Irene Howley

Biography

Brooklyn greeted Irene Howley on 7 August 1888, and by 1916 the cameras had begun returning the favor. In the space of a single year she stepped into Life’s Shadows, slipped into the jewel-toned intrigue of The Purple Lady, then closed the silent-era chapter with 1917’s Her Father’s Keeper—three films that still carry her flicker across a century. Off-screen, her name shared a marriage license first with Hobart L. Littell and, later, with Charles F. Tischner, Jr., each union a private reel running parallel to her brief but lasting public light.