A gutsy Illinois farm girl born with a man's name and a magical gift for flying blazes a legendary trail across WWII, earning powerful friends and enemies on both sides of the war.

SYNOPSIS:

THE ACE OF HEARTS

Tone & Style: Action-adventure dramedy faithful to multiple decades across the 20th Century in style, fashion, music, dialogue, humor and events. And while the tone is often comedic, there are many tense moments involving war, death, depression, shocking discoveries and life-threatening danger. But at its core is one woman’s powerful emotional journey as she doggedly battles her way against incredible odds to succeed in a man’s world and find purpose in her life even when her best days are behind her.

The thrilling action of MASTERS OF THE AIR and TOP GUN, the heartbreaking tragedy of AMELIA, the boozy humor of THE THIN MAN, the romantic wartime passion of CASABLANCA, the life-spanning sweep of CITIZEN KANE and the inspiring bonds of MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS combine in a rambunctious, unpredictable and highly cinematic saga filled with memorable historical characters, progressive women's values and battle of the sexes humor that will strongly connect with today's audiences and touch their hearts like few films ever have.

Story Overview: America is in the grip of the Great Depression. The glitz and glamour of the Roaring ‘20s are a distant memory and the Crash of 1929 has ruined millions. The Dust Bowl is wreaking havoc, unemployment is at 25% and 13 million Americans are out of work. FDR has been sworn in as President, Adolf Hitler has been appointed Chancellor of Germany. Japan has invaded China, Mussolini has his eyes on Ethiopia, Stalin is slaughtering millions and fascism is on the rise. World War II is on the horizon and nothing can stop it.

KING KONG is topping the box office, Duke Ellington and Bing Crosby are topping the charts and the first Major League All-Star Game is played starring Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. And at a dusty farm in Illinois, a young girl gaga over Amelia Earhart is about to take the first step in a magical journey that will take her where no woman has ever gone before.

Main Characters (who age through the story):

Bobbie Joe Mayfield: Feisty, high-spirited Illinois farm girl born with a magical gift for flying who idolizes Amelia Earhart. Becomes a champion teenage stunt pilot and Earhart lookalike, but when Amelia vanishes in 1937, gives up flying, changes her appearance and becomes a sultry, hard=charging newspaper reporter. Sent to England to cover the Battle of Britain, she steals a Spitfire and flying like a maniac, shoots down five German planes in one day, becomes the celebrated Ace of Hearts and launches a remarkable journey into the pages of history, earning powerful friends and enemies on both sides of the war.

Dickie Mayfield: Bobbie’s devoted All-American older brother and top teenage pilot who joins the RAF in 1940 to fight in the Battle of Britain. Returns to the States after Pearl Harbor and joins the Navy as a combat pilot on Guadalcanal, where he’s shot down and badly wounded. Survives his injuries, endures a long recuperation both at Pearl Harbor and at the farm and when he marries his Navy nurse and starts a family, Bobbie wonders if her own wedding day will ever come.

Uncle Charlie: Former WWI ace pilot, powerful owner of the Chicago Examiner and Bobbie and Dickie’s surrogate father. Teaches them to fly in his WWI biplane called “Canary” as well as the much more advanced Vega 5. Hires Bobbie as an ace reporter and sends her to England in 1940, launching her remarkable career. A wise and big-hearted man who loves his martinis, he’s Bobbie’s Rock of Gibraltar who always gets her back on he feet when life deals its crushing blows. “He was more than the father I never had. He made me everything I was.”

Roger Vaughn: Dickie’s Squadron Leader at RAF Tangmere, Oxford man and Errol Flynn lookalike. Charming, witty and hilariously funny, he and Bobbie meet at the Savoy in London and over countless martinis and a Blitz bombing raid, fall in love like peas in a pod. Takes her to Tangmere to reunite with Dickie and after Bobbie steals a Spit and downs five German planes, makes her part of the squadron. But when Willi Galland enters the picture, jealousy boils over. The love triangle between Roger, Bobbie and Willi lasts for decades and becomes a driving force of the story.

