Cassandra Peterson

Cassandra Gay Peterson is an American actress best known for her portrayal of the horror hostess character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

Peterson gained fame on Los Angeles television station KHJ-TV in her stage persona as Elvira, hosting Elvira's Movie Macabre, a weekly B movie presentation.

A member of the Los Angeles-based improvisational and sketch comedy troupe The Groundlings, Peterson based her Elvira persona in part on a "Valley girl"-type character she created while a member of the troupe.

They asked 1950s' horror hostess Maila Nurmi to revive The Vampira Show.

Nurmi worked on the project for a short time, but quit when the producers would not hire Lola Falana to play Vampira.

The station sent out a casting call, and Peterson auditioned and won the role.

Producers left it up to her to create the role's image.

She and her best friend, Robert Redding, came up with the sexy goth/vampire look after producers rejected her original idea to look like Sharon Tate's character in The Fearless Vampire Killers.

They created the Elvira look by drawing inspiration from a Kabuki makeup book and the hairstyles of The Ronettes.

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.

In the early 1970s, Peterson moved to Italy and became lead singer of the Italian rock bands I Latins 80 and The Snails.

However, Peterson appeared in several adult magazines in the 1970s including Modern Man, Playgirl, and Swank, among others.

She had a small role as a showgirl in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and played a topless dancer in the film The Working Girls (1974).

After being introduced to film director Federico Fellini by the producer of a documentary on Las Vegas showgirls in which she had appeared, she landed a small part in the film Roma (1972).

When she returned to the United States, she worked at the Playboy Club in Miami as a showgirl in the 1973 revue Fantasies of Love au Naturel and later signed up with Hugh Hefner's Playboy Modeling Agency, working as a hostess and model.

She also toured nightclubs and discos around the country with a musical/comedy act, Mama's Boys.

In her 2021 memoir Yours Cruelly, Elvira, she writes, "Perhaps the biggest mistake I made in my twenties was posing nude for a husband-and-wife photography team, who bullshitted me into doing what they said was a 'test shoot' for Penthouse magazine. They guaranteed me it would never be seen anywhere publicly."

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 adds, "I never saw or heard from them again, and as far as I knew, that was the end of that... until 1981 when I became famous. Those photos, pubic hair and all, appeared in every sleazy men's magazine on the stand and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it."

Peterson was one of two finalists for the role of Ginger Grant for the third Gilligan's Island television movie in 1981, but was dropped before filming.

Shortly after that, KHJ-TV offered her the horror host position.

In 1981, six years after the death of Larry Vincent, who starred as host Sinister Seymour of a Los Angeles weekend horror show called Fright Night, show producers began to bring the show back.

The producers decided to use a hostess.

The popularity of Elvira's Movie Macabre led to the 1988 film Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, and later the 2001 film Elvira's Haunted Hills, both starring Peterson as Elvira.

The television show was revived in 2010, featuring Elvira hosting public domain films, and airing on This TV until 2011.

In a 2011 interview, Peterson stated that as a child, she was more fascinated by horror-themed toys while other girls were occupied with Barbie dolls.

In elementary school, she watched House on Haunted Hill, which was the first horror film she ever saw.

During her teens, Peterson worked as a drag queen go-go dancer in a Colorado Springs, Colorado gay bar and as a go-go dancer at Club A-Go-Go, a nightclub in Colorado Springs, and for soldiers at Fort Carson.

She graduated from Palmer High School in Colorado Springs.

Inspired by Ann-Margret in the film Viva Las Vegas, while on a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, during high school, she convinced her parents to let her see a live show where she was noticed by the production staff; despite being only 17 years old, she convinced her parents to let her sign a contract.

Immediately after graduating high school, she drove back to Las Vegas, where she became a showgirl in Frederic Apcar's pioneering "Vive Les Girls!"

at The Dunes; there, she met Elvis Presley, with whom she went on a date.

Elvira returned as a horror hostess in 2014 with 13 Nights of Elvira, a 13-episode series produced by Hulu, and again in 2021 for a one-night 40th Anniversary Special that aired on Shudder.

Peterson has made cameo appearances as Elvira in a number of films and television programs, including appearing as a guest commentator during WrestleMania 2 and as a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race, The Boulet Brothers' Dragula, and Halloween Wars.

Peterson was born in Manhattan, Kansas.

When she was a toddler, she was scalded by boiling water, which required skin grafts to cover over 35% of her body to heal, resulting in her having to spend three months in the hospital.