The following information was submitted by Rex Weddle:

Earl was born in the Armourdale section of Kansas City, Kansas in 1919. As a teenager, a precocious drawing ability landed Earl the opportunity to study with Thomas Hart Benton at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1938-1941. His rendering of character, landscape treatments and use of color show the obvious influence of Benton.

After serving in WWII, Earl settled in the Los Angeles area and spent 10 years with the Spike Jones band as a comic. He enjoyed a successful career as a character actor in movies [The Egg and I], and later did cartoon voice characterizations and worked as a film editor.

He died in 2007 after spending the last few years of his life at The Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement facility in Woodland Hills, California.

He created an extensive collection of landscape and regionalism paintings, most of which are held in private collections.  His work was featured in Under the Influence, The Students of Thomas Hart Benton (Kemper Museum of Art, 1993). The Ashby-Hodge gallery of Art in Fayette, MO profiled his work in an exhibition in 1995.