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Cassandra Peterson (born September 17, 1949) is an American actress best known for her on-screen horror host persona "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, quick-witted personality and Valley girl-type speech.

Born in Manhattan, Kansas, Peterson grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and graduated from General William J. Palmer High School in 1967. 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` 1976 album, Small Change.

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 U.S., 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.

Peterson auditioned for the role of "Ginger" for the third Gilligan`s Island TV movie in 1981, shortly before KHJ-TV offered her the horror-host position.(Femme Fatales, 1:3, Winter 1992/1993, p. 6)


[edit] Movie Macabre
In the late spring of 1981, when Larry Vincent (who starred as host Sinister Seymour of a local Los Angeles weekend horror show called Fright Night) died, show producers began searching for his replacement. 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. Cassandra auditioned against 200 other horror hostess hopefuls, and won the role. Producers left it up to Cassandra to create Elvira`s image. She and best friend Robert Redding came up with the sexy punk/vampire look after producers jeered her original idea to look like Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers. Shortly before the first taping, producers received a cease and desist letter from Nurmi. Unable to continue with the Vampira character, the name Elvira was chosen. What followed was Elvira`s Movie Macabre featuring a ditzy 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.

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 lamp

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