This Week's Best Old Photos

No. 363

Left: Mickey Rooney, age 14, and Will Rogers in Los Angeles, 1935. Center: Mickey and his first wife (of eight), Ava Gardner, 1942. Right: Mickey, age 90, testifies before the Senate Committee on Aging, 2011.

At the end of the line, after a lifetime in show business and a string of more than 350 films, Mickey Rooney found himself in a 2011 Senate committee hearing giving testimony on elder abuse.

He had become infirm and dependent on stepchildren, and they had abused him verbally, taken his money and withheld food and medicine.

He felt trapped, until another f…