Willi Galland: Germany’s urbane and supremely self-confident top ace, Bobbie’s savior and Clark Gable lookalike. When Goering puts a price on Bobbie’s head, Willi lures her over to France and cripples her plane to keep her alive. The two fall hopelessly in love and when Willi escorts Bobbie back to Tangmere, the love triangle begins. Both in love with the same girl, Willi and Roger forge a valiant separate peace that will last a lifetime and have hilarious consequences both during and after the war.

Jack Kennedy: Handsome Navy Lieutenant, commander of PT 109 and future President. When Bobbie vanishes in combat over the Pacific in 1943, Jack and his crew are sent to the rescue and find her on the deserted island where Bobbie washed ashore and found Amelia Earhart. Jack and Bobbie fall deeply in love and risking both their careers and Roosevelt’s ire, make a pact to keep Earhart’s explosive diary a secret. After the war, Bobbie turns down Jack’s proposal to join him in Washington and spirals into deep depression when he’s assassinated in 1963.

Amelia Earhart: Record-setting aviatrix, Bobbie’s idol and the most famous woman in the world. When Earhart crashes in Hawaii on the first leg of her around the world flight in 1937, the White House changes her flight plan in return for repairing her plane, sending her 1000 miles off course so she can take spy photos of the Japanese military build-up in the Solomon Islands at the END of her trip instead of the beginning, which causes her to run out of fuel. And when Bobbie crashes in the Pacific after a harrowing dogfight and washes up on a deserted island, she finds Earhart, skeletal and half-insane after being marooned there for 6 years. She tells a horrified Bobbie what happened, and when Jack and PT 109 come to the rescue, Earhart commits suicide, leaving her blood-stained diary with a note reading “Let them remember me as I was.” It’s a secret both Jack and Bobbie will take to their graves.

SYNOPSIS:

June, 1933. America’s in the grip of the Great Depression and gaga over Amelia Earhart. At a dusty farm in Illinois, 14 year-old tomboy Bobbie Joe Mayfield and her older brother Dickie, 16, are dying to fly. Uncle Charlie, a dashing WWI ace, owner of the Chicago Examiner and the kids’ surrogate father, agrees to teach them in his 2-seater yellow biplane called Canary on one condition: they get straight A’s in school. Just one B and the lessons will stop for both. It’s a daunting decision for any teenager to make, but the kids shake hands sealing the deal and the lessons begin.

Bobbie and Dickie have never been in the air before and as Charlie teaches them the basics, the kids take to it like ducks to water. Dickie’s good, but Bobbie's a prodigy who can make Canary do anything she wants. Charlie instantly recognizes Bobbie’s gift and when Dickie gets his pilot’s license, he insists he take Bobbie up with him when he flies so she can build her hours and until she’s old enough to get her own license, which Dickie is more than willing to do because “she’s ten times better than me anyway.”

Bobbie quickly becomes a champion stunt pilot, perfecting several aerial tricks including her own signature death spiral, which always wows the crowd. And when kids sweep the junior air races in 1935, Bobbie starts looking and dressing like her idol Amelia in her signature tousled hairstyle, brown leather flying jacket, colorful scarf and trousers – so much so that the press dubs her “Little Amelia” and “The Teen Queen of the Air.”

Meanwhile Earhart takes a brief break from flying and joins Purdue’s faculty as Counsellor in Careers for Women, a revolutionary and controversial lecture post where she encourages Purdue’s female undergrads to look beyond the traditional roles society has made for them and pursue to their own careers rather than settle for just being housewives. Bobbie’s certain that they’ll hit it off like gangbusters and skips school one day and drives to Purdue to meet her.

But in a blunt encounter outside Purdue’s lecture hall, Earhart – showing the immense strains of being the most famous woman in the world – scolds Bobbie for copying her and tells her, “You don’t want to be me. Just be yourself and fly your own course.” Bobbie’s mortified, and it takes a few years for Amelia’s advice to sink in. But as she says later, it’s the best advice she ever got.

Bobbie and Dickie soon master the advanced Vega 5 monoplane, a much faster plane than Canary with a closed cockpit that requires instrument flying and an entirely new set of piloting skills. They plan to enter the Transcontinental Speed Race, but when Earhart vanishes in the Pacific in 1937, Bobbie is shattered and gives up flying forever. Or so she thinks. 1940. Dickie joins the RAF and Bobbie, now 23 and looking like a cross between a sultry Lauren Bacall and a swaggering Rosalind Russell in HIS GIRL FRIDAY, becomes a hot beat reporter for the Examiner. And in a hilarious Thin Man-esque scene over many martinis in the Drake Hotel dining room, cons Charlie into sending her to London as a war correspondent.

