Unseen Footage Filmed Days Before Amelia Earhart’s Final Flight Emerges 80 Years Later

Amelia Earhart in her Electra plane cabin
Photo: Albert Bresnik/The Paragon Agency via AP

Previously unseen video footage of aviation legend Amelia Earhart, thought to have been shot just days before she disappeared, has come to light, the Associated Press reports.

Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and she attempted twice to fly around the world in 1937. She crashed during the first flight, and she and her plane disappeared during her second attempt. The details remain a mystery to this day.

The above footage, shot in Oakland California, shows Earhart getting into her plane, posing for photographs, and waving and smiling. It also features her husband George Putman, her navigator Fred Noonan, and personal photographer Albert Bresnik.

The film is thought to have been shot by Albert Brenick’s brother John. The film was only discovered upon John Bresnick’s death in 1992 by his son, who is also named John.

Aviator Amelia Earhart with her Electra plane's propeller, taken by Albert Bresnik at Burbank Airport in Burbank, Calif. It was a clear spring day in 1937 when Amelia Earhart, ready to make history by flying around the world, brought her personal photographer to a small Southern California airport to document the journey's beginning. Photo: Albert Bresnik/The Paragon Agency via AP

Aviator Amelia Earhart with her Electra plane’s propeller.
Photo: Albert Bresnik/The Paragon Agency via AP

“I didn’t even know what was on the film until my dad died and I took it home and watched it,” Bresnik told AP. “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 footage will now be released as a film, called Amelia Earhart’s Last Photo Shoot, by the Paragon Agency, in conjunction with a book written by Nicole Swinford, a firm believer that the footage was shot just days before Earhart’s final voyage.


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