CHAPTER 19

A HOLLYWOOD HORROR STORY

While working at Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert and living in my split-level, ’70s single apartment on Beachwood Drive, I made what I thought would be a quick trip home from the nearby soundstage to iron a blouse for one of the Pointer Sisters and grab another roll or two of film for my Nikon. As I stood at the ironing board, I heard the neighbors in the building next door arguing again. I was used to it by now, but this time it was odd because their fights usually took place late at night. I’d called the police and reported them on two previous occasions because their yelling was so loud I couldn’t sleep. Now they were at it again. I took a quick look out my window but didn’t see anything unusual. As I continued ironing, the shouting escalated, growing louder and more intense. The yelling turned to a woman’s screams—short and sharp at first, then longer and more guttural, like something out of a horror movie. As I grabbed the telephone in my trembling hands and dialed 911, I ran back to the window, phone cord trailing behind me. Like some twisted version of a football commentator, I relayed what I was seeing to the dispatcher. I described a woman, half running, half falling down the stairway from her second-story apartment, tumbling toward the glass front door. She was immediately followed by a man who struck at her savagely.

“He’s hitting her… she’s screaming… she’s down on the floor… she’s quiet. He’s walking outside. Oh God, I think he killed her! There’s blood all over him! He has a rubber glove on. It’s all bloody. He’s straightening his clothes like nothing happened. He’s walking away.”

I dropped the phone and ran from my apartment to where she lay.

Outside was a perfect California summer afternoon. The sun was shining and the sky was blue, but nothing looked right.

I stopped abruptly and for a moment just stared at her body, which was spilling halfway in and halfway out of the open glass door. I approached her slowly and knelt beside her. I could smell a sweet, metallic odor that made the knot in my stomach tighten. She was lying on her back, covered from head to toe in blood, her eyes wide open, staring past me into the distance. The only sound coming from her was gurgling that emanated from deep inside her throat. One stylish brown pump stood upright next to her on the stoop. I hesitated, then reached out to feel her wrist for a pulse. She was still warm. I kept thinking this couldn’t be real, it had to be a movie.

“Do you think she’s okay?” a low voice asked from behind me.

I turned my head slowly and squinted into the bright sunlight at the silhouette of a man hovering over me.

My voice quavered. “I… I don’t think so,” I breathed. He tossed something into the azalea bushes behind him, removed the bloody glove he was wearing, and dropped it at his feet, then casually strolled off down Beachwood Drive.

One by one, neighbors arrived on the gruesome scene. The police showed up soon after, and then the coroner. I was put into a patrol car and taken to the station where I was interviewed for hours. I was in shock, traumatized by what I’d just witnessed and shaking so violently that my teeth chattered. It’s a horrible thing to witness another human being killed so brutally right in front of your eyes, something I hope none of you ever have or will have to experience. When I returned home, the mere thought of going back inside my apartment made me feel nauseous. There was no way I could stay there and not keep replaying that scene over and over in my head. I also knew the killer was still out there somewhere and might come looking for me because I could identify him. I called Mark, who rushed right over, grabbed a few of my things from the apartment, and took me to his place.

The living arrangement was less than ideal. For the next several nights we slept in his twin bed in the tiny apartment he shared with a roommate. A few weeks later, we decided to give up our respective apartments, find a place, and move in together. I wanted to stay in the same Beachwood neighborhood, near my friends. It’s where I’d first lived with Matt, and to me, it felt like a small town in the big city. We combed the papers, then drove around the neighborhood in Mark’s ’76 Volkswagen van checking out rentals. About a half-mile away from my apartment, we came across a man pounding a “Duplex Apartment for Rent” sign into the ground at the top of a long, cypress-lined driveway. At the bottom sat a beautiful Spanish bungalow perched on a hillside overlooking the Hollywood sign. The landlord offered us a tour, but we both knew we wanted it even before we walked through the door. It was the lower level, and although it was only a one-bedroom, one-bath place, it was bigger than anything I’d lived in since leaving Las Vegas. The price was right, so we snapped it up. It seemed almost too good to be true. And in a way, it was.

What I didn’t know was that the man who had brutally murdered my neighbor was the reason we were living there. Only after we’d gotten married, I’d become “Elvira,” and we’d moved out did Mark tell me what had taken place there before we’d rented it. After the killer left the scene of the murder, he made his way on foot into the hills, where he approached a man walking two small dogs. Pretending he had a gun in his pocket, he forced the man to take him to his home, where he tied him up, grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen, and threatened to kill him and his dogs if he tried anything. After showering and changing into some of the frightened tenant’s clothes, he left. Thankfully, neither the man nor his dogs were hurt, but obviously feeling the same way I’d felt about living in a place that sparked such traumatic memories, he broke his lease and abruptly moved out. We were the lucky couple to rent it.

I later learned that the perpetrator, an African American advertising executive with no prior record, turned himself in to the police not long after the murder. The victim, who was white, turned out to be the daughter of a powerful politician and Texas Instruments executive and the ex-wife of a prominent Hollywood producer. Days after turning himself in, the killer was found dead, hanging from his belt in the cell. The Los Angeles Herald Examiner claimed she was murdered during a random robbery. The whole sad story still strikes me as very fishy to this day.

A year after moving in together, Mark and I decided to get married. Our wedding was held in a little church in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, attended by a few friends, lots of my relatives, and both Mark’s parents and mine. Deliriously happy and madly in love, we headed to a modest hotel in Aspen for our honeymoon and the beginning of our new life together.

In August of 1981, Maila Nurmi was asked by KHJ-TV to revive her Vampira character for television. I’m assuming that after their initial meeting it was obvious that wasn’t an option. Maila was in her sixties and was clearly not up to the task. The TV station came up with the idea of finding a new, younger actress to revive the role. KHJ promised Maila that in exchange for the use of the name, she would receive an executive- producer credit on the show and collect a weekly royalty payment.

