Mary Pickford testifies for a friend

• Posted By: Scott Harrison
• Posted On: 12:15 a.m. | March 27, 2012

March 16, 1944: Mary Pickford is photographed in Los Angeles Superior Court, where she had come to testify for a friend seeking damages following a traffic accident.

This image by Times staff photographer John Malmin accompanied an article the next morning that reported:

Mary Pickford, who described herself “in a humble way, a writer too,” yesterday took the witness stand before Superior Court Judge Roy V. Rhode to aid her friend, Inez Wallace Hubbell, newspaperwoman, in a $100,000 damage suit as aftermath of an automobile accident.

Mrs. Hubbell, columnist known as Inez Wallace, is assistant to the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She charges that she received serious injures to her head and spine when the taxicab in which she was riding last June 3 was involved in a three-car collision….

“America’s Sweetheart” told of her friend’s activities and many interests preceding the accident, and of her obvious illness afterwards.

“Mrs. Hubbell was a very active woman,” Miss Pickford testified when questioned by Paul Blackwood, attorney for her friend. “I’m also an active woman, but I found it difficult to keep up with her.”

The trial results were not reported in the Times. This photo was probably taken during a break in trial proceedings — a common practice in the 1940s.

This image has been added to the Photojournalist on the Job photo gallery.