Your Sister Did WHAT?

That look you reserve for your sister-in-law. The one played by Joan Crawford. The one who's coming to live with you. The one who was just released from a mental institution after twenty years. For committing axe murders...

Happy birthday, Rochelle Hudson! Born March 6, 1916, she became a movie ingenue in the 1930s, named a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1931. Some thirty years later, having paused along the way to play Natalie Wood's mother in Rebel Without a Cause, she made the acquaintance of flamboyant director William Castle. He gave her two of her last movie roles, in his shockers Strait-Jacket (pictured above) and The Night Walker. Miss Hudson died in 1972.

Joan Gives Him the Axe!

Strait-Jacket (1964) gets off to a shocking start when axe murderess Lucy Harbin (Joan Crawford) gives the unkindest cut of all to her philandering husband and his younger mistress. Do you recognize the future TV star who, in one of his first professional appearances, plays this lopped-off Lothario? I'll give you a clue: he definitely didn't get paid Six Million Dollars to perform this uncredited bit part.

P.S. Even tawdry affairs were pretty genteel in 1964, wouldn't you say? Can you really make the most of your forbidden passion when you haven't even unbuckled your belt, and your lady is fully dressed? Maybe Lucy should've just given them a really stern warning...