That week, I had a meeting with the director of the show, Larry Thomas; the station manager, Chuck Velona; and the program director, Walt Baker; along with Vampira herself, Maila Nurmi.

Vampira had hosted horror movies at the station for a brief period in 1956 and they explained that I would be playing Vampira’s daughter. At this time, I had absolutely no idea there was an actual person named Vampira, probably because the show had aired only in the Los Angeles area when I was a child. I was familiar with the character Vampirella from Famous Monsters of Filmland creator Forrest J. Ackerman, but I assumed the name Vampira was a generic name for a female vampire. They showed me a few photos they had on hand of her when she was in her prime and I was thrilled that the character she’d played looked so much like one of my childhood favorites, Morticia Addams. Coincidently, Maila and I had a lot in common. She had previously worked as a showgirl and modeled for men’s magazines before turning to horror hosting. She’d even worked as a hatcheck girl like me. And according to Hollywood legend, she was a bit of a star-fucker too.

The idea for the Vampira character was born in 1953 when the young ingénue was invited to a masquerade ball and took her inspiration for her costume from Morticia as portrayed in the New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams. She caught the eye of producer Hunt Stromberg Jr., who arranged for her to host horror movies on local Los Angeles television station KABC-TV. Maila’s first of three husbands, Dean Riesner, came up with the name Vampira and the show premiered on May 1, 1954.

It was canceled in 1955 and after leaving the station, Maila took The Vampira Show to their competition, KHJ-TV, where we now found ourselves. It aired on KHJ for only a few months in 1956 before being canceled again for the final time.

Our meeting that day was seriously awkward. It was plain to see from the photos she shared that she’d once been a very statuesque and beautiful woman, but it was also clear that she’d lived a very hard life. She had only a tooth or two left in her head and she rambled on incoherently about subjects that didn’t relate at all to what we were there to discuss. She talked a lot about her relationship with James Dean, but in the present tense, as if it was ongoing. I wasn’t all that familiar with James Dean, but I knew enough about him to know he was dead. It was sad to see an older lady like her alone and down on her luck. I was happy the show would be an opportunity for her to make some money for the use of the Vampira name.

When the meeting adjourned, the first thing I did to prepare for the new show was go straight to my friend Robert Redding from Mama’s Boys, who was now living back in LA. In addition to being a performer, he was also a talented artist, so he and I threw some ideas around and he came up with sketches of what we thought the character might look like. The first version we both agreed on was a take on Sharon Tate’s character from Roman Polanski’s movie The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck, which had been a favorite of ours. The Sharon Tate look would utilize my own long, wavy, red locks and I would wear a pale-pink tattered gown with “dead-girl” makeup: pale face and lips and dark, sunken eyes. That look didn’t fly with the KHJ management at all.

“No, definitely not,” came the response. “Has to be all black!”

That left us with the more typical vampire look, which was frustrating for both of us, but Robert managed to give it a cooler, edgier ’80s spin. He’d recently wrapped a production of Macbeth at West Hollywood’s Globe Playhouse, playing the witch Hecate, and had researched Kabuki theater books for his look. His makeup turned out to be perfect for me, too.

Robert’s favorite performer of all time was Ronnie Spector of the ’60s girl group the Ronettes—the original bad girl of rock ’n’ roll. Elvira’s hairdo was inspired by Ronnie’s beehive (only she called it a “knowledge bump”) featuring long, black hair cascading from beneath a mile-high bouffant.

We were both a bit shocked that they didn’t mind the plunging neckline that Robert had drawn. In fact, their only comment regarding changes to the costume was to ask that we make the slit on the leg a little higher. Ratings were ratings, and local stations back then didn’t seem to get much flak from “standards and practices,” so what the hell. Coming from my background, I was totally fine wearing a skimpy outfit. From time to time, I was asked in interviews how my parents felt about what I was wearing on TV and I always replied, “Heck, they’re just happy I’m wearing anything!” Back then, my super-low-cut neckline and long, black nails were so shocking! Today, it seems like every woman on the Grammys and Academy Awards has adopted my look.

The first day of filming almost turned out to be the last. After spending hours in the dressing room with Robert putting the finishing touches on my wig, makeup, and costume, I appeared on set for the first time. Larry and the crew were impressed with the transformation, to say the least. They set me in place to tape the introduction to the show. Just as we were about to begin, Walt Baker burst into the studio.

“STOP THE SHOW!” he commanded. “Maila Nurmi’s attorney just called. We can’t use the name Vampira!”

Apparently, she was unhappy that the station had cast me, a comedic actress, to portray her character. According to an interview in a 2005 Bizarre magazine, Maila wanted thirty-nine-year-old Lola Falana, an African American singer, to play the part. It was easy to see how I might be a big disappointment.

So, there we were, me in full regalia, rented hallway flats propped up, fake spiderwebs blown into place and ready to go. I was completely verklempt—n ot another part snatched away at the last minute! Just as I was about to drag my sorry ass back to the dressing room, I heard a commotion. Larry suddenly turned around and shouted, “Okay, gang. Let’s pick another name and get this show on the road!” I breathed a huge sigh of relief—hey, a job’s a job—and everyone on the crew began throwing out names. Larry came up with the idea of writing names on scraps of paper, tossing them into an old Folgers coffee can, and choosing one at random. Robert, Mark, and I, along with the cameraman, lighting and sound guys, stage manager, and whoever else happened to be on the set, threw our little scraps of paper into the can. I tossed in the name Cassandra. Thank God I didn’t choose that!

“El-vi-ra?” I grimaced when I pulled the slip of paper from the can. “Sounds like a country-western singer to me,” I said, probably in reference to the song “Elvira” by the Oakridge Boys, which had recently been released.

