Cassandra Peterson

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Cassandra Peterson

Cassandra Peterson, in front of a poster of her Elvira character, October 2005
Born September 17, 1951 (1951-09-17) (age 57)
Manhattan, Kansas, U.S.
Occupation Actress and TV hostess
Years active 1970–present
Spouse(s) Mark Pierson (1981-2003)
Official website

Cassandra Peterson (born September 17, 1951) is an American actress best known for her on-screen horror hostess character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She gained fame on Los Angeles television station KHJ wearing a black, gothic, cleavage-enhancing gown as host of Movie Macabre, a weekly horror movie presentation. Her wickedly vampish appearance was offset by her comical character, quirky/quick-witted personality, and valley girl-type speech.

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[edit] Biography

Born in Manhattan, Kansas, Peterson grew up in Randolph, Kansas, until the town was flooded to create Tuttle Creek Reservoir. Her family then moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and she graduated from General William J. Palmer High School in 1969. Days after graduating, she drove to Las Vegas, Nevada, where she became a showgirl at The Dunes. The Guinness Book of World Records cited her as the youngest showgirl in Las Vegas history. She had a small role as a showgirl in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, briefly dated Elvis Presley, played a topless dancer in Working Girls (1973), and posed (again as a stripper) for the cover of Tom Waits's 1976 album, Small Change.[1]

[edit] Career

[edit] Early career

In the early 1970s, she moved to Italy and became the lead singer of the Italian rock band I Latins Ochanats. During this time, she had a chance encounter with director Federico Fellini which led to a small part in Roma (1972). Back in the United States, she toured nightclubs and gay discos around the country with a musical/comedy act, Mammas Boys. In 1979, she joined the Los Angeles-based improvisational troupe The Groundlings, where she created a valley girl-type character upon whom the Elvira persona is largely based.

She also posed nude for several men's "Big Bust" magazines during the late 1970s and early 1980s, most notably, in the 1974 Playgirl pictorial with adult film star turned Hollywood private eye Paul Barresi and "Night and Day Supermamas" , March 1980, "Cavalcade" volume 3, number 3, 1975, and "Men's Delight," June 1977.

Peterson auditioned for the role of Ginger for the third Gilligan's Island television movie in 1981, shortly before KHJ-TV offered her the horror-host position.[2]

Peterson also was a radio show personality on Los Angeles' 106.7 KROQ radio station from 1982 to 1983.

[edit] Elvira Begins: Movie Macabre

Main article: List of Elvira's Movie Macabre episodes

In the late spring of 1981, five years after Larry Vincent (who starred as host Sinister Seymour of a local Los Angeles weekend horror show called Fright Night) died, show producers began the task of bringing the show back. Deciding to use a female host, producers asked 1950s horror host Maila Nurmi to revive The Vampira Show. Nurmi worked on the project for a short time, but eventually quit when the producers would not hire Lola Falana to play Vampira. The station continued with the project and sent out a casting call. Peterson auditioned against 200 other horror hostess hopefuls, and won the role. Producers left it up to her to create the role's image. She and best friend Robert Redding came up with the sexy punk/vampire look after producers rejected her original idea to look like Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers.

Unable to continue with the Vampira character, the name Elvira was chosen. What followed was Elvira's Movie Macabre featuring a quick-witted valley-girl type character named Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. With heavily-applied drag queen-style horror make-up and a towering black beehive wig concealing her flame-red hair, the transformation from Cassandra Peterson to the sexy "Elvira" was so drastic that no one ever recognized her out of costume.

Shortly before the first taping, producers received a cease and desist letter from Nurmi. Besides the similarities in the format and costumes, Elvira's closing line for each show, wishing her audience "Unpleasant dreams," was notably similar to Vampira's closer: "Bad dreams, darlings..." uttered as she walked off down a misty corridor. The court ruled in favor of Peterson, holding that "'likeness' means actual representation of another person's appearance, and not simply close resemblance." Peterson claimed that Elvira was nothing like Vampira aside from the basic design of the black dress and black hair. Nurmi herself claimed that Vampira's image was based on Morticia, a Charles Addams cartoon character in The New Yorker magazine.

