Cleo Madison

She returned, apparently fully recovered, in 1924 and made several films. Then, for reasons never explained, she simply left the business.

She eventually became a victim of her own success; she was in such demand, and put herself through such a heavy schedule, that she had a nervous breakdown in 1922, and was off the screen for more than a year.

By the early 1920s, Madison's career had been steadily declining. Although she remained active with bit parts in several Universal shorts, she no longer possessed the star power necessary to inhabit lead roles. Many film historians point to her enormous output of work throughout the mid-1910s as a cause of exhaustion and exasperation for Madison.

Madison directed sixteen shorts and two feature-length films in a directorial career lasting only one year. Her most notable credits included the short films Her Defiance (1916), Eleanor's Catch (1916), and Triumph of Truth (1916). Eleanor's Catch was notable from a directorial perspective as one of the first films to use the twist ending; her character is revealed to have a surprising identity.

By 1915, Madison had become well known as one of the foremost women working in Hollywood, and she began to seek new challenges within the industry such as screenwriting, producing, and directing.

After playing in numerous one- and two-reelers, Universal put her into a serial, The Trey o' Hearts (1914), which achieved great success. She was given better parts, and was eventually teamed with director Otis Turner, and the films they made together were big hits. She even began to write and direct her own films, among the first women to do so, and she made everything from westerns to action pictures to tearjerkers.

In 1913 Madison signed with Universal Pictures and achieved star status the following year in The Trey o' Hearts (1914), a 15-episode film serial for Universal. Madison played three roles in the serial, portraying both the protagonist, Judith Trine, and the villain, her evil twin Rose, as well as the twins' mother.

She began her acting career on stage with the Santa Barbara Stock Company. She made her first professional appearances on the stages of the Burbank Theatre and the Belasco in 1911. She played the role of the mother in Captain Swift. In March 1912 she debuted as the leading female player in Ernest Shipman's stock company in Phoenix, Arizona; her first production was When We Were Twenty-One. She toured on vaudeville briefly.

Cleo Madison began her career with a theatrical company in Santa Barbara, California, in 1910. She stayed with the company for several years, and the troupe made the rounds of vaudeville and the theater circuit. Returning to California, and tired of touring, she decided to get into the motion picture business and secured work at Universal Pictures.

Cleo Madison (born Lulu Bailey; March 26, 1883 – March 11, 1964) was a theatrical and silent film actress, screenwriter, producer, and director who was active in Hollywood during the silent era.