Oh well. That was that. We fired up the ol’ fog machine and got back to shooting the intro to the show—me, standing in a doorway at the end of a long, dark hallway, beckoning viewers to join me. Thus began Vampira’s long, one-sided feud with Elvira.

The show was called Elvira’s Movie Macabre and debuted in September 1981, just days before my thirtieth birthday. It ran in the Los Angeles area every Saturday night at midnight and repeated on Sunday afternoons as an alternative to the football games that were airing on all other channels. Our first show featured the 1972 horror snore-fest Grave of the Vampire. Mark and I watched my very first episode from home, excited and nervous. Not two minutes after it ended, the calls started pouring in, first from friends congratulating me, then from guys with important questions like, “Are your tits real?” That’s when we realized that having my name and number in the phone book was a super-bad idea.

I had absolutely zero hopes of the show staying on the air long, much less leading to fame. I was just happy to have a weekly check coming in! Apparently, the station didn’t hold out much hope for the show either, because years later, when the show came to an end and I asked to buy the red velvet sofa I’d reclined on, management discovered they’d been paying a weekly prop rental fee for the previous six years instead of buying it outright. I estimate that sofa had about $20,000 sunk into it. I got it for $200—deal of the century!

With Halloween around the corner, among the calls I received from men wondering whether I liked guys with big dicks were calls asking if I might be available for an appearance at their beauty salon, mini-mart, or Halloween party. I accepted a gig to sign autographs at a small convention in LA, which offered to pay me one hundred dollars. Mark and I could hardly believe our ears! A hundred dollars?! For doing nothing but signing my name? You gotta be kidding!

When the day of the convention rolled around, I woke up desperately sick with the flu. This turn of events was not going to deter me, however. Mark drove me there in his Volkswagen van while I lay in the back, nauseated and headachy. The promoters gave us a hotel room, where I slathered makeup onto my feverish face, which was already so pale that the white foundation was almost redundant. They were also nice enough to place my table right next to the ladies’ room, so that while I was signing, I could periodically pop in to puke. The few fans that showed up seemed happy with their autographed photos and each received a bonus with purchase: a free flu bug! I made it through the convention alive and left with a hundred bucks in hand.

My husband, a budding composer (or so I hoped), wrote an eerie organ melody, punctuated by ghoulish sound effects, that was adopted as Elvira’s trademark theme song. In the beginning, Larry wrote the scripts for the show. His writing style was pure vaudeville—schlocky jokes and puns that would make even Henny Youngman cringe. Coming from a Vegas background, I loved it! The show always opened with a line or two welcoming viewers to Movie Macabre and introducing myself:

Hello darling, and welcome to Movie Macabre… or as we like to call it: rent.

Yes, it’s me.…

… that gal in the wig whose talents are big…

… the gal who put the “sick” into classic…

… the gal who put the “boob” back into “Boob Tube…”

… the gal with the yucks who’s workin’ for schmucks…

… that gal in the dress who al-l-l-ways says yes… except for one time when somebody asked me if I’d ever said no…

… the cute high school dropout who looks like she’ll pop out…

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

You get the picture.

Each Thursday, I showed up at KHJ to shoot a show (or two, time permitting). Larry was a genius at coming up with hilarious, albeit corny scripts, but eventually, between writing, screening the movies, pulling all the film clips, and editing them into the show, plus directing and producing the whole shebang, it became too much for one guy to handle. I suggested John Paragon come onboard to help with the writing. John was one of the funniest and most brilliant Groundlings ever to grace their stage and Larry loved his work, so he convinced the station to scrape together a little money to pay him.

Paragon would become my writing partner for the next twenty-four years. In addition to writing Movie Macabre and all of my many home- video series together, John also cowrote Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. He helped write my Knott’s Scary Farm Halloween show each year, in which he performed his Latin lover character, Ramone Azteca, which was incredibly popular. He and I collaborated on three Elvira-themed young adult novels, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, Camp Vamp, and Transylvania 90210, as well as a parody of the popular children’s book Good Dog, Carl, called Bad Dog, Andy, about John’s very naughty dalmatian. John later became my child’s godfather, and we became as close as two friends can be.

The movies on our show usually ran an hour and a half, minus commercials, so we had to come up with anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes of nonstop yakking. In the case of some of the films that were shot in Italy or Mexico, we had to cut so much nudity and hot, horny girl-on-girl vampire action that we hardly had a film left, so we had to make up a lot of time!

The movies were the “crème de la crap.” KHJ’s parent company, the legendary RKO Pictures, happened to be chockablock with low, low, low budget films. Sometimes we got some decent classic horror films like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Peeping Tom, Tales of Terror, The Other, Village of the Damned, or Willard. But mostly we got movies that you could argue were not-so-classic, like The Wild Women of Wongo, Meateaters, Blackula, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, Monstroid, The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, and Pigs.

To give these tired-ass old movies new life, KHJ had figured out that the key to getting new viewers was the addition of a horror host, and lucky for me, I just happened to be crazy about these B-grade and C-grade clunkers!

Every Monday morning, John and I grabbed a couple of coffees and headed to KHJ, where we shut ourselves in a tiny, closet-size room for the better part of a day. A mystery man on the other side of the back wall projected the week’s film onto a pull-down screen the size of an old-school TV set. There were no “pause” or “rewind” buttons, so we had to watch and rewatch the films two, three, four times, often jabbing each other in the ribs when one of us started snoring. John and I laughed and joked our way through the films, making cracks about the wardrobe and hair, the monster, the bad acting, and the corny plot, and then jotted down our notes. The shows consisted of an “open,” a “close,” and eight commercial “intro and outro” segments, with John doing the heavy lifting of actually forming our notes into an intelligible script. The worse the movies were, the easier it was to come up with funny material. Our biggest problem came when I had to host a film that was too classy, like Peeping Tom. Fortunately, we didn’t have to deal with that pesky problem too often.

