She was one of Los Angeles’ more...

She was one of Los Angeles’ more colorful judges, performing marriage ceremonies on Saturdays outside the locked courthouse, and dramatizing her points by such tactics as destroying evidence--burning a Nazi flag on the bench.

And her appointed successor decorated her chambers in pink, wore miniskirts and kept a pet Chihuahua at her feet as she sat in judgment on accused wrongdoers.

At a time when women judges were virtually nonexistent, these two filled the spotlight.

From the Depression to the Space Age, Municipal Judge Ida May Adams--the third woman elected to the Los Angeles municipal bench--was a tiny, familiar figure whose personality, if not her stature, filled the oversize black robe she wore in civil and criminal courtrooms.

Before Adams ended her controversial career in 1962, she had become legendary for conducting marriages on the courthouse steps--and perhaps for collecting big fees from the happy couples.

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As an attorney, she had a reputation for outspokenness.

Defending a client accused of disturbing the peace, Adams, a 1920 USC Law School graduate, was admonished by a judge who shook his finger at her, saying: “Don’t get excited, young lady, I know something of the facts in this case.”

Before the judge found her in contempt of court moments later, Adams retorted: “Courts are supposed to base their actions on evidence, and not on what facts they may know themselves.”

After she was elected judge in 1931, Adams was repeatedly in the limelight.

In the days of Prohibition, she battled the parole board, the sheriff and the district attorney, accusing them of “working diametrically opposite to the judiciary” for granting early parole to a bootlegger she had sent to jail.

“Gentlemen, he was a fugitive from justice with a trunkload of gin bottles. May I ask how the people of Los Angeles County can expect the judiciary to enforce the law if its district attorney and sheriff are working against me?”

Despite her outspokenness--or perhaps because of it--36 fellow judges endorsed her for reelection in 1937. Many others believed it was inappropriate, though not illegal, for a judge to endorse a candidate.

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The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. began to interview the 36 judges. One said he supported Adams because she had not run against him as she had threatened. Another said he didn’t have the heart to refuse after she “burst into a fit of weeping.” And yet another judge said, “She is a judge, and judges should stick together.”

But not all judges agreed.

They objected to Adams often spending more time defending herself than she spent on the bench. And some opposed her for not paying a $40 advertising bill, for being delinquent on a $126 department store account and $37 worth of law books--not to mention receiving several traffic tickets and being involved in a few accidents.

She still was reelected.

In 1941, shortly before the country entered World War II, Adams began a war of her own, burning a small Nazi flag that was evidence against an American sailor. The sailor admitted stabbing a woman he had met in a bar after becoming “infuriated” at the sight of the Nazi flag in her apartment.

From the bench, Adams grabbed the flag and put a match to it, saying, “I think this emblem should be burned up before it might cause some more serious crimes.”

The Germans protested and the governor ordered an investigation, but Adams declared that she had no apologies to make.

Controversy returned in 1958, when she became a target of a state legislative committee trying to determine whether marriage ceremonies were interfering with judges’ trial work. Their solution: close the courthouse on weekends, ostensibly for economic reasons.

For one year, Adams defied the rules and continued performing marriages, but on the steps outside the locked building.

But the committee had more serious concerns. The report found that Adams was receiving about $10,000 a year in marriage fees, and even paid elevator operators and other county employees to direct couples to her courtroom.

She said she gave the gratuities to a school she had opened for retarded children. As a result of the investigation, a 1959 law made it a misdemeanor for a judge to perform a marriage for a fee or any other compensation on weekdays.

Still, she continued to preside with wit and humor. When the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed prayers in New York schools in 1962, Adams announced that she always opened court with a prayer and intended to continue. She then bowed her head and said, “God bless the Supreme Court and let it be shown the error of its way.”

She retired that year, three months before the end of her fifth term, and she died in 1965 at the age of 79.

Adams’ successor proved to be a match for her: Noel Cannon, whom the California Supreme Court removed from the municipal bench after 12 years of bizarre behavior.

Cannon, a graduate of Stanford University and its law school, ordered the incarceration of defense attorneys who made her angry, gave a demonstration of weapons women could carry to protect themselves, and threatened to give a police officer a “.38-caliber vasectomy” after he stopped her for excessively honking her horn in traffic.

When the officer appeared in court, she greeted him with, “You’ve been a very naughty boy,” and sent him on his way with some religious pamphlets.