Trivia

Brother of director Ferdinand P. Earle.

Regarded by Vitagraph as one of its most important directors, Earle lost all his money in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and by the early 1930s was reduced to selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door for a living.

Earle was a director at Vitagraph back in the silent era. In 1941 his old boss, Vitagraph owner J. Stuart Blackton, was struck by a bus in Los Angeles and later died of his injuries. It turned out that Blackton was penniless and was about to be buried by the city of Los Angeles in a pauper's cemetery. Earle heard of it, bought his old boss a plot of land at Forest Lawn Cemetery and had him buried there. He later married Blackton's ex-wife, Evangeline Russell, and when she died he had her ashes placed next to Blackton's at Forest Lawn.