Another difficult script to write was one in which the movie took its own stab at comedy, leaving us struggling to make jokes on a joke, the perfect example being Attack of the Killer Tomatoes—a ll the good jokes about ketchup were already taken!

Meanwhile, Robert and I ran around town each week begging, borrowing, and buying props and costumes with our very limited budget. When Thursday rolled around, I reclined on my trusty old Victorian sofa in front of a black scrim, candelabras glowing behind me, and delivered my lines. Just to switch things up, Larry once tried an alternate set—me, leaning against a lamppost—but for obvious reasons, management ruled against it.

People often ask whether I improvised my scripts—possibly because they seemed so amateurish—but, no. Hell no! All the improvising was done during the writing process and I read every word straight from the teleprompter. We didn’t have the luxury of time when it came to shooting the show. The one and only studio at KHJ was available between the News at Noon and the News at Five. We started each taping day at 1:00 p.m. and it didn’t matter if we were finished shooting or not, at five minutes to 5:00, we were done! The opening scene from Mistress of the Dark, where I’m hosting a movie and the weather map drops down in front of my face mid-sentence, wasn’t far from reality.

A big problem soon emerged. Without my glasses, I couldn’t see two feet in front of me, let alone read a teleprompter ten feet away, no matter how big they made the copy. I wore contact lenses, but all the heavy eye makeup and lashes made them unbearable! A dozen times during the shoot, I’d waste precious minutes running to the bathroom to take my contacts out, rinse them, and stick them back in my eyes. That process would screw up my eye makeup, so it would take even more time to redo that. Edie McClurg told me about a new experimental surgery for near-sightedness that she and actor Robert Wagner had just undergone called radial keratotomy, the forerunner to LASIK. I immediately signed up for it and underwent the surgery and it was a miracle—I could see without glasses for the first time since third grade! Edie may have single-handedly saved my career.

As the show became successful, we were given a little money to hire other actors. We started by adding Paragon in a recurring role, “The Breather,” based on his Groundlings’s character “Mr. Ferguson”—a deranged sex-ed teacher who wore a dirty, disheveled suit and tie, thick Coke-bottle lenses in his horn-rimmed glasses, and a greasy face, courtesy of KY Jelly. Breather regularly called me from a phone booth, first breathing heavily into the receiver and then, in his creepy, croaking delivery, telling me a stupid joke, for example:

Breather: “What’s the last thing that goes through a fly’s mind when he hits the windshield of your car?”

Elvira: “I dunno, Breather. What is the last thing that goes through a fly’s mind when he hits the windshield of your car?

Breather: “His butt!! Hahahahahaha!!!”

Okay, not the most sophisticated humor, but people loved him!

Over the years we were lucky to get an amazing list of actors who came on the show for little or no money. Some were “reprising” roles from the film I was showing that week, like my old flame Fabian Forte in Kiss Daddy Goodbye and Johnny Crawford (The Rifleman) in Village of the Giants. Other actors included John Carradine, fellow Groundlings Paul Reubens and Laraine Newman, John Astin (The Addams Family), Ed McMahon (The Tonight Show), Barbara Billingsley (Leave It to Beaver), Cheech Marin (Cheech & Chong), Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), Hervé Villachaize (Fantasy Island), and comedian Arsenio Hall (playing the head of the NAACP—the Negroes Alliance Against Crappy Pictures). Larry Thomas reached out to Vincent Price to see if he might consider doing a quick appearance on our “Halloween Special” and to our shock and amazement, he said yes! At the time he happened to be appearing locally in a play called Diversions and Delights, based on the life of Oscar Wilde, and if we would allow him to plug it, he would agree to do the show. I couldn’t believe it! “Vinny the P,” my childhood hero, was actually going to be on my show! I was so nervous during the taping I could hardly get the words out, but he was charming, funny, and down-to-earth and quickly put me at ease.

One of the perks of being Elvira was that with the black wig and major makeup I wore, no one recognized Cassandra Peterson, so I could continue to go out for “legitimate” acting roles to boost my income.

I was still working as a temp in mind-numbingly boring office jobs, and the first inkling that I might be onto something came not long after the show aired. I mentioned to my boss at whatever insurance office I was working at that day that I’d landed a gig on a late-night TV show and was no longer available to work on Thursdays. Being a lowly insurance dude, he was clearly impressed and asked what the show was. When I told him I was Elvira, I thought he’d shit his drawers! Word traveled fast, because by the end of the day a steady stream of guys was flowing in from other offices to ogle me. When I left the office, I passed a group of construction workers outside who screamed and giggled like little girls. Was I actually becoming “famous”?

In May 1982, Movie Macabre was among the first wave of TV shows ever to be broadcast in 3D. Along with my segments, we aired the Vincent Price 3D classic The Mad Magician. Because 3D television technology was new and fairly experimental, shooting my segments of the show was painstakingly slow and difficult and took forever! We shot on a weekend starting around noon and ended at noon the next day, with a quick break or two to eat and pee. Naturally, we had to get in as many 3D jokes as possible. I opened Snakes in a Can, played with paddleballs, blew party “blowouts,” and of course, lunged my chest toward the camera as many times as possible, milking the 3D effect for all it was worth—ew, bad pun. Two point seven million pairs of cheesy cardboard 3D glasses were sold through 7-11 stores in Southern California where the show aired. At three bucks a pop, somebody was making a crap-load of moolah and it wasn’t me. I was still being paid my regular weekly salary. Was I bitter? You could have made lemonade out of my spit. I’m still wondering where the other $8,099,650.00 went!

