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What Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark Looks Like Today
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What Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark Looks Like Today
By Brian Boone / Updated: March 14, 2022 11:42 am EDT
She's the "Queen of Halloween." She's the "Mistress of the Dark." She's a little bit vampire with a whole lot of vamp, and she wears just about the skimpiest (but still tasteful) dresses legally allowed on television. She is, of course, the iconic Elvira. Debuting on a Los Angeles TV horror movie showcase in 1981, Elvira is the creation of her longtime portrayer: comedian/actress/singer/model Cassandra Peterson. Starting with Elvira's Movie Macabre, where she poked fun at old scary flicks (and at herself), Peterson has brought the magic of Halloween and her campy blend of classic Hollywood fun to the masses for decades.
Elvira has been big on the public's radar for nearly 40 years through movies, sitcoms, talk shows, live performances, commercials, and more, but how much do you really know about the fabulous and self-made Cassandra Peterson? Here's a look at the creation, rise, and impact of Elvira and Peterson — including what the latter really looks like without that fright wig.
Cassandra Peterson always wanted to be a star, or as she more accurately told the Lenny Letter , she wanted to be "the center of attention." At the age of 3, her parents would put her on tables at eateries and "have me dance and sing 'How Much is That Doggy in the Window,' and people would throw change at me, and I thought, This is an awesome way to earn money. "
A few years later, she narrowed down her interests. "So I saw this movie Viva Las Vegas and I got this idea in my head to become a showgirl like Ann-Margret," Peterson told Vulture . Soon thereafter, Peterson's family took a vacation from its home in Colorado Springs to California, with a brief stop in Sin City. "I begged them to let me go see one of those shows with them. So I dressed up to look super old and sophisticated, you know, like I was actually old enough to get in to see the show." While sitting in the audience all dolled up in "eyelashes and a push-up bra," Peterson caught the eye of the show's dance captain, who asked her to audition for a spectacular called Vive Les Girls. Peterson got the job, and, amazingly, her parents signed off on it. Literally — they had to sign some legal forms because Peterson was only 17 at the time.
In the 1970s, Cassandra Peterson did what a lot of young Americans did at the time. She bummed around having grand adventures. Shortly after leaving that gig in Vegas, Peterson took another dancing job in France at the Folies Bergere. "The girls didn't like me first because I was an American, and second because I was so much younger than they were," she told Cinema Retro , "so they treated me horribly and I quit before my first performance."
Peterson fled to Rome, where, as luck would have it, she ran into a friend from Las Vegas who was on the crew of Federico Fellini's Roma. The pal introduced Peterson to Fellini, who put her in the movie, using her as a background extra in various scenes. While in Italy, Peterson began singing with a couple of local rock bands, the Snails and Latins 80.
Peterson paid the bills in the early '70s modeling for second-tier "men's magazines" (nudie mags like Playboy that weren't Playboy ) and a famous album cover ... well, maybe. There is a naked redheaded woman on the cover of Tom Waits' 1976 album Small Change. "It looks like me, but I don't have any recollection of ever doing that," Peterson told Screen Anarchy . "But it was the '70s, so I don't have a recollection of a whole lot that I did then."
At some point during Peterson's Vegas run (she can't recall the exact date), Elvis Presley reportedly came to watch Vive Les Girls . "He invited all of the showgirls back to his hotel room," she told The Huffington Post , declaring that the King "instantly glommed on to" her. Presley was supposedly in the midst of a divorce at the time, but despite his attention and availability, Peterson claims not much happened. "You have to remember, I was underage. So nothing did go on, except some kissing," she said. Peterson says she and Presley talked all night and into the next day. He even gave her some advice that jump-started her career. "He said, 'If you really want to be in showbiz, you've got to get out of this town,'" she recalled. He also suggested voiced lessons, because by 25, she'd "be too old to dance." The next day, Peterson says she got a vocal coach, and a month later, she was singing in her stage show.
