Biography

January 28, 1928 · Dodge City, Kansas, USA

September 15, 1999 · Canoga Park, Los Angeles County, California, USA (Heart attack)

Lila Lee Wilkinson

Arrested with Robert Mitchum on August 31, 1948, for possession of marijuana, she served sixty days in jail and was placed on probation for five years. It was predicted that she and Mitchum would never work again, but in fact, Mitchum's career rebounded, and he became more popular than ever. Leeds, on the other hand, found it difficult to secure roles, and with her finances depleted, she eventually agreed to star in the exploitation film Wild Weed (1949), but it did not reignite her career or decrease her notoriety. She was once engaged to Stephen Crane, but he called it off and sought to distance himself from Leeds following her arrest for drug possession. She later claimed that while serving prison time, she was introduced to heroin by other inmates, and soon became addicted to the drug.

In the 1970s, she received renewed press attention when it was discovered that she had returned to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, where she had studied religion and become a dedicated volunteer at local missions and helping to raise money for the Shriners. She kept her distance from the movie business, and died without fanfare in 1999, aged 71.

Only two weeks after her release from prison, as she sped along the Sunset Strip in her car, she crashed into another vehicle which had stopped at a red light. She suffered a broken arm and other injuries. Disillusioned with Hollywood and her continued misfortune, she finally left Los Angeles in 1949. She lived in various places, mostly in the Midwest, generally working in nightclubs. She married and divorced twice more, and had three children, Shawn, Ivan and Laura. Her children were in and out of orphanages while she was in trouble. She settled in Chicago with her third husband, pianist Irving Rochlin, who once tried to rob a gas station to support his own drug habit.

Of Irish and Swedish descent, Leeds was born Lila Lee Wilkinson to Preston and Leta Wilkinson in Dodge City, Kansas, and raised in Clovis, New Mexico before she left for Los Angeles. She had one sibling, a brother, Robert. She worked at the box office at a local movie theatre in Clovis before leaving home. She worked as a dancer in St. Louis, Missouri, before moving to Hollywood when she was reportedly only 15 years old. A chance meeting with former child star Jackie Cooper led to his finding her a job as a hat-check girl at Ciro's, and soon afterwards, she was signed by MGM, reportedly without even a screen test, after being spotted in an amateur stage production.