Paragon and Mark collaborated on a song that was featured in the show, appropriately entitled “3D TV.” It was later released on vinyl through Rhino Records with another John Paragon original on the flip side, “Trick or Treat.” Mark played recording engineer, while Paul Reubens and John—as my backup singers, The Vi-Tones—stood in our bathtub with the shower curtain drawn to give the record that special “bathtub of sound” effect that was so popular in the early ’80s.

The night the 3D show premiered was beyond exciting! Mark and I invited over as many friends as we could pack into our living room and even scraped together the money for a new, larger TV set for everyone’s “viewing displeasure.” Of course, KHJ didn’t give me any 3D glasses, so the afternoon of the premiere I schlepped down to the nearest 7-11 to buy them for us and our guests. When I got there, I couldn’t believe my eyes—there was a long line of people outside the store waiting to buy the glasses! Feeling comfortable that I wouldn’t be recognized, especially since I wasn’t wearing makeup and had my hair up in curlers (I know. I’m sorry.), I took my place in line tucking my hands under my armpits to conceal my long black nails, and prepared to wait. Moments later, a mobile news van from a competing station pulled up and a reporter hopped out and shoved a microphone in my face. “Are you waiting in line to get glasses for Elvira’s upcoming 3D show?” she brayed. Before she could see my nails or hear my voice and put two and two together, I turned, bolted to my car, and headed out to track down another store. How humiliating would it have been to find out that Elvira was waiting in line because her employers were too cheap to comp her a few pairs of the damn things? Sheesh! I later read in the LA Times that the demand for the 3D glasses was so great that the supply ran out long before the lines died down. There was even a story about a guy leaving a 7-11 being robbed at gunpoint by someone who took only his 3D glasses!

Even though I didn’t make any money on the 3D broadcast, Movie Macabre’s ratings went through the roof, and the next thing I knew, I was invited to appear as a guest on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. At the time there was only one talk show that mattered and this was it. Appearing on The Tonight Show was a career-defining moment and everybody knew it. They specifically asked me to do the interview as Cassandra, something that has rarely happened since. It would be the first time the television audience would see me out of Elvira drag, and, without my alter ego to protect me, I was scared shitless! I searched the stores for the perfect thing to wear, spending almost two weeks’ salary on a dress. The night I went on, I was so nervous I thought I might hyperventilate and pass out! The producers introduced me to Johnny as he was getting into makeup, and he couldn’t have been nicer or more encouraging. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “Just relax and be yourself.” When I was actually on the stage, seated next to him, he led me through the interview, his years of expertise making me look good every step of the way. The high point came when Johnny asked what my favorite movie I’d hosted had been. I answered, “The Head with Two Things… I mean, The Thing with Two Heads!” It got a huge laugh and Johnny milked it for all it was worth by just staring at the audience with that signature deadpan look of his—a Carson trademark. During the following commercial break, I leaned over and whispered to him, “I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean to say that!” He looked at me with a sly grin and said, “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, honey,” knowing full well I’d planned it. In the years that followed, I went on to guest on The Tonight Show as Elvira with hosts Joan Rivers, David Brenner, and Jay Leno, sharing the sofa with Vincent Price, Dionne Warwick, Pee-wee Herman, and Betty White, among others.

Much to everyone’s delight, Movie Macabre plugged along, week after week, and the ratings continued to grow. I think I was more shocked than anyone else! It seemed that not only did Elvira have a great set of boobs—she also had “legs.”

Dressed as Elvira, I did local newspaper, TV, radio interviews, and my first professional photo session, and made my first public appearance at a shopping mall in Azusa. Whoo hoo! In 1982, I also received a local LA-area Emmy award nomination, which, even though I didn’t win, seemed unimaginable.

When Elvira’s Movie Macabre was well on its way to becoming a cult hit, Maila Nurmi resurfaced—this time to sue me for stealing her character. She’d dug up a lawyer, willing to work on a contingency basis, by placing an ad in a local newspaper that read, “Vampira to sue Elvira—Interested attorneys please inquire below.” She filed a lawsuit naming KHJ-TV, Larry Thomas, and me, personally, as defendants. What really chapped my ass is that I didn’t steal her character or anyone else’s. I was just a “gun for hire,” not involved in the terms of whatever agreement she’d made, or hadn’t made, with KHJ, but that didn’t seem to matter.

After Mark and I were forced to borrow $35,000, which was promptly thrown down the dumper on lawyer’s fees, Maila never showed up in court and the judge ruled in our favor, stating, “likeness means actual representation of another person’s appearance, and not simply close resemblance.” Maila herself had claimed in a 1994 interview with Boxoffice magazine that Vampira’s image was based on the Charles Addams character of Morticia from the New Yorker cartoons—hypocritical much?

Unfortunately, the Vampira saga didn’t end there. She would continue to haunt me for years, sometimes sending tough-looking punks to my various appearances to heckle and threaten me, and once even shove me. When I was on the verge of signing a deal for a Little Elvira cartoon show on one of the major networks, Maila mailed their attorneys nude photos of me as Cassandra that she’d dug up in an obscure men’s magazine. The cartoon show was promptly canceled.

But for all the trouble she caused me, she was still television’s first horror host and I owe her a debt of gratitude for paving the way for me and all horror hosts to follow.

In late ’82, Mark and I were invited to a party at the Hollywood Hills home of Eric Gardner, manager of singer/musician Todd Rundgren, an artist I’d idolized since his days in the Nazz in the ’60s. I wouldn’t have missed a chance to meet him for the world! On top of getting to hang out with Todd, who became a friend—and Richard Butler from the Psychedelic Furs, who was drunk, stoned, or both and behaved like a total douche—that evening marked the night we began discussions with Eric about the possibility of managing me in partnership with Mark, who, being new to the biz, lacked the experience Eric brought to the party, so to speak. Eric began his career in the early ’70s coordinating tours for groups like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and KISS. In 1974 he shifted to talent management with his company Panacea Entertainment, and in addition to Todd, managed musicians like Steven Van Zandt as well as Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones. Since moving from New York to Los Angeles with his wife, Janis, he’d been looking for a vehicle that would allow him to expand into the world of film and television, and I was that ride.

