Thirteen Black Cats SoCal

01/31/2026

Texas Fandango coming up! March 27-29! We will be there, who else is going? 📸

12/27/2025

1927. Reginald Denny and Art Goebel.

12/26/2025

13 BC Frank Clark and Jeff Warren at the Dole air races, 1927.

09/07/2024

1924. The Black Cat - Often imitated, never duplicated. Some have tried but none are as good as the original. It’s ok, someone had to come first.

07/22/2024

Sept 1927. Bon MacDougall promoting his nonstop flight from California to Tokyo.

07/17/2024

1933. Los Angeles Calif. Frank Clarke at the national air races.

07/12/2024

Dec. 14, 1920: Stunt pilot Frank Clarke (in 1925 joined the 13 Black Cats) flies an aircraft off the 10-story Railway Building in downtown Los Angeles during filming for the movie “Stranger Than Fiction.”
The Los Angeles Times reported the next day: Frank Clark (later Clarke), 22-year-old stunt aviator, yesterday flew off the 10-story Los Angeles Railway Building at 11th Street and Broadway.
Clark’s plane a J.N. 4 Curtiss, equipped with a L-4 Liberty motor developing 150 horsepower, with a wingspan of 43 feet, larger than any biplane that ever hopped off a battleship’s deck.
The intrepid aviator had his plane going about 90 miles an hour when it left the edge of the roof.
The stunt was filmed for the Katherine MacDonald Pictures Corp. released in 1921 as “Stranger Than Fiction.”
Clarke went on to a career as a stunt pilot and actor in several Hollywood movies. Clarke was the chief pilot for the 1930 film “Hell’s Angels” by director Howard Hughes. He died in a non-job-related plane accident in 1948.
Los Angeles Times staff photographer George Watson took these three images

07/01/2024

March 29, 1924. 13 Black Cat Gladys Roy walks the wings of a Curtiss JN-4 'Jenny' biplane over Los Angeles while blindfolded.

06/27/2024

1934. “I have been a friend of Matlock for years and I barred him because I thought he has used up plenty of his luck. He has been a great auto racing mechanic, parachute Jumper airplane wing walker
and had done some aviation work where there was fighting in foreign countries. It is about time that he pulled out the slippers, lit the pipe and sat by the fireside and let the younger fellows do the dangerous work” - Art Pillsbury.

06/26/2024

1926. Albert Johnson in a low altitude jump from plane. 150 feet

06/25/2024

06/16/2024

1925 Gladys Roy Interview.