Though she didn't get it on with Presley, Peterson did lose her virginity to another male singer during her Las Vegas days: Tom Jones. In 2008, she told Blender (via Dlisted ) that Jones "seemed gentlemanly and nice, so when he was jumping on me, I thought, 'Well, if I'm ever gonna do this, it might as well be with Tom Jones.'" Unfortunately, the experience was "horrible" for, um, anatomical reasons we won't get into here.
The lines between Cassandra Peterson and Elvira are blurred. That will happen after more than 25 years in character. Both ladies rose to prominence in 1981, when Los Angeles TV station KHJ-TV decided to revive its old-fashioned horror movie-with-a-host show Fright Night. The series had been dormant since 1975 , following the death of host Larry Vincent, who ran the show as a character named "Sinister Seymour." (Most cities had at least one show of this nature in the '60s and '70s.)
Peterson got the hosting gig, which became Elvira's Movie Macabre. (Her salary: $350 a week.) With her friend, makeup artist Robert Allen Redding, Peterson devised Elvira's signature look — a cross between a scary movie monster (with a Bride of Frankenstein-reminiscent beehive hairdo) and a hyper-sexualized Morticia Addams (her costume showed off a lot of leg and a lot of cleavage). That made for an amusing disconnect between image and voice, which wasn't at all spooky or sensual. Peterson gently made fun of the horror movies she was tasked with hosting in a sunny, "Valley Girl"-esque accent.
Surprisingly, the Elvira look was not Peterson's first pick. "I initially wanted to go a very different way, like a Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers look," Peterson told the Lenny Letter , "but KHJ wanted to go with the all-black thing."
The mixture of comedy, campy old movies, and an attractive woman in revealing clothing was (big shock) a hit, but how did the star of a local TV show become famous around the world? A television syndicator picked up the high-profile, no-frills show and sold it to more than 70 other TV stations within about five years. That solidified Elvira's status in pop culture. When Peterson landed an endorsement deal with Coors, she became the first woman to become the focus of a national beer campaign. (Your uncle surely still has a sexy cardboard standee in his man-cave of Elvira holding a six-pack.)
Along with the show and the ad work came, of course, the merchandise. Fans of the camp vamp pin-up could buy Elvira calendars, Halloween costume kits, toys, comic books, collector's plates, and pinball machines. (Again, check with your uncle.) Halloween 1987 just might have been "Peak Elvira." The horror hostess expanded her TV duties from hosting thrilling schlock and schlocky thrillers to include NBC's Friday Night Videos and an appearance on Saturday Night Live.
The woman who made fun of movies got one of her own in 1988: Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. The tongue-in-cheek horror-laced comedy finds Elvira inheriting a creepy old mansion and clashing with uptight locals. Peterson co-wrote the film with TV writer Sam Egan and longtime collaborator John Paragon (best known for portraying head-in-the-box genie Jambi on Pee-wee's Playhouse ). The film earned a little more than $5 million at the box office, but became a cult classic when it reached VHS and cable.
Peterson made a sequel in 2001 called Elvira's Haunted Hills . She and then-husband and manager Mark Pierson came up with most of the $1 million-plus budget by mortgaging their real estate holdings. As with the first Elvira film, Peterson wrote the script with Paragon . Set in the Carpathian Mountains in 1851, Elvira takes refuge in a spooky castle, which sets up a horror-comedy that pays homage to a lot of old movie tropes and feels like an old Roger Corman or Vincent Price film. While Haunted Hills never received wide theatrical release, it's been a popular "midnight movie," similar to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (it even costars that film's creator and Riff Raff portrayer, Richard O'Brien). Peterson and Pierson also screened their creation at fan conventions, benefits for AIDS organizations, and festivals. It even won best feature at the 2002 Provincetown Film Festival.
