When Cassandra Peterson was three-years old, a pot of boiling water
full of Easter eggs fell over severely burning 35% of her body. She lost
most of her hair, and she
underwent seventeen skin grafting operations
to repair the scar tissue. When commenting
about the tragedy years later, she commented. "A lot of things happen
for a reason, and I have this strange feeling that without being burned, I
don't think I would have been Elvira."
When Cassandra was seventeen, she saw Ann Margret in Viva Las Vegas,
(1964) and decided to be a professional dancer . She moved to to Las Vegas where
she became the youngest showgirl every hired in Sin City up to that time.
She met Elvis there who persuaded her to take up a singing career.
She took Elvis's advice and moved to Italy where she joined a rock band that
toured Europe. When Cassandra came back to Rome from one of the band's tours, she
met Federico Fellini who gave her a bit part in Fellini's Roma
(1972). After returning to the US, she formed her own nightclub review which toured the country for a few years In the late
1970s she joined the satiric improvisational troupe, The Groundlings, where
she honed her now renowned comedic skills.
She was then hired by the Los Angeles
television station KHJ to host Movie Macabre, a weekly horror movie
as "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark" wearing a black wig and her now infamous
black, tight-fitting, low-cut gothic gown which showed more cleavage than
had ever appeared on Los Angeles television before. With her perfected
comedy group training, she adopted her classic wisecracking
valley-girl persona often with risqué double entendres and frequent
jokes about her of infamous cleavage. Because all of the
horror movie were campy and bottom-of the-barrel films that primarily
appealed to teenagers, she immediately became nearly every teenaged
boy's masturbatory fantasy.
The overwhelming success of Movie Mscabre
made Cassandra a national celebrity and frequent talk show guest including
several
appearances on The Johnny Carson Show. She also began to get parts on
several popular TV shows She soon became a successful
entrepreneur with her Elvira brand-named products throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
including Halloween costumes, comic books, action figures, trading cards,
pinball machines, Halloween decor, model kits, calendars, perfume, dolls;
and Elvira-themed computer games
The Pentagon even named a
Stealth computer system "Elvira" after her.
So to celebrate the campy busty broad who
made goth fashion chic for tens of thousands of teens, we suggest
watching the feature film,
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark
(1988) while enjoying the classic White Mistress Cocktail.
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