Halloween 1982 found me performing a month-long show at the Southern California amusement park Knott’s Berry Farm, which, during the month of October, transforms into the Halloween Haunt, the largest and longest-running Halloween venue in the country. I replaced the former host, radio personality Wolfman Jack, to perform onstage in Knott’s 2,000-seat Good Time Theatre. Dancing and singing was something I hadn’t done in years, but I had a blast doing the show and was reminded why there’s nothing quite like the thrill of performing in front of a live audience. Knott’s Scary Farm became a seasonal gig for Elvira that would continue, on and off, for twenty-four out of forty years.

For a year, I’d worked on Movie Macabre—t he number one–rated show on KHJ—acting, writing, and buying costumes and props, and at the end of the week picked up my skimpy paycheck. Mark had negotiated a minor raise in 1982, up to $500 a week, but KHJ wouldn’t budge beyond that. Shocked that KHJ owned all the rights to the Elvira character, Eric made getting them his number-one priority. Thanks to some deft negotiating on his part, and with the help of attorney Vance Van Petten, we soon owned the rights. After a long history of corporate misconduct, KHJ’s parent company, RKO General, was ordered to surrender their remaining broadcast licenses in 1988, including that of KHJ, which was sold to the Walt Disney Company, becoming KCAL. If KHJ had retained the rights to the character, Elvira would have disappeared down the dark hole of history along with the station.

With a little help from Mark’s generous parents, we were able to buy a house in the Los Feliz Oaks neighborhood, just down the hill from the duplex apartment we’d been renting. It was nothing fancy, no pool, no gates, just a modest, middle-class, three-bedroom home on Park Oak Drive, but it was a place of our own and we were ecstatic.

It was a magical time. Mark and I were more in love than ever, and becoming successful added to our feelings of happiness and well-being. We adored our new home, our dogs and cats, cooking for friends, and throwing parties. I replaced my Volkswagen with a BMW and Mark exchanged his van for a Mercedes station wagon, both used, but big improvements over what we’d been driving.

The first year at KHJ passed in a crazy whirlwind of newfound fame. I’d gone from a struggling actress to a celebrity. Life was turning out in the way I’d always dreamed it would.

In 1983 we released Elvira Presents Vinyl Macabre—Oldies But Ghoulies Vol. I through Rhino Records, this time an album of classic Halloween hits like Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s Halloween classic “Monster Mash” and one of my favorite weird songs of all time, “It’s Halloween” by the Shaggs. Each song was bookended with Elvira’s signature snarky comments.

I flew to Atlanta to film a small part in the movie Stroker Ace, starring Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson. Burt and Loni were still blissful lovebirds back then, and they, along with director Hal Needham and actor Jim Nabors, treated me like a star. Although Jim, as his Gomer Pyle character in The Andy Griffith Show was a favorite of mine growing up, the scene between the two of us was awkward, to say the least. I played a kind of Elvira-human hybrid, wearing Elvira’s hair and makeup, but dressed in a high-collared, knee-length blue dress, attempting to pick Jim up in a bar—a formidable task.

Settling into our very first home, Mark was now comanaging me full-time, so we added an office above the garage that made our house feel more like a home and not a workplace. Through fans, we acquired two adorable rottweiler pups who we named Vlad and Bela, and along with our cats, Renfield and Hecate, we started to feel like a family.

My career continued to ramp up. March 9, 1984, was declared Elvira Day in Los Angeles, and I attended a ceremony where I was given a plaque by then-Mayor Tom Bradley. I received the 22nd Annual Count Dracula Society Award from founder Dr. Donald A. Reed and, while at the awards ceremony, spent a very festive hour in my limo drinking and chatting with Fahrenheit 451 author Ray Bradbury, whose books were among my favorites. MTV hired our newly formed production company to write and produce a six-hour Halloween special, doing comedy bits in between their year-end countdown of best music videos, and I made lots more TV appearances including on The Today Show and Entertainment Tonight and another guest spot on The Tonight Show. This time, I appeared as Elvira, and the show was hosted by comic David Brenner (who was surprised to learn I’d worked with him years earlier on The Bachelor of the Year Awards). I was excited as could be to discover that Vincent Price was also a guest that night. When I told David that Vincent had been featured in many of the Edgar Allan Poe–themed movies on my show, Vinny replied, “You’re right, Elvira. Those were some po’ pitchures, they were!” (I’ve used that line so many times over the years, I should have paid him royalties!) For almost a decade, it seemed like every time there was a talk show, an awards ceremony, or a movie premiere with a horror theme at which Vincent was a guest, I was there, too, so we saw a lot of each other. We became friends until his death, writing letters back and forth, some of which I hear are archived in the Smithsonian. He also taught me to cook fish in my dishwasher. Just throwing that out there.

In 1984, I attended the Grammys, and while backstage, got the chance to meet Michael Jackson. During the show that evening, he’d won a record eight Grammy Awards for various songs from his album Thriller. I hadn’t seen him since he’d performed as a child in Vegas with the Jackson Five, and I was slightly intimidated by how tall, handsome, and larger than life he appeared. “I love you, Elvira,” he breathed in his high-pitched, whispery voice as I shook his begloved hand. “You should have done that voiceover in ‘Thriller.’” Michael Jackson was telling me I should have been in “Thriller,” one of the best-selling singles of all time?! Get the fuck out! Stifling a yelp from the rhinestones that were digging into my flesh, I wanted to scream, “Damn straight I shoulda been!” but instead murmured politely, “Oh, that would have been fun!” Years later, when Rod Temperton, the prolific genius who wrote “Thriller,” passed away, I read an article in the New York Post, claiming that Temperton had initially suggested Elvira to record the spooky spoken-word segment of the song. Instead, producer Quincy Jones decided to hire his wife’s friend’s husband, who just happened to be Vincent Price. Well, I guess if I had to lose out to someone, my idol would be my first choice. But I still have to wonder sometimes how “Thriller” would have changed the trajectory of my career.

