Height
5' 7" (1.70 m)

Spouse
Helen Hansmann (1935 - 30 June 1965) (his death) 1 child
Marian Stone (16 December 1911 - 1934) (divorced) 2 children

Trade Mark

Round spectacles, angular glasses and silver shirts with the letter "L" (for Legion) over the left breast pocket.

Trivia

Ran for President in 1936 on the Christian Party ticket. Washington was the only state that allowed him on the ballot (received 1,500+ votes).

Founder and head of the nativist, ultra-right-wing and anti-Semitic American political organization The Silver Legion of America, nicknamed the "Silver Shirts," founded in Asheville, NC, in 1933 and disbanded in 1940. He was active in Hollywood and New York film circles from 1921 until 1929, at which date he became a publisher of metaphysical magazines with strong political flavor. His closest friends during those years were Lon Chaney, William Boyd and Neil Hamilton.

Founded five publications: "Liberation", "Pelley's Silvershirt Weekly", "The New Liberator", the "Galilean" and "Roll-Call", which featured such headlines as "Why You Are Opposed by Invisible Persons", "Take Your Cues From the Great Pyramids" and "You Can Remember Before You Were Born".

Widley believed to be single-handedly responsibly for creating the myth of the "Benjamin Franklin Prophecy".

Personal Quotes

"Call it the Hereafter, call it Heaven, call it Purgatory, call it the Astral Plane, call it the Fourth Dimension, call it What you will. Whatever it is - and where - that human entities go after being released from their physical limitations, I had gone there that night." - (recounting the "seven minutes of Eternity" he had in California on a May night in 1928 when he left his body and bathed in an ornate pool "among jolly, worthwhile people".)