The daughter to a loving "knight in shining armor" father and an unpredictable, insult-hurling, abusive mother, Halloween soon became her favorite holiday as she entered puberty and sprouted breasts early ("I developed faster than a Polaroid") and pursued an internal call to act and perform.Īt 14, Peterson became inspired by Ann Margaret in Viva Las Vegas and began go-go dancing at Army base officers' clubs, which led to gigs as a topless Las Vegas showgirl in a stripping extravaganza called Vive Les Girls! in the early 1970s. The millennials weren't there and won't get it, but Elvira fans certainly will, and her new memoir, Yours Cruelly, Elvira is packed with insider details and a few shocking surprises which no one saw coming, except folks closest to her plunging neckline.īorn in Manhattan, Kansas, "a bad place to be from if you're destined for a life in show business," Cassandra Gay Peterson recalls tragedy early on when, as a toddler, she had an accident with a pot of boiling water and scalded a third of her body which required massive skin grafts. Her persona had the uncanny ability to appeal to gay audiences for her knee-slapping bad humor and Gothic costuming, and straight men for hypnotic, mesmerizing abilities of her heaving cleavage, which Elvira graciously compacted into black dresses that left little to the imagination. For those readers of a certain age who remember the kooky, campy, slinky, boobtastic, more-sexy-than-scary Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, her long-running horror movie screening series remains a camp classic.
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