Becoming famous was quite a rush, but it wasn’t all champagne and limousines. Don’t get me wrong, being invited to Hollywood parties and premieres, hanging with other celebs, offers of all the cocaine I could snort, and having everyone make a big fuss over me was fun. But little by little the loss of privacy crept in and I began to feel overwhelmed. I went from a “no one” to a “someone” so quickly it made my head spin.

I received bags and bags of fan mail, which I loved reading and did my best to personally respond to. There were flattering and moving letters from adults and children alike. As you might expect, there were also tons of letters from every branch of the military, from bikers, and from lots and lots of prison inmates. I once got a Christmas card signed by dozens of prisoners from the Chino State Prison in California and, on the same day, received a card signed by dozens of the men who put them there, the Los Angeles Police Department. There were even fan letters from clergymen. Yep, at one time or another I got fan letters from someone in almost every branch of the religious establishment, including Catholic priests, Jewish rabbis, monks, preachers of every denomination, and a lovely card from a convent signed by each and every one of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Among the overwhelmingly kind, funny, sad, interesting letters were always a few creepy and slightly disturbing ones, too. Like photos of men you would never want to see naked. One went beyond that, however, making threats and describing, in detail, violent things he’d like to do to me. He followed me from appearance to appearance, sent threatening letters to my husband, and often planted himself outside the post office where we picked up the fan mail. We reported him to the LAPD’s stalking unit, and that’s the point at which alarms were installed in our house, our two rottweilers were guard-trained, and our street number was painted on the roof so the police could spot our house from the air in an emergency.

At the same time, my family was in turmoil. My sisters, Melody and Robin, who’d had drug and alcohol issues since their teens, were descending deeper into their addictions. I’d loaned them money time and time again and begged them to enter rehab on my dime, but nothing seemed to help. The few times they did agree to go to rehab, they stayed for only a short time and then relapsed. As anyone who’s had a friend or relative with addiction issues knows, there’s little you can do to help if the person isn’t willing to help themselves. Drugs and alcohol would plague Melody and Robin their whole lives, and they both spent time in jail and on the streets, with all the horror that entails.

As if that wasn’t depressing enough, the AIDS epidemic was just beginning to rear its ugly head. The first time I heard anything about the deadly virus was when I stopped by a local bar on Hollywood’s Eastside to see my friend David Meyer. David was a successful photographer who had shot the photo spread and cover of Bill Cable in Playgirl magazine years before. He also co-owned a bar, so I always knew where to find him.

“David’s not here today?” I asked the substitute bartender.

“No. Out sick. Pneumonia.”

I was shocked. I’d seen him just a week before and he was fine.

“Pneumonia? You’re kidding, right?” I said. “Did he have a cold?”

“Nope. He just got sick. Said he’d be back in by next weekend.”

I left, concerned but not freaked out. I’d heard that Joey Arias’s friend Klaus Nomi had recently come down with pneumonia, too, and decided it must just be going around. I returned to the bar the following weekend hoping to catch David, and from the look on his co-owner’s face I immediately knew something was very wrong. His voice breaking, he said, “David died.” Nothing could have prepared me for that response. What the hell? He was a healthy, fit, young guy. Things like that didn’t happen.

Over the next few weeks, I began hearing rumors about the new “gay pneumonia.” Then people started talking about something they called “gay cancer,” but I was sure someone must be working on a pill or a vaccine to take care of it. I just prayed to God that no one else I knew would get sick before a cure was found. The occasional news report or a story from a friend about another man dying of a mysterious virus struck terror into my heart, not only for my friends, but for myself, too.

In the meantime, not a day went by that I didn’t see or talk to Robert Redding. Then one day he called to tell me he had shingles. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach because I’d heard that shingles was one of the many diseases that people with HIV were getting. I accompanied Robert to the hospital to get some medication and the doctor on duty suggested he have a blood test. It confirmed what I already suspected: Robert had AIDS.

His brother, Dan, Mark, I, and all Robert’s friends leapt into action, calling every person we knew in the medical profession and reading every bit of information we could lay our hands on for any news of something, anything, that might help. Robert tried everything possible to boost his immune system—vitamins, herbal tonics, special diets—vowing he’d beat this thing. But over the next months, he went from a strapping six-foot-four-inch muscular hunk to a dried-up shell of a man, weighing almost half his normal weight. When he was treated for one disease, another would pop up—Crohn’s, Bell’s palsy, Kaposi’s sarcoma, and on and on. He was now spending more time in the hospital than at home, and it left me feeling desperately helpless and scared. It wasn’t bad enough that Robert already felt like a pariah because of his disease, but most nurses and doctors were afraid of treating patients with this new, baffling virus and wore something akin to a hazmat suit when they entered his room. Some just flat-out refused to treat him. When I visited him in the hospital, all I could do was crawl into bed with him, hold him, and do my best to make up for them. I kept my “happy face” on when I was with him, but the pressure of keeping my emotions inside led me to go home every night, pour myself a drink or two—or three—and cry myself to sleep.

As a young, previously healthy man and your typical starving artist, Robert had no insurance, so it was up to his friends and family to do what we could to set him up with various AIDS services, which helped financially by paying a portion of his medical bills and keeping a roof over his head.