The Elvira character rapidly gained notoriety with her tight-fitting, low-cut black gown which showed more cleavage than had ever appeared on local Los Angeles television before. The movies featured on Elvira's Movie Macabre were always B grade (or lower). Elvira reclined on a red Victorian couch, introducing and often interrupting the movie to lampoon the actors, the script, and the bad editing. Adopting the flippant tone of a California valley-girl, she brought a satirical, sarcastic edge to her commentary without ever being crass or mean-spirited. Like a macabre Mae West, she reveled in dropping risqué double entendres as well as making frequent jokes about her eye-popping display of cleavage. In an AOL Entertainment News interview, Peterson revealed, "I figured out that Elvira is me when I was a teenager. She's a spastic girl. I just say what I feel and people seem to enjoy it." Her campy humor, obvious sex appeal, and good-natured self-mockery endeared her to late-night movie viewers as her popularity soared. At the same time, Elvira was embraced as an icon of the waning 1980s punk movement as well as the emerging Goth subculture.

The demand for Elvira increased throughout the 1980s. A frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and many other talk shows, she also produced a long-running series of Halloween-themed TV ads for Coors Light Beer and Mug Root Beer. She did guest roles on television dramas such as CHiPs, The Fall Guy, and Fantasy Island, and appeared on numerous awards shows as a presenter. Despite the fact that her success is forever linked to her image as Elvira, Peterson has never been reluctant to make out-of-costume appearances as herself for television interviews and specials.

In 1982, with the surprising success of Movie Macabre, Knott's Theme Parks hired Elvira to replace Seymour as the host of its annual Halloween Haunt during the month of October. Elvira would appear nightly at the park, live on stage with a Halloween-themed musical comedy revue similar to her Mamma's Boys act from the 1970s.

The Elvira character rapidly evolved from obscure cult figure to lucrative brand-name and "Mistress of all Media," spawning countless products throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including Halloween costumes, comic books, action figures, trading cards, Halloween decor, model kits, calendars, perfume, and dolls. She's appeared on the cover of Femme Fatales magazine five times. Her popularity reached its zenith with the release of the feature film, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (co-written by Peterson) in 1988. She also did many non-Elvira character-roles in other films, most notably Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) with friend and fellow Groundling, Pee-wee Herman, aka Paul Reubens.

In 1992, CBS filmed the pilot episode for Elvira, a proposed sitcom with Peterson and Katherine Helmond as witches living in a small town. Network executives balked at the ribald humor and decided the series was too risqué for television. The series was shelved and the pilot was never aired.

[edit] Elvira on Home Video

In 1985, Elvira began hosting a home video series for ThrillerVideo. Some releases were Elvira's apperance. These were films hand-selected by Elvira herself. Choosing to stay away from the more explicit zombie, cannibal, and slasher films of the time, these were generally tamer films such as The Monster Club and Dan Curtis TV films. She refused to host Make Them Die Slowly, Seven Doors of Death, and Buried Alive, so the videos were released on the LIVE Home Video label without Elvira's appearance as hostess. After this, several "tamer" British TV-movies (i.e. The Devil's Web, A Killer in Every Corner, Murder Motel) were also released without Elvira hosting.

The success of the ThrillerVideo series led to a second video set, Elvira's Midnight Madness through Rhino Home Video. In 2004, she revisited this concept with a similar horror film collection on DVD, titled "Elvira's Box of Horrors." After more than ten years, Box of Horrors was the return of Elvira hosting horror movies ala Movie Macabre.

[edit] Mistress of the Dark

In the late 1980s and early 1990s a number of Elvira-themed computer games were produced.[3] Two of these were Elvira: Mistress of the Dark and Elvira 2: The Jaws of Cerberus.