Arriving in blitz-bombed London and camping out at the Savoy bar, Bobbie meets the dashing and witty Roger Vaughn, 24, Dickie’s Squadron Leader and over many jokes and martinis, they fall in love like peas in a pod. They go to the 601 squadron base at Tangmere on the southeast coast and Bobbie has a joyous reunion with Dickie, who introduces her to his fellow pilots, who are battling the Luftwaffe every day against impossible odds. Dickie lets Bobbie sit in the cockpit of his Spitfire and as he acquaints her with the finer points. Bobbie’s a quick study. And as her eyes dart across the complex instrument panel taking everything in, she knows she was born to fly it.

When the squadron goes up the next day to tangle with the Germans, Bobbie can’t stand being left out. Breaking every rule in the book, she steals a Spit, rockets into the air and joins the squadron over the English Channel. Roger and Dickie are shocked, but when Bobbie shoots down four German planes flying like a maniac and shoots a fifth Messerschmitt off Roger’s tail, saving his life and making her an ace in one day, the squadron inducts Bobbie into the RAF in a hilarious and heartwarming ceremony.

Reporters and photographers from The Times of London and the BBC arrive at the pub that night and as the squadron regales them with tales of Bobbie’s heroics, her smiling face lands on the front page as “THE ACE OF HEARTS!” and leads the BBC World Service broadcast, which is heard by the Germans.

But fame has its price. Goering wants her dead and when the squadron goes up the next day, the Luftwaffe has its orders: find the Spit flying crazy and shoot her down. But one brave man disobeys. Germany’s top ace, the handsome and urbane Willi Galland, lures Bobbie over to France and forces her down unharmed. Bobbie’s furious he got the best of her but when they meet face to face and Willi explains why he did what he did, the two fall hopelessly in love and spend several amorous days together, Bobbie picking Willi’s brains for the combat flying techniques Willi has mastered.

Goering is furious that Bobbie’s still alive and orders Willi and Bobbie to have an aerial duel to the death, which everyone knows Willi will win. As the two planes circle high over the Channel with Willi reluctant to kill her, suddenly Bobbie plunges in her signature death spiral, pulls out at 50 feet and makes a beeline for the White Cliffs. As Willi gleefully gives chase, Bobbie radios Tangmere that she’s “Comin’ in hot with a Schmitty on my tail! Don’t shoot! Repeat! Don’t shoot!”

Dickie, Roger and the squadron are overjoyed to see Bobbie alive and stunned to meet the legendary Willi, who already has 40 kills on his way to a record 104. When Bobbie explains how Willi saved her life, Roger’s jealousy eases – but it’s clear the two are deeply in love with Bobbie, and she with them. They make a secret pact not to kill each other and Willi urges Roger to ground Bobbie because the Luftwaffe has standing orders to shoot her down, and it’s only a matter of days until they do.

Roger’s in a serious pickle. He can’t play favorites with his pilots, but if he sends Bobbie up she’ll die. Suddenly Winston Churchill makes a surprise visit and solves the problem. In a deeply emotional scene, he tells Bobbie that the British people need to focus on winning the war and not go to bed every night worried about the fate of one pretty girl. He thanks Bobbie for her extraordinary service, gives her the coveted Victoria Cross and sends her home. Bobbie is heartbroken, Roger and Dickie are relieved and Bobbie heads back to London with Churchill, who wants to know about everything that happened.

Back in Washington, Roosevelt chews Bobbie out for pulling a stunt, violating the Neutrality Act and worst of all, for being a woman. Bobbie fights back, refusing to be lectured, then delivers a passionate Rose Garden speech urging America to support the British, who are getting bombed every day and standing alone against Hitler. Roosevelt is furious, but the speech makes national news and Eleanor Roosevelt becomes Bobbie’s champion, promising she won’t let her talents go to waste.

Bobbie returns to the farm brokenhearted and cries when she reads a letter from Roger telling her about a day when he and Willi recognized their planes during a dogfight, chased each other to a field in southern England and spent the afternoon like old friends taking about their mutual love for her. Uncle Charlie helps get Bobbie back on her feet by arranging a War Bond promo film with the Dorsey band singing “Any Bonds Today?”, which plays in all the theaters and gets Bobbie back on the radar screen.

