Cassandra Peterson was born in Manhattan, Kansas. At age 17, she became the youngest showgirl in Las Vegas history, and after receiving advice from the King himself, Elvis Presley, she traveled to Europe where she pursued a career as a singer and actor. Upon returning to the States, Peterson toured America as star of her own musical-comedy show, Mama’s Boys. She eventually settled in Hollywood, where she spent four years with the Groundlings, Los Angeles’ foremost improvisational comedy group. In 1981, she created the character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, for a local Los Angeles television station. Elvira and her show, Movie Macabre, became an overnight sensation and was soon picked up by stations across the country. Peterson cowrote, produced, and starred in two feature-length films, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark and Elvira’s Haunted Hills. In 2021, she published her memoir, Yours Cruelly, Elvira, which became a New York Times bestseller. Peterson has spent over four decades solidifying the Elvira brand, one that has become synonymous with Halloween and the horror genre. Her latest book, Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell: Sexy, Spooky Soirées and Celebrations for Every Occasion, is published September 30 by Grand Central.
Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the recent publication of Cassandra Peterson’s new book Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell, the actress and writer who’s been playing the black-clad horror hostess for 45 years shared some of the things she loves most in life. — N.D.
My Career
It’s maybe weird to choose this, but I’m 74 and I still really, really enjoy my career. I’ve had many people say, “What’s your hobby? Do you have something you love to do?” And I say, “I think it’s my job,” because I’ve gotten to do so many new, different and diverse things as Elvira over the years. I’ve gotten to make TV shows and films, so I get to act. I get to sing and dance in my live show. I get to do comedy. I get to write books and record albums. It’s seemingly endless, and it’s a very creative outlet for me. People ask me, “When are you going to retire?” But if I retired, I don’t think I’d have anything else to do. It’s just an unusual career and I’m very lucky.
I thought being Elvira would last about two weeks, but she’s still going strong! I got hired to be Elvira – to be sexy and funny and talk about horror – in 1980. We came up with a look and the whole thing was so cheesy and had such a low, bargain-basement budget that I really did not have any hope for it. But I was an actor looking for work, so I thought, A couple weeks’ pay is better than nothing! The fun part probably kicked in when I co-wrote and starred in the movie Mistress of the Dark, because before then, I had been almost like a newscaster, just sitting there reading a teleprompter straight at the camera. Suddenly in the movie, we found out who Elvira was, where she came from and developed a 3-D personality for her. It opened up a big world for the character.
I’ve had a lot of really great moments as Elvira, and one of my favorites is way, way back when I was still on local TV in Los Angeles. Suddenly, I got invited on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, which was the only talk show that anybody knew or cared about. And I was a local TV horror host! So to get invited on there was the moment a lightning bolt struck my brain and I thought, Wow, maybe I’ve got something here … I’ve been playing her for 45 years, so I guess I was right about that!
Stephen King
Stephen King has had a big influence on me as a writer, although I’ve met him only once. He, Vincent Price and I were on Tom Snyder’s talk show, The Tomorrow Show, and I got to speak to him briefly, but I’ve always been a big admirer of his books and films. Stephen King is an incredibly prolific writer, and he has his own wheelhouse that he’s just brilliant at. He cranks out books, and each one is better than the last. I love that he can go back and forth between horror and non-horror, and I actually appreciate some of his non-horror work even more.
He wrote a book called On Writing, which is fantastic and gave me the inspiration to write my autobiography, Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark, and believe I could actually do it. I thought, Hey, maybe I can be a writer too… I’d written movies and TV shows already, but to write a book felt like a very different prospect. I listened to the audiobook of On Writing in the car when I was driving, after having read the book already. I loved hearing him reading it. It was wonderful and had a big impact on me.
When I was writing my autobiography, I had to go to a coffee shop every day, because when I’m at home alone writing, I’ll remember I have to go throw a load of washing in the machine, or I haven’t emptied the dishwasher or I should walk the dog. So I had to leave in the morning and treat writing like a 9-to-5 job. Some moments were really hard, like when I was writing about the AIDS epidemic and all of the friends I lost. I could barely move my fingers, but I knew from Stephen King to just keep writing – vomit it all out on the page, just keep going and move my hands – even though I could hardly stand to think about what I was writing.
Those moments were very painful, but I also had a lot of fun times sitting alone writing in the coffee shop. People were probably staring at me, thinking, One minute she’s laughing, next minute she’s sobbing. What’s going on over there?!
Getting Older
I love getting older and having the freedom to be more like I’ve always wanted to be. I’ve always been in careers that revolve around sex: I was a go-go dancer, a showgirl, and later Elvira. And a lot of that depended completely on my looks and how sexy and attractive to men I was. Not having to rely on that anymore is really, really great. It was initially difficult to go through a period of men not looking at me anymore and feeling like nobody was seeing me, but now that I’ve come out the other side, I’m just like, Oh, fuck it. I’m just not having to try so hard and it’s very liberating.
Even though I am in show business, where you can’t do everything you want, I now can really be the real me and not have any phoniness or fakeness. I can really speak. I’ve also noticed I’m a little angrier at people sometimes. I used to be more polite, but now I just don’t hold back. If people are treating me shabbily, I can respond with a lot more honesty and power. I spent most of my life as a woman saying sorry, even if it was the other person’s fault, because my generation was taught to do that. Now if somebody runs into me, I say, What the fuck is wrong with you? Which isn’t so good either, but it’s also OK. I’m not having to subdue my real self.
I’ve spent my entire life doing my hair and wearing tons of makeup. And that even meant when I went to the grocery store, because the day that I don’t wear makeup and don’t look good is bound to be the day somebody’s going to take a picture of me and post it on social media. But at this point, I just go out as myself. I don’t wear makeup. I don’t do my hair. I luckily haven’t gone so far that I’m just wearing my bathrobe and slippers, but I just go out looking like myself and say, Hey, this is me. I’m the real person. I would have never done that even five years ago. Never. Back then, I did full makeup to go to the grocery store, which ended up keeping me home alone a lot. So it’s very freeing for me to now just go about my business. If somebody sees me and recognizes me, which they often do, that is OK. As a person who could be in the Guinness Book of World Records for having worn more makeup than any human being on earth – first as a showgirl and then as Elvira – not having to do that anymore is almost overwhelming. It’s really wonderful.