Mark and I offered to throw a fundraiser at our home to raise money to pay some of his mounting bills. Robert was such a talented genius in so many areas—art, music, theater—that he had many well-known and affluent friends who loved him, including writer Christopher Isherwood and his partner, artist Don Bachardy, director Randal Kleiser, and singer/songwriter Brenda Russell, who were all graciously willing to help.

On a warm August afternoon, I was in my backyard planting flowers in pots in preparation for the benefit that night, when I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks. An overwhelming sense of Robert’s presence surrounded me. At the risk of sounding too “woo-woo,” I gazed up at the sky and smiled, a warm, loving feeling enveloping me. I was snapped back to reality when the kitchen phone rang. It was Robert’s younger brother, Dan, calling to say that Robert had just passed away. Even though I knew how ill he was, I wasn’t prepared for the news. All this time I kept hoping against hope that something would come along and save him. The party became a wake, and one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was greet each of his friends at the door with the heartbreaking news of Robert’s death.

I fell into a deep depression after Robert was gone. He was so much a part of my life, and of Elvira, that I really didn’t know what I was going to do without him. It was a dark time. The AIDS epidemic kept growing and growing, with no end in sight. I still kept in touch with all the guys from Mama’s Boys and was shaken and deeply saddened to learn that first John Palmer, then Jim Raitt, then Bobby Howland, were dying. I heard that Buddy Vest, my crush from my Las Vegas days, had passed, and my first serious boyfriend, Matt Vernon, was sick. Robert’s brother Dan, who was also an ex-boyfriend and someone I’d been close to for years, discovered he had AIDS and died by suicide, and my gorgeous, talented friend and “Halloween Haunt” choreographer, Alan DeWames, became ill and soon succumbed. With my dating history, it was nothing short of a miracle that I somehow escaped the virus.

Every few days, I crossed off another name in my address book. This disease was so horrific that it’s impossible to describe the tragic loss and seething rage I felt seeing so many friends’ and loved ones’ young lives cut short.

As time went on, my sisters and the AIDS crisis, in combination with my newfound fame, began to take its toll. My own drinking increased and I began to use cocaine more and more frequently to get “up” for appearances. I gradually became afraid to leave my house. For the first and only time in my life, I started having panic attacks. I developed what, in hindsight, I believe was agoraphobia. I became extremely paranoid, and if I had to go somewhere, I kept my eyes glued to the rearview mirror, sure that someone was following me.

The breaking point came one day as I was grocery shopping at the local Mayfair Market. Someone was following me; I was sure of it. No matter what aisle I turned down, I caught a glimpse of a man prowling around each corner. By the time I reached the checkout counter my heart was pounding so hard I became dizzy and was short of breath. The last thing I remember was the cashier saying, “Miss? Are you all right?” before waking up on the floor with paramedics hovering over me.

This was the cue that I needed help. For the first time, I began seeing a therapist regularly and keeping medication with me in case of another panic attack. Over the next year I learned to cope with the anxiety, curbed my alcohol consumption, and cut the drugs out altogether.

The TV offers kept coming in. In 1984 I did my first episode of The Fall Guy with Lee Majors and guest stars John Carradine and his three sons, David, Robert, and Keith; and a second one a year later with Chris Humphreys and Vincent Schiavelli. That same year I was asked to do an episode of Bloopers & Practical Jokes, hosted by Ed McMahon and Dick Clark, and my third appearance on The Tonight Show, this time with Joan Rivers as host.

On a plane back from Florida, where I’d been hired to lead the “Parade of Villains” at Walt Disney World, I happened to sit directly behind the legendary comedian Bob Hope. Summoning all my nerve, I introduced myself, letting him know what an honor it was to meet him. Of course, I was familiar with Mr. Hope’s work, having seen him in films and on TV my entire life, so I was a bit intimidated. He was very polite and gracious, but when I explained that I played the character Elvira, his face registered a blank. Suddenly his wife, Dolores, piped up: “My sister and I are big fans!” She elbowed her hubby and decreed, “Bob, you need to have Elvira on your next special.” Mr. Hope, in perfect-husband mode, smiled, nodded, and said, “Yes, darling,” and I assumed that would be the end of it. But a week later I got a call from his production company asking me to be on the first of two Bob Hope Specials I would appear in.

In 1984, Cheech Marin, who had become a friend since my appearance in Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie, featured Elvira in the music video for his popular novelty song “Born in East LA.” That same year the home-video series I hosted, ThrillerVideo, was released and sold more than 200,000 copies, and Elvira Day was declared in Atlanta, Georgia. I even became a figure in LA’s Movieland Wax Museum. Elvira was on a roll!

Then in 1986, in a game-changing move for Elvira, Mark and Eric landed a deal to syndicate Movie Macabre. Our little local TV show expanded to the national television market, making Elvira the first horror host ever to be televised throughout the US. That year we also produced and hosted our second MTV special, “Elvira in Salem,” and Elvira appeared as a comic-book character for the first time in twelve issues of Elvira’s House of Mystery from DC comics. The show was still taped at KHJ, so of course had the low-budget look of being shot in somebody’s basement, which I believe endeared Elvira to fans across the country all the more. Viewers in each town assumed Elvira was their own local horror host. After all, how could a show made in Hollywood look so incredibly cheesy? Despite the occasional complaints about my cleavage, our biggest audience was in the Bible Belt. Figures, right?

When the station manager made a rare appearance on set, we always knew it wasn’t to deliver good news.

“You’re going to have to do something about that neckline,” Walt would intone. “We got another complaint about the cleavage.”

“Oh, right! No problemo!” I’d reply. I wouldn’t do anything to change it and the following week he’d be back.

“Did you fix the dress?”

“Yep, all good!”

And that was the end of that until the next complaint.

After a billboard went up in one Southern city featuring Elvira seductively sprawled across it, the local television station that had sponsored it received a dozen complaints, so they slapped a black “censored” banner across the offending body parts and then received hundreds of complaints.