Cassandra Peterson and Elvira are not the same person, of course, and Peterson has acted in a handful of movies and TV shows portraying characters that are not the Mistress of the Dark, particularly during the dominant Elvira years of the 1980s. It's just that it's really hard to recognize her as the lady who plays Elvira when she isn't wearing the black dress, the black wig, and the goth makeup.
That's her (above) as "Biker Mama" alongside Paul Reubens in 1985's Pee-wee's Big Adventure . (She's one of the toughs that Pee-wee wins over with his "Tequila" dance.) Peterson also portrays Queen Sorais in 1987's Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, an ill-fated attempted to bring a 19th century book adventure series to the screen. More recently, she played "Hunter's Mom" in Red Riding Hood, the 2006 horror-ish retelling of the famous kiddie tale.
One doesn't just ascend to the title of "Queen of Halloween" and then quit. Though the widely syndicated Elvira TV show, movies, and beer commercials may be in the past, Cassandra Peterson has never stopped playing her incredibly famous character for long. Elvira's Movie Macabre briefly returned to TV in 2010 and to Hulu in 2014 in the form of 13 Nights of Elvira . In 2016, Peterson released a career retrospective coffee table, or rather " coffin table book ," called Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Most years, she also headlines an October full of Halloween-themed stage shows at Knott's Berry Farm in California.
She's basically the Santa of Halloween, so the fall is still an incredibly busy time for Peterson, who turned 67 in 2018. She told TIME that each October, " My phone doesn't stop ringing, and I don't sleep, and I'm working during the day, and I'm working at night. It's pretty hectic! I love it, I'm happy. But I sometimes wish all my work didn't come in a one-month period."
What man could ever please Elvira for all of eternity and beyond? A guy named Mark Pierson tried his best. The year 1981 was a big one for Cassandra Peterson. During the same year that Elvira's Movie Macabre premiered, she married Pierson, her manager.
One of their first trips together was perhaps not the best omen: They took a road trip in Peterson's parents' Winnebago — with those parents — from Los Angeles to the Kansas town where Cassandra had lived as a child. "My husband read a book the entire time," Peterson told The Spokesman-Review . "It wasn't the greatest adventure spending 24/7 crammed in a small space with the in-laws."
The couple later celebrated the family business it built together in an Elvira-approved, 5,600-square foot mansion in the L.A. area, lining the home's dark wood and copper walls with Elvira merch. And get this: The house was haunted. "Footsteps above my head on the ceiling. Clouds of smoke forming into what looked like a human and then disappearing. A black shadow floating on the bottom of the pool that wouldn't go away," Peterson told the Marriott Traveler . After an exorcism, Peterson reportedly sold the place to actor Brad Pitt.
In 1994, Peterson and Pierson turned their attentions toward starting a family. She gave birth to their only child, a daughter named Sadie , in 1991. Peterson and Pierson divorced in 2003 .
Cassandra Peterson, better known as Elvira, poses during the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. / Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images
Cassandra Peterson attends Wizard World Chicago Comic Con in 2014. / Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images
Cassandra Peterson, a.k.a. Elvira, performs in her "Danse Macabre" show at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California in 2016. / Barry King/Getty Images
Cassandra Peterson shows off her new book in 2016. / Noel Vasquez/Getty Images
With 40 years of playing Elvira under her beehive, Cassandra Peterson is showing no signs of slowing down. The character hasn’t changed much since her 1981 debut, but Peterson, who turned 70 in September, has a remarkable knack for adapting to changes in how we watch horror movies. She was a staple of cable television Halloween programming throughout the ’80s; this month, “Dr. Elvira” is the face of Netflix ’s annual Netflix and Chills event.
Peterson has gone from a $300-per-week gig hosting schlocky B-movies on a local TV station to heading a multi-million-dollar international licensing empire, starring in crowd-pleasing live shows and a pair of feature films along the way. Not every endeavor has been successful: Peterson's attempt at a primetime sitcom never got past the pilot stage because, according to Bloody Disgusting , "CBS went crazy over the immense usage of boob and sex jokes." But through it all, Elvira has remained the undisputed Queen of Halloween. And fans haven’t tired of her shtick any more than Peterson has. Her newly released autobiography, Yours Cruelly, Elvira , was an instant New York Times bestseller.
