Johnny Cash is all of us this holiday season. Drunk, hiding in the bushes and eating cake.
 
On average, people gain anywhere between seven to ten pounds over the holiday season. The annual feeding frenzy is now in full swing ready to send our cholesterol into outer space while we simultaneously pour all kinds of delicious booze all over our livers. While I love pie and bourbon just as much as anyone else, I also like to cook so I thought it would be fun to share some fun celebrity recipes from yesteryear.

Most of the recipes below were published in the 1978 charity cookbook, Habilitat’s Celebrity Cookbook, 1930’s What Actors Eat When They Eat, and 1981’s Celebrity Cookbook. I’ve included a nice selection of recipes shared by icons such as Cary Grant’s barbequed chicken, Boris Karloff’s guacamole (which calls for sherry mind you), and Johnny Cash’s “Old Iron Pot” family style chili. The majority of the recipes are of the traditional variety—such as beef stew and meatloaf, though there are a few curve balls. Like Bette Davis’ “Mustard Gelatin Ring” which sounds about as appetizing as the rat she served to Joan Crawford in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), and actress Bea Arthur’s fancy-sounding “Avocado with Jellied Madrilene.” For those of you who lack Arthur’s gastronomical refinement, madrilene is a cold tomato consommé. Check them all out below!
 

 

 

 
Many more after the jump…

Bettie Page dressed up like a devil in a black catsuit. Yes.
 
After not-so-patiently waiting for the first 30 days of October to pass, Halloween has finally arrived. I’m sure many of our Dangerous Minds readers are still recovering from whatever pre-Halloween party you hit up over the weekend—I know I am, that’s for sure. Ah, the bliss that is dressing up like someone or something other than our old, boring selves and swilling booze all night because you never really grew up and that’s o-fucking-kay. Because I plan on continuing along with various Halloween-related activities, it seemed more than appropriate to share a few choice vintage (and sometimes slightly bizarre) photographs of famous pinups, movie stars, and even Elvis Presley vamping it up for Halloween.

Like other posts I’ve done like this, once I got started looking for photos of famous people celebrating Halloween, I just couldn’t stop. So you might want to get comfy before you start plowing through the images below because there are a lot of them including an epic shot of Maila Nurmi (Vampira) hanging out with a pal who dressed himself up as a “deceased” version of James Dean that you simply have to see. Some of what follows is slightly NSFW. Happy Halloween!
 

Betty Grable.
 

Actress Yvonne Craig in a Halloween-themed photo as Batgirl.
 

A fantastic promo shot for Eartha Kitt’s 1954 single “I Want To Be Evil” from the album ‘That Bad Eartha.’
 
More famous faces in their Halloween costumes after the jump…

A terrifying still of Joan Crawford and her best friend, an axe, from the 1964 film, ‘Strait-Jacket.’

Though she was widely vilified by the gossip columnists of her time and is best recalled today for being a very bad mommie, it is impossible to dispute the fact that Joan Crawford was one hell of an actress. She was a talented dancer and worked as a showgirl before starting her long career in Hollywood during which she became one of the most iconic actresses of all time. She also served on the board of directors of the Pepsi-Cola Company for well over a decade. Even Blue Öyster Cult wrote a song about her. And for yours truly, street credibility just doesn’t get any better than being immortalized by the mighty BÖC.

Joan Crawford was tough—a defense mechanism that she likely developed during her difficult childhood. While attending a private school she paid her tuition by doing jobs at the school such as washing dishes; cooking; making beds, and waitressing. Due to this overload of work, her studies suffered. Crawford dropped out of school in the sixth grade—something that the actress allegedly deeply regretted. However, the event would also signal the beginning of Crawford’s aspirations to become an actress and after taking a strong interest in dance, her luck finally started to change when she took off for Chicago and landed a gig as a showgirl in a vaudeville act. She was quickly discovered and within a short period of time, she was under contract by MGM by way of producer Harry Rapf.

After a successful early run with her films, Crawford’s star began to fade, leading her to part ways with MGM in the mid-1940s for Warner Brothers who would gift her with one of the greatest roles she would ever play as the star of the 1945 film Mildred Pierce. Crawford would receive the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 for the role—her only Oscar in her entire career—which she accepted while at home in bed after skipping the ceremony. Then in 1962, she went head-to-head in the dark cinematic masterpiece What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with her real-life nemesis, Bette Davis. Two years later Crawford would star in another bleak masterpiece of sorts—which is the subject of this post—the 1964 film Strait-Jacket which was scripted by the same man who authored the 1960 novel-turned-film Psycho, Robert Bloch. It was directed and produced by the master of scary movie gimmicks William Castle. The film’s byline read “FROM THE DIRECTOR OF HOMICIDAL, THE AUTHOR OF PSYCHO, AND THE CO-STAR OF WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?”
During the film’s original release, moviegoers were given cardboard axes by movie ushers and Castle provided an “animated” moving movie poster to exhibitors. At the end of the film, the Columbia logo’s torch-bearing woman is shown decapitated, with her head resting beside her feet.
 

