Earl Drive in La Canada/Flintridge is named after Edwin Earl. Filmmaker John Newcombe says Earl was a rich landowner and businessman in Southern California at the turn of the last century.

"He had made millions inventing or patenting the refrigerated rail car. He then went into the newspaper business."

Newcombe produced the documentary film "Rancho La Canada: Then and Now." He says at the start of the 20th century, Edwin Earl bought the Los Angeles Express newspaper. He later started a morning paper – the Los Angeles Tribune.

Earl and L.A. Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis got into a public tiff over a Times story about "a coterie of Long Beach men whose unnatural tendencies caused them to make advances to other men."

Thirty defendants paid fines to avoid publicity. One pled "not guilty" and went on trial. Edwin Earl thought publishing the story before any convictions was exploitative, saying his papers would "throw such matter in the wastebasket." The battle escalated to a libel suit that Earl won. But his newspapers lost the circulation war.

(Airdate: 4/18/2009)