Pearl Harbor is attacked, Dickie comes home and joins the Navy but Bobbie’s not allowed to enlist. As Dickie heads for the Pacific, Bobbie join the WAFS (Women’s Auxiliary Flying Service) and spends six months flying military planes all over the US with female crews so the men can be freed up to fight abroad. The WAFS do an incredible job, but Bobbie is soon bored. Eleanor pulls some strings and Bobbie joins the Navy as a Lieutenant at Pensacola AFB, the first female combat flight instructor in history.

Bobbie whips the young pilots into shape, earning their respect and teaching them all the tricks Willi taught her. But after six months, she needs more and Eleanor gets her assigned to Dickie’s squadron on Guadalcanal as a combat pilot. The air war in the Pacific is totally different than the one in Europe. No gallant foes or friendly fields to land in – only murder in the sky and thousands of miles of open ocean. Once you go down, you’re gone.

Bobbie and Dickie reunite on war-torn Guadalcanal in 1943 and on her first mission, the squadron wages a furious dogfight with a dozen Japanese Zeros and bombers. They bag nine Japs, but Dickie’s plane is hit and as he bails out, three Zeros riddle his parachute and make a getaway. Horrified and furious, Bobbie disobeys orders and goes after ‘em and in a thrilling twilight chase, shoots them down but runs out of fuel, crashes in the ocean hundreds of miles from nowhere and washes ashore on a deserted island barely alive.

Searching for food, Bobbie’s caught in a trap and taken prisoner by a Robinson Caruso –like figure with long straggly hair and a primitive hatchet and taken to to a cave. As they sit near a fire, the figure pulls back her hair revealing the face of Amelia Earhart, who’s only 46 but looks 90. Marooned for six years and now half-insane, Earhart tells Bobbie what happened: that the White House made her fly 1000 miles off course to spy on the Japanese, then covered up her disappearance and left her to die to hide their involvement. Bobbie’s horrified and heartbroken over Earhart’s emaciated condition, and when Earhart tells her the island is invisible and she can never leave, Bobbie knows she has to act.

Bobbie builds a huge heart-shaped design with coconuts on the wide sandy beach, fashions a wet sand pedestal in the middle and angles her compact makeup mirror towards the sun, hoping the signal is seen. A pilot from Bobbie’s squadron on a recon mission to find her sees a glinting reflection on the distant horizon and veers off to investigate.

At the Tulagi Naval base, Lt. Jack Kennedy is given the pilot’s coordinates for an island that’s not on the map and PT 109 is sent to find her. Jack knows Bobbie’s name from the Battle of Britain and is shocked to learn she’s fighting in the Pacific. The trip takes two days at a steady 30 knots across open ocean, and Jack is ordered not to tell his crew who they’ve been sent to find.

Earhart senses someone is coming and tells Bobbie she needs to be alone. Bobbie sleeps on the beach curled inside the coconut heart and when she enters the cave in the morning, Earhart has slit her wrists, leaving her leather-bound diary and a page written in blood reading ‘Let them remember me as I was.”

PT 109 arrives and when Bobbie wades out to meet Jack in the shallow surf, the attraction is electric. Bobbie says there’s something he needs to see, Jack tells his crew to camp on the beach and entering the cave, Jack is shocked to see Amelia’s body and heartbroken by her farewell note. He wants to take the body back, but Bobbie insists they honor her last wishes. Bobbie and Jack bury Amelia on the island and afterwards, swim in a silvery lagoon and spend spend a passionate night together, sealing a secret that will bond them for life.

Bobbie is court-martialed at Pearl Harbor for disobeying orders and is sentenced to five years in prison. Defending herself at the trial, Bobbie accepts the verdict – but tells the court she found Amelia Earhart alive on the island, has her diary and the scandal of sending her on a spy mission will bring down the White House. She suggests the court cable Roosevelt for instructions, then goes to see Dickie in the hospital, who survived for two days in the ocean and suffered a broken back that will take years to heal.