 
In the film, Crawford plays Lucy Harbin, a woman who has just been released from an insane asylum after a twenty-year bid as punishment for chopping up her husband (marking the first role for TV’s future Six Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors) and his mistress with an axe in a fit of jealous rage, an act witnessed by her three-year-old daughter. Things go south pretty quickly in Strait-Jacket as we soon see Crawford sucking down bourbon, chain-smoking and acting as though she’s about to have a complete psychotic break from reality at any moment. It’s rumored that when she took on the challenge of playing Crawford in Mommie Dearest, actress Faye Dunaway got much of her inspiration for her spot-on portrayal of a completely unhinged Crawford straight from Strait-Jacket.

If you have never seen this film I can say with complete confidence that it is as remarkable as it is abjectly horrifying at times. In fact, it is also my humble opinion that Crawford’s performance is on par with fellow axe-aficionado Jack Nicholson and his portrayal of “Jack Torrance” in The Shining. I’ve included some great artifacts from the film including stills, vintage lobby cards, and some sinister posters that will help prove my point about Crawford’s baleful performance in this wickedly frightening film below. Sleep tight!
 

Crawford inside a striped dressing room featured in the film that has her recalling her days in the asylum.
 

A ‘Strait-Jacket’ lobby card.
 
More Joan Crawford after the jump…

 
Okay, so there’s this letter floating around the Internet supposedly written by Joan Crawford addressing Bette Davis’ (allegedly) offensive body odor. The letter is dated August 11, 1962, so that would have been during the filming of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. The letter is written to “Bob” which is probably director Robert Aldrich. Now I’ve tried to find its provenance and if this thing is actually real and came up empty handed. I couldn’t find anything except for an Instagram account that posted the image.

Could this be an Internet hoax? Absolutely. But I must add, the two were known to have an extremely icy relationship.

 
h/t Mike McGonigal

 
Village Voice columnist Michael Musto went to see a preview of Christina Crawford’s off-Broadway show, Surviving Mommie Dearest, a documentary screening followed by a Q&A with audience members. In the past, Crawford has hinted that her mother killed her last husband, Pepsi-Cola CEO Alfred Steele, but now she’s pretty much coming right out and alleging it rather bluntly.

Musto writes:

And what she said effectively wiped away what all the apologists have conjectured for years—that mommie merely drove Steele to a heart attack by making him batty and anxious. Oh, no, kids. It’s way worse than that.

In the doc, Tina describes how Steele was found dead at the bottom of the grand stairway in the house.

“I didn’t believe it was an accident,” she asserts, knowingly. “I know what Mommie was capable of in a state of rage.”

Eek. She was implying Joan was a real-life villainess fresh out of the type of film noir Joan often played the heroine of. Mommie did like to push, after all.

“There was no autopsy,” added Christina, austerely. “He was cremated.”

Yikes! In 1959, Joan Crawford was elected to fill Alfred Steele’s vacancy on the Pepsi-Co board of directors, a spot she held until she was forced out in 1973. Crawford and Steele’s ashes are interred together at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Thanks Niall!

 
Santorum may have beat Mitt in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado, but he’s no match for Mommie Dearest.

Joan, next time bring out the heavy artillery. A wire hanger!
 

 
Here’s a little treat, a vintage, short film looking behind the scenes of Robert Aldrich’s classic movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
 

 
Via Hidden Los Angeles
 

 
The legendary actress Joan Crawford died today in 1977. While now best remembered through Faye Dunaway’s incredible interpretation of the actress (‘No wire hangers!’) in Mommie Dearest, we tend to forget that Crawford was a talented, Oscar winning actress, who had one of the longest and most successful careers in Hollywood. No mean feat, no matter what her adopted daughter later wrote.

Joan worked damned hard to maintain her career and independence and if she’d been a man, we’d remember her as fondly as Errol Flynn or Robert Mitchum. What is also impressive about Crawford was her ability to make the most of the roles offered, no matter how trashy the role. Her performance in Trog should have won her a medal for perseverance beyond the call of duty.

In 1964, Joan Crawford starred in B-movie genius William Castle’s classic Strait-Jacket, where she gave a brilliantly bizarre performance. Here is Ms Crawford trying out her make-up for the role of suspected ax-murderer Lucy Harbin.
 

 
Bonus trailers of Joan Crawford in ‘Strait-Jacket’ and ‘Trog’, after the jump…
 

 
Dressed like a cross between Ed Grimley and Quentin Crisp and looking surlier than Joan Crawford with a wire hanger up her ass, Bowie has never appeared less like a rock star than in this woefully executed video. The song ‘Be My Wife’ is from Low, one of the only Bowie albums I actually like, but this really stinks.