[3] Searching for a hobby for their gregarious young daughter, the Appels enrolled Lila in Gus Edwards' kiddie review shows where she was given the nickname of "Cuddles";[2] a name that she would be known by for the rest of her acting career.

When Lee was 15 years old, she went to court seeking an injunction to prevent Mrs. Edwards "from collecting any money for Lila's services.

Lee quickly rose to the ranks of leading lady and often starred opposite such matinee heavies as Conrad Nagel, Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, and Rudolph Valentino.

Lee continued to be a highly popular leading lady throughout the 1920s and made scores of critically-praised and widely-watched films.

As the Roaring Twenties drew to a close, Lee's popularity began to wane and she positioned herself for the transition to talkies.

She went back to working with the major studios and appeared, most notably, in The Unholy Three, in 1930, opposite Lon Chaney Sr. in his only talkie.

However, a series of bad career choices and bouts of recurring tuberculosis and alcoholism hindered further projects and Lee was relegated to taking parts in mostly grade B-movies.

[6] Lee wrote Kirkwood stating she wanted a divorce, and in late September of that year, the two formally separated.

In August 1934, Lee, Peine, and chauffeur George Morrison had been sued for $110,000 by Italian opera singer and voice teacher Emilio Staine, who claimed he had been struck by their car when crossing a street in Santa Monica, California.

In 1936, Lee was living in California with her son James Jr, novelist Gouverneur Morris, and his wife Ruth (née Wightman), a screenwriter and racecar driver.

On September 25, 1936, Russell's dead body was discovered outside on the hammock by Kirkwood Jr., and a scandal that would ultimately end Lee's career ensued.

According to author Sean Egan in the James Kirkwood biography Ponies & Rainbows (2011), Murphy's will left Lee at the financial mercy of his second wife, who consequently became the manipulative character Aunt Claire in P.S.

On November 11, the Los Angeles Times reported that a woman had made a telephone threat towards Russell's mother, Victoria, urging her to stop pushing the investigation into her son's death.

Later in life, James Kirkwood Jr. would confide to a friend, William Russo, that there had been three suicide notes – one in Ruth Morris' jewel box and two within a newel post on the handrail of a set of stairs in the house.

Mrs. Morris claimed she found the suicide note in a box on her dresser drawer two or three days after Russell's body was discovered.

An entirely new theory was also introduced that day by The Examiner, which ran a story headed "Racketeering Ring Linked to Russell Case."

The source for the information was Detective Lieutenant Harry Leslie Hansen of the Georgia Street Division, who was an old friend of Russell.

On December 12, 1936, DA Buron Fitts closed the case on the grounds that "blood tests" had ruled out foul play.

In her autobiography, Lila Lee wrote, "They started digging around the place and they had found that our gardener had had relations with a sheep, had buried it.

Lee made several uneventful appearances in stage plays in the 1940s and starred in early television soap operas in the 1950s.

For her contribution as an actress in motion pictures, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1716 Vine Street.