An incensed Roosevelt demands Earhart’s diary, but Bobbie refuses to give it up. And when he threatens to lock her and Kennedy up for 20 years, Bobbie denies Jack has any knowledge of it. A deal is struck: in return for her freedom, Bobbie will remain eternally silent about Earhart. And if she ever breathes a word of it, he’ll lock her up and throw away the key. Bobbie is removed from active duty but kept at full pay and Bobbie storms out of the Oval Office a free woman.

1944. Bobbie slowly nurses Dickie back to health at the farm but as the months drag on, Dickie can see Bobbie’s antsy for action, so Uncle Charlie steps in and sends Bobbie back to London as a war correspondent. Bobbie returns to the Savoy Bar, meets legendary war reporter Rusty Gates and the two hit if off like gangbusters. Suddenly the Germans launch a massive counteroffensive in Belgium and when Rusty goes to cover the Battle of The Bulge, he leaves a note telling Bobbie to see Major Jimmy Stewart, Commander of the 445th Bomb Group at Tibenham if she wants a good story.

Jimmy tells Bobbie the Luftwaffe, now under command of General Willi Galland, have a top secret 262 jet fighter plane that’s ripping their squadrons to shreds. Bobbie says she knows Willi very well and when Jimmy jokes that maybe Willi will give her one so they can figure out how it works, Bobbie gets a mischievous idea. She goes back to Tangmere and tells Roger, now a Group Captain, she needs his help to steal a 262. Roger wants nothing to do with it, but when Bobbie says they’d be stealing it from Willi’s airbase near Berlin, Roger can’t resist.

Bobbie and Roger parachute into Germany at night, sneak onto Willi’s base and find a 262, which is unlike any plane they’ve ever seen. But there’s a problem: the cockpit is tiny and it only has one seat. Bobbie and Roger cram themselves in, Bobbie fires up the jet engines and the base erupts in panic. Bobbie rockets down the runway and takes to the air getting a feel for the plane as Willi and his crews race outside in alarm. Bobbie flips on the radio and as her gleeful voice booms over the loudspeakers, Willis is stunned. And when Roger joins in, he’s stunned even more. As Bobbie and Roger send their love and rocket towards England, all Willi can do is shake his head and smile. And when the 262 lands at Tibenham in Essex, Jimmy and his squadrons give them an uproarious hero’s welcome.

1945. Roosevelt dies, the war ends and Dickie’s nurse from Pearl Harbor, Janet, arrives at the farm and when she and Dickie get married, Bobbie wonders if her special day will ever come.

1948. Jack, now a Congressman, invites Bobbie to fly the lead plane in the Berlin Airlift along with a promotion to Lieutenant Commander. Bobbie eagerly accepts and when she lands in Berlin, Willi, now a Lufthansa executive, is part of the blue ribbon delegation to meet her. Bobbie desperately wants to get married and settle down, but not just with any man. She and Will have a romantic dinner together and is crushed when Willi tells her he’s married. Bobbie goes to Oxford and has a wonderful reunion with Roger, but is crushed again when she meets his wife and toddler son.

Bobbie finally does her homework, She learns that Jack’s being groomed for the Presidency and has a string of girlfriends a mile long. And when Jack calls and begs her to come to Washington and be a couple, Bobbie turns him down, knowing she’d never be able to change his womanizing ways. It’s one of the toughest decisions she ever makes and it haunts her for the rest of her life.

Accepting her fate as a single woman, Bobbie moves to Paris and spends the 1950s living the bohemian life, enjoying several lovers, singing in a nightclub and writing a column for The Examiner called “Views From Abroad.” And in early 1960, Bobbie receives a package from Jack containing Earhart’s diary, which Jack has kept safe for 17 years, along with a note saying he’s convinced they did the right thing by keeping Amelia’s secret and letting the world remember her as she was.

The 20th anniversary of the Battle of Britain arrives and Bobbie, Dickie, Roger, Willi, Jimmy and Rusty - now in their 40s and 50s – have a hilarious reunion atop the White Cliffs watching mock air battles over the Channel. Jimmy says Hollywood’s ready for a movie about Bobbie’s amazing life and everybody’s going to be in it, but as Bobbie says in a regretful voice-over, Jimmy’s busy schedule kept the movie from ever getting off the ground, but hopes that one day Hollywood will get around to it.

