Hello there, everybody. I'm your host, Diane.

And I'm your host, Kelly.

We are dropping one of our bonus casts that we feature over at Patreon

for our executive producers.

We thought you'd enjoy this since we're coming up on Halloween.

This is the Life and After Life of Lon Cheney.

Enjoy!

Hello, you spooktacular executive producers. Welcome to History Goes Bump Bonus Cast, number 146.

On this bonus cast, we're going to be talking about the Life and After Life of Lon Cheney.

We're coming up on Halloween and so I thought what better than to talk about one of the icons of horror.

Lon Cheney was born, Lyonitis Frank Cheney on April 1st, 1883. His parents were Frank and Emma

Cheney and both were deaf and mute. This fact is probably why Cheney did so well as an actor

in silent movies because he could pantomime anything in order to communicate with others

because he was so well practiced at doing it with his parents. So you can imagine

when you can't use dialogue to get your point across because of the silent movies, he was able

to get his point across pretty well with just the way that he would pantomime and fling himself

around and such. He crow wrote a play with his brother called The Little Tycoon and they took it on

the road in 1901. So this is where he started getting his big break and acting and he learned that

he absolutely loved it. He'd been bitten and he was going to stick with it for the rest of his

life. Cheney toured with a company that stopped in Oklahoma City and he met his wife Francis Cleveland

Criton who joined him as a singer there. She went by the name Cleva. Cleva was asked to continue in

the troop left town and this helped the couple to grow their love. Cleva eventually became pregnant

...