John Leopold Le Berthon (1868-1952) and Theodore Moracin Le Berthon (1892-1960) were father-and-son newsmen who, around the time this street was named, shared a doomed business venture with Australian swimmer-turned-movie star Annette Kellerman (1886-1975), a major sex symbol in her day. John and Ted Le Berthon were both San Francisco boys. John moved the family – Ted, his two sisters, and their mother Rose – down to SoCal by 1902 but dumped Rose in 1909 and went back to SF, possibly to flee accusations that he’d scammed prominent Angelenos for a book of biographies that never materialized. (One of them even beat him up over it.) He then fell off the radar for a number of years – Rose finally divorced him in 1915 – while Ted was making a name for himself in L.A., first as a publicist for Grauman’s Theatres, then as a showbiz columnist for several newspapers. John, Ted, and John’s new wife Josephine picked up ninety acres here in the early 1920s – this street was named by 1929, possibly 1923 – and in 1924 they made a deal with Kellerman to build a women’s health resort on the land and brand it with Kellerman’s valuable name. Things fell apart and Kellerman sued, claiming she was duped, but the matter was settled and the resort never built. John returned to SF once more and would publish a satirical weekly called the News Letter-Wasp until folding it in 1941. Ted wound up editing various Catholic periodicals and was an ardent civil rights activist. He spent his final years in Fresno with his wife Frances.
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