Edna's parents, Ira C. Tichenor and Hattie L. Craig, a newspaper couple, tied the knot in Illinois in 1882 and relocated to St. Paul, Minnesota, where Ira worked as a wire editor at a newspaper that same year.
Prior to Edna's birth, the Tichenors experienced a tragic loss, with their first child passing away sometime before 1901. Edna was born on April 1, 1901, in St. Paul, Minnesota, and her parents continued to live there for a few years.
The Tichenors made a significant move to Los Angeles by 1904, where Ira joined the staff of the Los Angeles Times and later served as real estate editor of the Los Angeles Examiner and financial editor of the Salt Lake City Telegram before returning to Los Angeles.
Edna attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School and married auto mechanic Robert J. Springer around 1919. Her film career began in 1923, with seven of her ten movies produced by M-G-M and four directed by Tod Browning.
Edna is best remembered for her roles in London After Midnight (1927) and The Show (1927),where she played a dark-eyed companion to Lon Chaney's vampire and a carnival sideshow performer posing as a giant spider with a woman's head, respectively.
Edna and Robert were divorced by 1930, and she returned to living with her parents that year. Unfortunately, her acting career did not survive the silent era, and her last known work was as a stand-in for actress Dorothy Burgess in 1934.