Two Elvira themed pinball machines were produced by Bally/Midway. Elvira and the Party Monsters[4] was released in 1989 and Scared Stiff[5] was put out in 1996.

On Halloween night of 1992, Elvira appeared with rock band U2 when they played at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on their ZOO TV tour. Just as she apparently did some 14 years later, she declared her candidacy for President, noting that "we already have two boobs in the White House, might as well be mine." Following a couple of corny jokes, she led the crowd to sing "Happy Birthday" to drummer Larry Mullen, Jr., whose birthday is on Halloween.

In the early 1990s, she released a very successful calendar featuring Elvira in various locations (on a studio set) and in poses. One of the months can be seen in the video game Blood, hanging on various walls. Nude modeling photos of Peterson from her pre-Elvira days are still popular on the internet and have been reprinted countless times in men's magazines such as Celebrity Skin, Celebrity Sleuth, and High Society.

She appeared on Cartoon Network's talk show Space Ghost Coast to Coast in its twenty-seventh episode "Switcheroo" with Susan Olsen.

In 1997, Ray Productions of Orlando, Florida produced the first haunted house chain endorsed by Elvira titled "Elvira's Nightmare Haunted House". The attraction was fully themed (including an Elvira Look-alike) and remained open for two Halloween seasons in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 2001, she appeared throughout the nation screening her second full length feature film Elvira's Haunted Hills including Los Angeles, New York, Key West, Chicago, and Atlanta.

[edit] Movies, TV, and video

Additionally, Elvira appeared, more or less, as herself in an episode of Nash Bridges.

[edit] Accomplishments

  • Movie Macabre was the first nationally syndicated horror host show.
  • Elvira is the first person to be broadcast in 3-D in America.
  • Elvira is also the first female celebrity to do a national beer campaign, she also was the first to market her own beer.
  • Elvira is the first female to twirl tassels on a national network.
  • Elvira is the first person to produce a music video in large format 3-D.

[edit] Recording career

Elvira recorded several songs for her Halloween albums in the 1980s and 1990s. Here is her discography:

  • Elvira and the Vitones 3-D TV (Rhino Records, 1982)
  • Vinyl Macabre (Rhino Records, 1983)
  • Elvira Presents, Haunted Hits (Rhino Records, 1987)
  • Elvira Presents, Monster Hits (Rhino Records, 1994)
  • Elvira Presents Revenge of the Monster Hits (Rhino Records, 1995)

Elvira also performed guest vocals on a track called "Zombie Killer" for the band Leslie and the Ly's, released in February 2008. The music video for the track features Leslie & The Ly's performing to a sold out audience of zombies in a fictional venue called "Elvira Stadium." A 7" single was released.

[edit] Elvira impersonators

In the mid-nineties, Cassandra Peterson enlisted female impersonators Christian Greenia (Cassandra Fever) from Los Angeles California and Patterson Lundquist ("Elvira's Twin") from Atlanta Georgia as her "official Elvira impersonators", calling them "the best she'd ever seen." The two would later appear with her as co-judges on The Search for the Next Elvira [7]. The first official Female Elvira impersonator; April Wahlin, the winner of "The Search for the Next Elvira" was passed the crown on October 31, 2007 as the winner of the reality show and made a few appearances during her one year 'reign' from October 31, 2007 to October 31, 2008. Despite April Wahlin's win of the title and one year contract as Elvira, both Greenia and Lundquist continue to appear as Elvira for various events across the country.

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ The Big Takeover: "Steve Holtje's Top Ten — March 19, 2006: #5 - Tom Waits – Small Change," by Steve Holtje
  2. ^ Femme Fatales, 1:3, Winter 1992/1993, p. 6
  3. ^ List of games at Gamespot
  4. ^ [http://ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=782
  5. ^ http://ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=3915
  6. ^ Elvira seeks a successor, via reality TV
  7. ^ Search 4 next Elvira on Fox Reality cable channel

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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