He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and died in Los Angeles, California.

[2] Dearholt worked with Universal Studios on a number of melodramas during the 1910s but usually worked outside the studio system, producing and starring in a series of "Pinto Pete" Western during the 1920s.

Ten years later, Dearholt and Edgar Rice Burroughs founded the film production company Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises[2] when he was filming The New Adventures of Tarzan.

His character in that serial was a mercenary antagonistic explorer sent to steal the valuable Green Goddess.

During its production in Guatemala, Dearholt married the leading actress, Ula Holt, and Burroughs broke up with his first wife to marry Dearholt's ex-wife, Florence Gilbert.