Earle C. Who?
On this day 128 years ago, was born Earle C. Anthony, a pioneer in some of the arts and sciences that began during his lifetime that are now dead or dying. The Packard distributor for all of California; one in seven Packards was sold by his companies.
ECA was a renaissance man born with a mechanical aptitude in the age of the great engineers who leveraged his abilities and his moment in time to not only profit from the rise of the automobile, but through building one of the first radio stations in the west. From money earned in his dealership he improved his station until it became the most powerful on the west coast.
A QSL card from ECAs KFI
Through the thirties, forties and fifties, KFI 640 was the powerhouse that brought the NBC Radio Network to most of the Southwest. With his other station, KECA (now KABC), he was a constant source of frustration to NBC. He’d no more sell his station than sell his wife, he told them.
While KFI is still a powerhouse (now a Clear Channel moneymaker in a sad radio environment), Packard preceded him in death (he died in 1961), and each year AM radio becomes less important in a changing media world.
In 1930, Anthony was one of the elite in Los Angeles. He rode horses with the Warner Brothers and the other moguls in the early mornings in Griffith Park, from his lavish estate (now a Catholic Church retreat) to the Breakfast Club he helped found. He put one of the first television stations on the air (now KCBS).
He traveled the country in his private rail car, listening to his station and sending telegrams back. He helped build Los Angeles from a cowtown to a metropolis with arts and culture. Surely his name would be known forever.
Today, the Packard is about to be joined in death by other once-great American carmakers, the private rail car is a museum piece, AM radio is practicing its death rattle, and Earle C. Anthony’s place in history is a disappearing footnote.
Nice summary of ECA’s life (I authored his bio, Earle C. Anthony, Renaissance Man of Los Angeles. Two small corrections: Anthony never owned a private rail car – only rented one on occasion; KFI-TV was channel 9, not channel 2, and became KHJ-TV (later KCAL) after its sale, not KCBS.
Small matter – both are now sister stations, part of the Viacom empire. As you note, Anthony’s mansion became a retreat for the Sisters of the Immaculsate Heart, replete with its hidden elevator (still works!) to the prohibition-era liquor celler.
His dealership in Los Angeles is now the Packard Lofts condo complex and the one in San Francisco on Van Ness sells Mercedes Benz. The main KFI studios on Vermont (originally built for Hearst’s KEHE and purchased by ECA in the late thirties) were destroyed by the LAUSD after housing a Korean newspaper for a quarter century.
A degreed electrical engineer (Cal Staste Berkeley), published playright with three pre-WW1 shows, occasional ghost writer of raduio scripts for NBC comedies, saviour of the Hollywood Bowl during the depression, instrumental in developing car radios, founder of the Los Angeles Auto Show and the service station chain called Chevron (sold to Standard Oil of Calif in 1913)he was truly a “renaissance man.”
His legacy today: with no living descendents his fortune still endows the Earle C Anthony fellowships at the University of California and Cal-Tech. Googling his name will bring up a host of scientists with ECA grants in their curricula vitae.
Oh, one final correction: Anthony was the Packard distributor (not the exclusive dealer) for all of California – there were numerous dealers under his aegis. The maximum number of dealerships he personally operated was seven, scaled back to Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco after the early twenties, with the magnificent Oakland showroom being sold in the late thirties to a Buick dealer.
A final note: after the demise of Packard the Anthony organization was briefly the western ststes distributor for the products of a reviving German carmaker known as Bayerische Motoren Werke. Unfortunately in 1958-59 BMW wasn’t yet ready to take the place of Packard. Today, however, their car and service in one place policy today echoes the concept ECA pioneered prior to WW I. When you purchased a Packard (or other Anthony distributed car) you recieved service coupons good for complimentary servicing at his Red and White Chevron service stations or any Packard dealership in California. Truly a visionary ahead of his time!