11 Questions With Elvira

1. Your story reads like a movie – a girl from Kansas runs away to Vegas and becomes the youngest showgirl in the city’s history. Did it really happen that way?

CP: It happened exactly that way. I was born in Manhatten, Kan., because the town I lived in, Randolph, was 25 miles away and didn’t have a hospital – there were only 250 people. My family later moved to Colorado, and when I was 14, I started go-go dancing. Now, I explain to people that go-go dancing back in those days was actually little fringy dresses and white go-go boots – not what they call go-go dancing today – so it wasn’t quite that disgusting for a 14-year-old to be doing it. But I saw the movie Viva Las Vegas with Elvis Presley and Ann-Margaret, and at 14, I began obsessing on that movie and decided I had to go to Vegas. I had to be a showgirl – I actually wanted to be the character Ann Margaret was playing. And by the time I was 17, I was in Las Vegas, I was a showgirl at a show at the Dunes called “Vive Les Girls,” met Ann-Margaret and went out on a date with Elvis. So that entire movie became completely true for me. I got the job because I was traveling with my parents on a vacation to California on spring break when I was a senior in high school and went to see a show with my mom and dad, dressed up to look really sophisticated because I was underage, and I was asked by the doorman there if I would like to be a showgirl – I was shocked – and I said yes. I was taken to the stage manager, next thing I was taken to the producer who asked if I would audition the next day and my parents stayed one extra night, I auditioned and they asked if I wanted to do the job. I had to get a waiver from my parents that said I would not enter the casino, I couldn’t gamble, couldn’t drink and had to come and go through the back door.

2. You went on a date with Elvis?

CP: I don’t know if I would call it a date, but he was having a party and one of the showgirls in my show had been dating his road manager Joe Esposito, and she was invited to go to a party at Elvis’ suite. I begged and pleaded and cried and screamed for her to take me along. Elvis had also come and seen our show – it was funny because they cleared out the entire showroom, and it was only him and his entourage – and he remembered me from the show. Obviously, I was quite a bit younger than any of the other girls there . . . he just locked onto me, and we spent the entire evening together, clear until the next day – until probably about seven in the morning – talking, playing the piano, singing . . . a little bit of kissing and stuff . . . but it was amazing. And he convinced me that I should get out of Vegas, stop being a showgirl and set my sights higher – that I had a good voice, he said, and I should maybe pursue a career in singing instead of being a showgirl. Coming from him, I took his advice. If it had been anyone else, I might not have listened . . . and I went out the next day and started taking singing lessons. Just a month of two after that, I got a part singing in the show I was in and later went on to Europe and began singing in a band.

3. While you were in Europe, Federico Fellini cast you in his film Fellini's Roma. Did you realize how lucky you were to work with such a superstar in the film industry?

CP: I did! Because I was a huge Fellini fan. I couldn’t believe I was even seeing him and meeting him, much less being put in one of his movies. It was literally myself and one of the other showgirls from my Vegas show, who was over in Europe. She was Italian, and I went to visit her. We were walking through Rome, came upon a film crew shooting and a guy comes running over named Stuart Birnbaum – I’ll never forget it – and he had made a college documentary about showgirls in which he had included both my friend and I a few years before, and he was now a student director with Fellini. He said, “I’m working on this film Roma, do you want to meet Mr. Fellini? And we were like “Oh my god!” So, he introduced us, and Fellini said to me that I looked just like his wife when she was a young girl. He couldn’t get over the resemblance. He was freaking out about it and says, “I’ll put you in the film! Would you like to work in the film?” Even though I had a very small part, I worked on the film for 30 days. I played a college student in a riot, one of the girls in a motorcycle gang that keeps going around all the notable places in Rome and I played a hooker in a bordello. He just kind of kept me on there, working on the film, and I got to be on [set] everyday and working with everybody and meeting a lot of the interesting people. I got to have lunch at Cinecitta, which is a big film studio in Rome, with Tony Curtis, Sean Connery – oh my god, at one table – Michael Cain and Federico Fellini . . . It was just amazing. It was quite magical.

4. How did you become the first female to twirl tassels on national television?

CP: Yeah, that was interesting. It was actually one of my little known talents. I practiced when I was a kid, 14, and working in the go-go club – it was actually called Club A-Go-Go in Colorado Springs, Colo. A girl came to work there. I think her name was something like Suzie Summers . . . and she was just this incredible tassel twirler, and she did it on a bra. I had seen it one time before on just pasties, but she was able to do it just wearing a bra. I asked her to show me how to do it, and she did and I practiced morning, noon and night in front of a mirror to learn how to twirl tassels. When all the other kids in eighth grade were practicing piano everyday, I was practicing how to twirl tassels. Isn’t that unbelievable? And I really got it down. I could do it left to right and both going inside and both going outside. I could do it with a backspin. I even did it once with them on fire. I learned this technique from this other old time stripper where you soak the things in lighter fluid stuff, and you put this oil on your stomach and your chest so you don’t burn yourself to death and get them flaming. How do you like that? (Laughs) Ah yes . . . The reason I was on TV, it was my movie, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, which was released in ’89. At the end of the movie, I twirl tassels for the big finale. People always think there are little motors in my bra or something, but that’s just me doing it. And it aired on television, on NBC . . . strangely, they cut so many things out of the movie, but they did not cut that, and so it was really bizarre. It aired even before the most famous other tassel-twirling scene in a film, which is from The Graduate – even though the film is much older than my film, it had still never aired on television. So, don’t ask me why that was suddenly on TV. We couldn’t believe it. They cut out things in the movie that were so non-offensive and then it was “hello!” Anyway.

