Trailblazing Stunt Pilot Was the Stuff Movies Are Made of
L.A. Times Staff Writer

Barnstorming pilots were the daredevil missionaries of aviation's pioneering era, and none of them did more for the cause than Los Angeles' Frank Clarke. He melded two of the world's, and the city's, most promising new technologies: flight and film.

In 1920, thousands of Angelenos watched transfixed as the "king of stunt pilots" took wing from the roof of the Railway Building in a Jenny biplane, whose parts he had ...