In 1893, Leonidas “Lon” Chaney, a ten-year-old boy from Colorado Springs, left Lincoln Elementary School to care for his sick mother and younger siblings. Both of his parents, Frank and Emma (Kennedy) Chaney, were deaf. As his mother struggled with illness, Lon created silent performances at her bedside, using pantomime to communicate news and stories without words. According to biographer Michael F. Blake, these daily routines developed the expressive skills that would later define Chaney’s acting career in silent films.
The story of Lon Chaney’s family in Colorado began with his grandfather, Jonathan Ralston Kennedy. Born in Ohio in 1824, Jonathan experienced hardship early when his father died during a cholera epidemic. His widowed mother led the family west to Kansas, where they settled along the Wakarusa River in an area called Kennedy Valley.
Jonathan Kennedy had three deaf children and became an advocate for education for the deaf. In Kansas, he worked with Philip A. Emery to open a private school for deaf students in 1861. The school was funded partly through tuition paid in goods and services and later became the Kansas School for the Deaf.
By 1873, Jonathan Kennedy moved his family to Colorado Springs. With $5,000 in territorial funding and support from local leaders, he opened the Colorado Institute for the Education of Mutes on April 8, 1874. The school started with seven students—three of them Kennedy’s own children—and later expanded its services to blind students as well. Today it is known as the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind (CSDB).
At CSDB, Emma Alice Kennedy met Frank H. Chaney, who worked as a barber in Colorado Springs from 1884 onward. Despite their strong family backgrounds—Frank descended from Ohio congressman John Chaney and Emma’s father founded CSDB—the family faced financial difficulties and moved frequently within working-class neighborhoods.
From a young age Lon contributed to supporting his family by leading tours on Pikes Peak, hanging wallpaper, helping rebuild after local fires, and learning stagecraft from his older brother at the Colorado Springs Opera House. The brothers formed a vaudeville troupe before Lon eventually moved to Hollywood by 1910.
Chaney found fame after years of minor roles when he starred in The Miracle Man (1919). He went on to perform iconic roles such as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and Erik in The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” he created elaborate makeups himself to portray characters often marginalized by society. Though famous for horror roles, Chaney also played many other types of characters and was respected for his versatility.
His only sound film was The Unholy Three (1930), where he performed several different voices himself before dying later that year at age forty-seven from throat cancer.
Although Lon Chaney never returned permanently to Colorado Springs, he maintained ties with CSDB; in 1925 he hosted a special screening of Phantom for its students. His mother is buried at Evergreen Cemetery alongside other members of the Kennedy and Chaney families.
“Chaney’s daily ritual honed the graceful movement and expressive hands that would later define one of the silent era’s greatest actors,” wrote Michael F. Blake.
