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ELVIRA
By Caroline RyderPhotos By Dan Monick
With her towering raven beehive, blood-red lips, and sprayed-on gown slit to the thigh, wisecracking horror- film hostess Elvira is as synonymous with Halloween as the Jack O’Lantern. In fact, the Elvira costume and wig, launched in 1985, is thought to be the best-selling female Halloween costume in history. “Elvira is to Halloween what Santa Claus is to Christmas,” says Cassandra Peterson, Elvira’s strawberry-blonde alter ego. “Except I have better boobs.”
So how did Peterson, a small-town girl from Colorado Springs, Colorado, become the so-called “Madonna of the Macabre”? It stems back to a disfiguring accident that happened when she was three. She knocked over a pot of boiling Easter eggs, fusing her eyelids, scalding off much of her hair, and permanently scarring 35 percent of her body. The kids in her neighborhood pointed and called her a monster. When she was eight years old, her mother bought a costume shop-and the transformation began. “I always had a really rich imagination,” she says, “so I started wearing Halloween outfits all the time, even to school. When I was in costume I felt different Ð instead of being shy, I wanted people to look at me. I guess the kids thought I was a little weird, but I didn’t care.” If it hadn’t been for that accident, she says, perhaps Elvira would never have been born.
She had always loved dressing up as a witch-she was five when she tried on her first witch’s outfit, made from crepe paper. And when she was 12 she had a strange Ouija board experience. “I was doing it alone, just playing, and it started moving by itself. It told me I was one of the witches who were hanged in Salem. I was totally scared.” She locked the Ouija board in the closet and never touched it again.
At 17, still obsessed with performance and dress-up, Peterson went to Vegas and became the youngest showgirl in Sin City’s history (she wore body makeup from head to toe to hide her scars). It was there that she famously lost her virginity to Tom Jones. Elvis Presley saw her perform one night and encouraged her to become a singer. She moved to Europe and fronted an Italian rock band. She met Federico Fellini in Rome, who cast her in his 1972 film Roma.
Peterson returned to the states and formed a nightclub revue called “Mama’s Boys” (”I was Mama”) with seven gay men. One of them was the late Robert Redding, the makeup artist/costume designer who would be instrumental in creating the iconic Elvira drag.
In the fall of 1981, two weeks before her 30th birthday, she scored a $350-a-week gig hosting the Movie Macabre series on KHJ-TV in Los Angeles, for which she and Redding came up with a look resembling “a dead Sharon Tate: all pale lips, negligees, and big, dark circles under my eyes.” But the TV station said no - they wanted the character vampy and all in black. Grudgingly, they went back to the drawing board. “Robert came up with a brilliant take on a spooky female,” recalls Elvira. “Not quite witch, not quite vampire, just kind of a cross.” He made a dress “as tight and sexy as he could,” and came up with makeup inspired by Japanese kabuki theater. His favorite singer was Ronnie Spector from the Ronettes-hence the black beehive. “Actually, he called it a knowledge bump, not a beehive,” says Peterson. The station bosses loved it, and Elvira was born. The following year, Movie Macabre became the first horror show to be nationally syndicated across the U.S. At the same time, her fan club was launched, and Elvira became the first personality in the history of U.S. Television to be broadcast in 3-D (2.7 million 3-D glasses were sold in Los Angeles ahead of the broadcast).
From then, there was no stopping Elvira, and over 25 years she and ex-husband/manager Mark Pierson built a formidable merchandising empire, placing her image on over 350 products. There’s been Elvira perfume (Evil), Elvira beer (Night Brew), Elvira model cars, Elvira dolls, Elvira comics, and Elvira movies (Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and Elvira’s Haunted Hills). She was the first female spokesperson for a beer, starring in Coors commercials for seven years. Even the government loves her: the computer system for the stealth bomber was named Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. “I’m still waiting for the royalty check on that one,” she deadpans.
And of course, there are the costumes. “Every year there are hot, happening costumes from the movies that are out that year,” she says. “But those come and go. It seems like Elvira is always around.” Over the years, she’s seen Elvira rip-offs of every variety, from Elvira truck drivers to 93-year-old Elviras to dogs dressed as Elvira. “Some of them are pretty damn scary,” she says.
Despite her Halloween demigoddess status, Elvira is an icon for all seasons, especially beloved by the gay community. “Gay men like me because I look like a big-old drag queen,” she says. She’s equally adored by bikers and metalheads. “I think it’s because of all the studs and the leather; I look very much like I could be in Motley Crue.” She has in fact introduced shows for Moley Crue, Alice Cooper, and White Zombie (she’s good friends with Rob Zombie), and once lent her name to an electric guitar.
But of all the people that identify with Elvira, the ones she relates to most are the moody goth kids. “They resonate with me so strongly,” she says. “They are so much like me when I was a teenager, only goth hadn’t been invented when I was young. But I felt the same as them: like a misfit, a loser who is still saying, ‘Look at me. Look at me.’ When I hang out with the goth crowd in clubs, I feel like, ‘Yes, I am your leader.’”