New black-and-white footage of Amelia Earhart shot shortly before her plane went missing over the Pacific, which sat unwatched on an office shelf for decades, has been released for the first time this month.
The grainy video shows Earhart in a playful light, not often seen in still photos of the aviator, at her last last photo shoot in Burbank, California, in 1937.
Earhart is seen smiling broadly and posing for photos dressed in a fashionable pantsuit, rather than in her standard flight jacket. She shows fans around the plane and climbs onto to pose for photos.
The undated promo shoot was held before Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, departed from the airport now known as Bob Hope Airport in Burbank on May 21, 1937, in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe in a twin engine Lockheed Model 10 Electra.
Earhart brought her personal photographer, Al Bresnik, to the airport for the photo shoot to document the journey's beginning. But his brother John, who tagged along, is the one who is believed to have recorded the very dark, grainy three-and-a-half-minute film that almost nobody saw — until now.
John Bresnik's son turned the footage over to The Paragon Agency. The publisher released it this month after it sat on a shelf in Bresknik's office for decades.
"I didn't even know what was on the film until my dad died and I took it home and watched it," Bresnik said recently. "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.'"
Earhart and Noonan were nearing the end of their journey when they left New Guinea on July 2, 1937, for tiny Howell Island. Halfway across the Pacific between Australia and Hawaii, their plane went off the map. In one of her final radio transmissions, Earhart said she thought they were near but couldn't see the island and were low on fuel. The mystery of their fate has captivated the world for decades.
Some information from The Associated Press.