Here are 14 things you should know about the wisecracking, tassel-twirling Mistress of the Dark.
In an interview for David Weiner’s 2019 documentary In Search of Darkness , Peterson recalled seeing the 1959 Vincent Price shocker when she was very young, maybe 7 or 8 years old, and being “gobsmacked.” She says she was “repelled and fascinated at the same time” and had nightmares for weeks, but there was no going back. Soon she was a die-hard Price fan, a Famous Monsters of Filmland reader, and a collector of Aurora monster model kits.
Peterson suffered horrific, near-fatal third degrees burns after overturning a pot of boiling water when she was 18 months old. Treatment involved extensive skin grafts, and the accident and surgeries left her with permanent scarring that made her a target of childhood bullies. “I totally think that accident paved the way for me to become Elvira,” Peterson told the Shondaland website in September. “I literally adopted another persona who had all the qualities that I wanted but couldn’t get on my own.”
In her new autobiography, Peterson writes that she was drawn to the horror genre as a child because she “felt like a misfit,” and that “in a weird, roundabout way, that accident led me to my love of horror and got me started on this path. I look at it as a good thing.”
When Peterson was a teenager, one of her idols was Ann-Margret, the Swedish-American singer, dancer, and actress who co-starred with Elvis Presley in 1964’s Viva Las Vegas . During a family vacation, a 17-year-old Peterson, who dreamed of being a showgirl like Ann-Margret’s character in the movie, talked her parents into letting her attend a performance of the iconic musical revue Vive Les Girls . The dance captain noticed Peterson in the audience and invited her to audition for the show; when Peterson revealed her age, her parents were asked to sign a release, and the audition proceeded. Peterson got the job and became one of the youngest showgirls in Las Vegas.
“I wasn’t able to enter the hotel, except through the back through the kitchen,” Peterson explained in a 2017 interview with Vulture. “I couldn’t drink or gamble or go in the casino, but I could dance in a G-string onstage.”
When she was working as a dancer with Vive Les Girls , Peterson and several of her colleagues served as extras in the 1971 James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever . Peterson appears briefly in a scene with Leonard Barr, who played stand-up comic Shady Tree.
Much has been made of Peterson’s " sort of a date ” with Elvis Presley when she was 17 years old, but the King’s greatest impact on her life came in the form of career guidance. According to Peterson, Presley told her to “get the heck out of Las Vegas and pursue a singing career.” Peterson took Presley’s advice. She started singing lessons the next day, and when her contract expired with Vive Les Girls , she went to Europe to be a singer. One of her gigs was singing with an Italian pop band called The Latins 80.
Peterson met the legendary director on the street while he was shooting his semi-autobiographical 1972 film Roma . “He thought I looked like his wife Giulietta Masina when she was young,” Peterson told Vulture, “and asked me if I wanted to be in the movie.”
Peterson eventually found her way to Los Angeles, where she joined the legendary comedy improv group the Groundlings, whose alumni list also includes Phil Hartman, Lisa Kudrow, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Will Ferrell. It was during her time with the Groundlings that she developed the Valley Girl character who would eventually become Elvira. Peterson has credited fellow Groundlings member John Paragon, who would later play Jambi on Pee-wee’s Playhouse and co-write Peterson’s 1988 feature film Elvira: Mistress of the Dark , as being instrumental in shaping Elvira’s persona. “[F]rom the beginning, we developed this character together,” she told Los Angeles Daily News in September. “Our brains became one big Elvira brain. His help was absolutely invaluable. It would not have been the same character had John not been around, that’s for sure.”
Peterson also met Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman , in the
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