‘Elvira, Mistress of the Dark’: The story of how Elvis Presley saved Cassandra Peterson’s life
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, has been the patron saint of the goths for nearly 45 years now, beginning with her debut hosting Elvira’s Movie Macabre, a weekly B-movie series, in 1981.
The vampiric pinup, known for her jet-black gown and matching beehive hair-do, voluptuous figure and campy, satirical humour, has become an icon synonymous with all that is morbid and horrific, an icon of beauty and wit.
Elvira’s Movie Macabre aired for five years before spawning two feature films, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark and Elvira’s Haunted Hills, and became one of pop culture’s most enduring figures. Elvira’s likeness is seen everywhere from dolls and action figures to apparel and home decor, immortalised further in a memoir and a cookbook.
She is, as she calls herself, the Santa Claus of Halloween, and with her signature quips of “unpleasant dreams” and “yours cruelly, Elvira”, she has delightfully haunted her cult-like following for decades. But of course, Elvira is just a manifestation, and underneath her gothic drag is actress Cassandra Peterson, who, before taking a chance on creating her Elvira character, had dreams of becoming a showgirl.
Peterson was born in Kansas and grew up in Colorado, with an early love of horror reflected in her choice of monstrous toys over Barbie dolls. She spent her adolescence training as a ballerina and, during her teens, worked as a go-go dancer, performing at a gay bar and a nightclub while still in high school. A fateful screening of the 1964 rock ‘n’ roll musical Viva Las Vegas, starring Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret, gave Peterson, then 14 years old, a spark: she would become a Las Vegas showgirl.
With a dream in her head, at 17, having already moved out of her family home, Peterson persuaded her parents to let her join their trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, where they attended a show at the Dunes Hotel. The show’s dance captain told Peterson that she would be a perfect fit in the cast of her summer show, Viva Les Girls, much to the chagrin of her parents.
“They said, ‘No way in hell,’ and dragged me out of there by my falls,” Peterson recalls to Pamela Des Barres, in Des Barres’ 2008 book Let’s Spend the Night Together. “I had only two or three months left of high school, and for the rest of my senior year I threatened to run away, kill myself, and finally they said, ‘OK, for God’s sake, just get out of here!’ The day I graduated, I threw my stuff into my Firebird and drove to Las Vegas. I started rehearsals and became a showgirl.”
In a serendipitous, full-circle moment for Peterson, she would meet Elvis Presley at a Viva Les Girls show. Her roommate was dating Presley’s road manager, Joe Esposito, and had an invite to The King’s hotel suite. With Peterson being a fanatic, she begged to tag along and soon found herself sitting next to her idol on the piano, singing harmonies together.
“We went off in a corner; just me and him, one-on-one, no one else,” she recounts in Let’s Spend the Night Together. The two talked until the early hours of the morning, discussing Presley’s parents, his meeting with Richard Nixon, the perils of drugs, and the solace in spirituality, numerology and religion.
Then, Presley imparted wisdom that would remain with Peterson forever. “You have a good voice,” Presley told her. “Have you ever taken singing lessons?” he asked. She said no, to which Presley responded, “You ought to get out of Vegas. If you stay here you’ll wind up like one of these old showgirls. You won’t have anything when you get older, and that’ll be the end of you.”
Stunned, Peterson admitted, “If anybody else had told me that, I would have thought they were full of shit. But he was Elvis.”
“He absolutely changed my life, 100%,” Peterson recently told AP News, retelling her meeting with Presley. “He said, ‘This is no place for a 17-year-old girl. You need to get the hell out of here.”
Taking the King’s advice, Peterson sought out a vocal coach the next day and, like kismet, a few weeks later, she and her fellow showgirls were asked to audition to sing, and Peterson won the part. Soon, she moved to Europe and became a singer and actress in Italy.
“Honestly, I tell everyone, I was the youngest showgirl in Las Vegas at the time. I would now be the oldest showgirl in Las Vegas,” she tells AP News. “[I’d] probably be doing it still. So, thank you, Elvis. Oh, you saved my life.”
In one scene from Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, Peterson is seen wearing a T-shirt with a photo of Presley emblazoned on a star, a small token of her unwavering love of the King. Giving a young Peterson the surge of confidence she needed, Presley inadvertently helped jumpstart one of horror’s greatest icons, and the goths would never be the same.
