnam appears in this archive photo with wife Amelia Earhart, circa 1931.
Submitted photo
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Did you know?
There's a local connection to “Amelia,” the movie about famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart that's opening today in Bend.
Earhart's husband, George Palmer Putnam (played by Richard Gere), was editor and publisher of The Bend Bulletin and mayor of Bend before leaving and eventually marrying Earhart (played by Hilary Swank).
In Putnam's day, Bend was a dirt-street village of 500 people. Putnam, a good-looking bachelor and heir to an East Coast publishing firm, was an adventurous young man with big dreams.
He came here to enjoy the West and became a promoter of Bend, seeing the town get electricity, railroads and timber mills.
While back East on a trip in 1911, he met and married Dorothy Binney, an heir to the Crayola crayon fortune, and brought her here.
They led the social scene and enjoyed the outdoors, particularly canoeing on the Deschutes.
Putnam's career took him to Salem to become the Oregon governor's private secretary, then to Medford and Salem to edit and run newspapers.
Eventually, he moved back East to work in the family business. There he published Charles Lindbergh's autobiography, which gave him contacts in the world of aviation.
When a wealthy benefactor asked Putnam to find an aviator to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic, his search took him to the not-yet-famous Earhart.
He divorced Binney in 1929 and two years later married Earhart.
After her successful transatlantic flight in 1932, Putnam promoted Earhart's career and published her books about flying.
Two years after Earhart's disappearance over the Pacific, he released her biography, “Soaring Wings.”
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