Frank Clarke (pilot)

Frank Clarke (29 December 1898 - 12 June 1948) was a Hollywood stunt pilot, actor, and military officer. His most prominent role was as Leutnant von Bruen (and double for von Richthofen in combat scenes) in the 1930 production Hell's Angels, but he flew for the camera and performed stunts in more than a dozen films in the 1930s and '40s. He was killed in an airplane crash near Isabella, California, in 1948.

Clarke was born near Paso Robles, California, on 29 December 1898.

In his biography of pilot Paul Mantz, aviation author Don Dwiggins observed that the "Undisputed king of the Hollywood stunt pilots when Mantz arrived was Frank Clarke, a tall, handsome, part-Indian ex-cowboy who melted the hearts of women and froze the hearts of men. A 'born' pilot, Clarke was hopping passengers at Venice Field in 1918 on the same day he soloed. His good looks won him the lead role in the flying film serial Eagle of the Night (1928) at Pathé Studios.

"In addition, Clarke insisted on writing his own scripts, calling for such suicidal stunts as landing on top of a speeding passenger train. He came closer to disaster on this one, when a wheel stuck between two cars; it came free when the train rounded a curve."

Clarke was a charter member, along with Pancho Barnes, of the Associated Motion Picture Pilots.

Clarke's first film piloting job listed by IMDB is in The Cloud Rider, in 1925, but the Los Angeles Times published details of Clark (he added the last 'e' later) flying a Curtiss JN-4D off of the roof of the incomplete 10-story Railway Building in downtown Los Angeles for the silent film Stranger Than Fiction on 14 December 1920. His last was an uncredited appearance in RKO's Walk Softly, Stranger, filming of which was completed in June 1948 but which was not released by studio head Howard Hughes until 1950.

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