@laexplained: A century ago this month, Santa Monica aviator Fred Osborne rode a motorcycle off a 200-foot bluff in Pacific Palisades with a parachute on his back and newsreel cameras rolling. The photograph that stopped me is the first one. You can see daylight beneath both wheels, the Pacific behind him and a stretch of beach road that suddenly looks a very long way down. It was November 1926. Osborne belonged to the 13 Black Cats, a troupe of stunt flyers, and he was making the world’s first recorded attempt at a motorcycle parachute jump. His idea was to build up speed, clear the edge of Huntington Cliff and leave the motorcycle in midair. The bike would go down on its own. Freddie, if all went according to plan, would float down after it. Swipe through the British Pathé newsreel stills for a look at the preparations. A man helps him into the harness. Osborne settles onto the motorcycle. In the close-up, you get a good look at the face of someone who has apparently considered this proposition and decided, yes, this seems like a perfectly reasonable way to spend an afternoon in Los Angeles. Then comes the view from behind. Look just under his rear wheel and you’ll see the end of the little wooden ramp. From that angle, the Pacific fills practically the whole frame. Go back to the opening photograph for the view from the side. The cliff drops away almost vertically, and for that one instant Osborne is still sitting upright, as though there ought to be another few feet of road under him. The Santa Monica Evening Outlook reported that fewer than four seconds passed between takeoff and impact. Osborne pulled the ripcord, but the parachute barely had time to open. He hit the beach with the cameras still rolling. The next day, the Associated Press reported that telephone and telegraph wires had broken his fall. His doctors expected him to recover. The local paper added that he’d broken both legs. Here’s the part tucked into the last paragraph of the AP story. Osborne had recently gone from one airplane to another to rescue a fellow stunt flyer whose parachute had caught in the landing gear. The local paper identified her as Bobby Chase and placed the rescue at the Armistice Day air show at Clover Field in Santa Monica. He went up in a second plane and cut her loose. Imagine doing something like that and, by the following week, finding it in the last paragraph of the story about the OTHER thing you did. Two front-page headlines tell you how the next couple of days went. On November 18, the Evening Outlook ran “Daredevil Flier Injured in Leap.” By November 19, the headline was “Stunt Man Jokes Over Close Call.” A reporter had caught up with Osborne at the hospital in Sawtelle, where he was already joking with the staff. I’m especially glad somebody thought to write down Freddie’s own account of those four seconds. “The chute didn’t open and zip! Here I am.” Can’t you just picture him and Buster Keaton swapping stories over bootleg whiskey in some shady little basement by the beach? I’d have paid good money to hear that conversation. 🥃 Which slide made you stop and look twice? For me it’s still that first one, but the newspaper clipping at the end comes awfully close. ❌🌴🔍 Discover more Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica Canyon history on our Rustic Canyon Historic Walking Tour. Dates, tickets and more at the link in bio! 📸: Fred Osborne midair above the coast | Via SoCal Stair Climbers 📸: Osborne in close-up | British Pathé, 1926 📸: Fitting the parachute harness | British Pathé, 1926 📸: Osborne on his motorcycle before takeoff | British Pathé, 1926 📸: Clearing the ramp, seen from behind | Newsreel still via Visordown 📸: The crash site, seen from the bluff | British Pathé, 1926 🗞️: The next day’s headline | Associated Press, The Evening Independent, November 18, 1926 #PacificPalisades #FredOsborne #LosAngelesHistory #SantaMonicaHistory #StuntHistory

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