Jack is elected President and Bobbie moves back to the farm, eager to be part of the exciting New Frontier. But when Jack is assassinated in 1963, Bobbie plunges into deep depression. Now 45 and convinced that her best days are behind her, Bobbie prays for a miracle, both for herself and her country.

And she doesn’t have long to wait. In 1964, as The Beatles surge to the forefront of pop culture and the world starts to change, Charlie introduces Bobbie to the President of Purdue, who offers her Earhart’s old job as Counsellor in Careers for Women saying her unique life experience will be a huge benefit for the girls. Bobbie and Amelia have come full circle and Bobbie’s “Fly Your Own Course” becomes the most popular – and controversial – lecture on campus.

But as Bobbie guides the girls through the tumultuous ‘60s in the same lecture hall Earhart used in 1935, the times take a toll. And when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy are assassinated in 1968, Bobbie sinks into another deep depression and drinks heavily, wallowing in despair old photos of Roger, Willi and Jack and the fate of her country. But she finally pulls herself out of it and guides the girls to glory through the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s and retires at age 72 with Purdue’s highest honors.

1993. Bobbie’s 75th birthday at the farm is a huge affair with scores of her former students and their dates and led by five female officers from all the service branches who stun the crowd, and Bobbie, with VHS tapes of her 1940 Rose Garden speech and her 1942 War Bond promo film. Nobody except Dickie and Janet knew Bobbie in the ‘40s. Nobody had any idea she did the speech or the War Bond promo. And everyone’s stunned at how beautiful and radiant she was. Bobbie’s overwhelmed watching the films from her glory days and deeply grateful to the five female officers who dug them up.

But the biggest surprise comes when Roger and Willi, still handsome and vigorous at age 77, arrive in Canary and a twin red biplane to join the party. Bobbie is overjoyed to see them (it was Dickie’s idea) and the two old aces wow the crowd with Bobbie’s wartime exploits and how they were both madly in love with her. But there’s another reason they came. Roger and Willi, both widowers now, offer marriage proposals. Bobbie is stunned. She has to turn away as her emotions well up inside, then turns and snarls like the hard-boiled reporter she used to be. “There’s only one way to settle this – a duel. Two legendary aces, locked in mortal combat.” The duel turns out to be a hilarious squirt gun battle and as Roger and Willi fire shots, Bobbie storms in with a Super Soaker, drenching them both and exacting her revenge. “You shoulda asked me 50 years ago, you jerks!"

But the fun’s not over. Bobbie and Dickie climb in Canary and Roger and Willi climb in the red twin and the planes take to the air in a show stopping exhibition of stunt flying to see who’s best. They match each other in barrel rolls and loop-de-loops, but when Bobbie pulls off her signature death spiral, Roger and Willi wave the white flag, ceding the crown to the one and only Ace of Hearts.

We close at the farm in 2018, where Bobbie lies near death at age 100 clutching Earhart’s diary to her chest. As she lovingly gazes at old photos of Roger, Willi and Jack knowing she wouldn’t have changed a thing, she hears a ghostly Canary throttling up outside and knows her time has come. As Canary flies off into the sunset, the voices of Roger, Willi and Dickie welcome Bobbie Joe to the Heavenly Squadron, where great pilots go to fly among the stars when their days on Earth are done.

Commercial Appeal:

Compelling Themes:

The fight for female equality and respect in a decidedly man’s world. The rise of feminism and women’s rights through the 20th Century. Insights into the air war side of WWII, too often overshadowed by the ground campaigns. The true story of Earhart’s White House-directed course change from east to west to west to east on her around the world flight in 1937, why the baffling change was made and what might have happened to her.

Fantastic Cast:

Richly drawn historical and fictional characters each with their own distinctive personalities, goals and objectives. An incredibly dynamic and empathetic female lead with all the strengths and weaknesses and triumphs and tragedies required to elevate a strong character into one for the ages. A delightful and engaging band of supporting characters each bringing added depth, dimension and color to an already powerful story.

Cinematic Settings & Songs:

Stunning locations, sweeping vistas, breathtaking air battles and jaw-dropping revelations that bring WWII and the 20th Century alive like few films ever have. Plus a great collection of songs and music from the 1930s through the 1990s that underscore the drama, add to the thrills and match the moods as the story marches through the course of 20th Century history.