5. Who created the Elvira character?

CP: Well, it was kind of an accident more than a creation. I began on a local channel here in Hollywood. I was actress struggling in town – struggling to get parts – and I was in a comedy group called the Groundlings. Some of the people who were in there with me at the time were Paul Reubens who plays Pee-Wee Herman and the late Phil Hartman from “Saturday Night Live.” We were in this comedy group and a friend of mine called up and said that she had a friend who worked at the local station and the local horror host, Seymour, had passed away and they were looking to fill his shoes and looking for a new horror host. And she said that she knew this guy, and he had decided that he wanted to have a woman [host] and he wanted her to be kind of funny and kind of sexy. And she told him she knew the perfect person for him. So he came down and saw me perform at the Groundlings, where I was every weekend. And I did sort of a bimbo-y, redheaded, ditzy, valley girl character – who was an actress – in a couple of sketches there. And he really liked the character, so I went in for the audition. I got the audition after several times of going in and performing . . . so I got the part, amazingly enough, looking like myself. Then he told me to do the character I was doing, but to come up with some kind of wacky outfit. I called one of my very closest friends at the time, who was an artist and he designed clothing . . . an amazing guy, and I just asked him, “What should I look like? I’m supposed to look spooky, and they tell me I have to have black hair and I have to have a black dress.” And he designed the entire outfit. He did the hair after his favorite singer in the world, Ronnie Spector . . . he called the hairdo a ‘knowledge bump.’ He said that’s the actual name of it; it’s not a beehive, it’s a knowledge bump. He got the make-up out of the Kabuki make-up that he had. And then he just made the dress as form-fitting as humanely possible. Even though the character didn’t go with the look at all, that’s what created the lucky accident of a unique character. Because I am sure I had been told to go in and act as a horror host, I would have been acting a lot different.

6. Did you ever think Elvira would evolve into a pop culture icon?

CP: No, I didn’t even there would be a second show! It was so cheesy and bad . . . everything was sort of so low-rent that I thought it was probably a one-off thing. Twenty-five years later, I am amazed. I amaze myself. (Laughs) It’s shocking. I think Elvira has become the personification of Halloween, or so attached to Halloween that that’s why the character keeps coming back, year after year. Because whenever Halloween comes back, Elvira is around.

7. Has Halloween ever been the same way for you ever since?

CP: No, it hasn’t! And I had some pretty wacky Halloweens even before Elvira. I was the biggest Halloween party freak. You could just imagine the costumes that I would get up for Halloween. Partially, because my mother ran a costume shop – my mother and my aunt – in Colorado. And I always had the best damn costumes of anybody, every Halloween, from the time I was in second grade on. So, I was just like the Halloween queen already, and the only bad part about becoming Elvira is I never get to go to the Halloween parties and have fun anymore – I’m always working! I always have to wear the same costume!

So, you’ve never worn any other costume on Halloween since Elvira?

CP: No. Simple one-word answer: no. That was the end of Halloween for me. I work on Halloween – I do my best to have fun as much as I can when I work – and I always wear the same outfit. I’d love to wear something different on Halloween. I know what I’d wear too – some kind of muumuu with flip-flops, something comfortable. 

8. What are your current projects?

CP: The major one is my “Movie Macabre” DVDs, the original show that I did starting in 1981 until 1987. That is the thrill show that aired on the local channel, here in L.A., and all around the country, and it is the first time on DVD, in 25 years, ever. So that is really cool. I’ve been trying to get this together, really, for 25 years and haven’t been able to because of the availability of the movies. So finally, we were able to snag six movies and put my original wrap-arounds on them. They are available through Elvira.com and in the finer stores everywhere – they’re in Wal-mart, they’re on Amazon – lots of ways to get them. I recommend Elvira.com – for all your Halloween needs. (Laughs) Also, my costume is out this year, and it is always a big seller. I have a really nice, new great-fitting costume, and it even comes in plus sizes this year – which is very popular with the guys! I’m not kidding, I get more orders for plus sizes for guys than almost anything else . . . This Halloween is an odd appearance. I don’t know if you know, but I didn’t know about this – NASCAR happens to be the sport that has the biggest ratings and makes the most money of any sport in the United States . . . and I’ve been asked to host a Halloween version of the NASCAR race from Memphis, which is so cool because I’ll get to go to Graceland and visit Elvis . . . Halloween this year, because it falls on a Tuesday – you know, when it falls on a weekday it’s always kind of celebrated on the Saturday before –the 28^th is really going to be the big day, and I’ll be on a NBC-televised NASCAR race, hosting the race. Isn’t that bizarre? And I’m doing several different appearances after that at nightclubs in Canada in New York City and at a thriller convention – which is one of the biggest in the country – so appearances all around that general part of the United States . . . while I’m on big role here plugging everything, I was going to just mention all this month on Comcast, I have a series of movies called Something Weird that you can get on demand. And they are the really old, bizarre, schlocky, weird movies and I’m doing new wrap-arounds – new hosting – for them that I just filmed a couple of months ago. I’ll also be appearing on the “Girls Next Door,” at Hefner’s mansion – the Halloween episode. It was really funny.

9. You are also an animal activist. How did this cause become near and dear to you?

CP: Years ago, one of the members of PETA, Dan Matthews, who is head of PR for PETA and just a brilliant guy and a good friend now, came to me because he had heard about Elvira and just started telling me about the plight of animals in all kinds of different arenas – factory farming and fur trade and eww, just on and on – and he sort of opened my eyes to that and educated me to the real truth of what goes on in those trades. And once I knew that, being a big animal lover, there was no way I could continue on doing the things I was doing like eating meat or wearing fur. I just couldn’t do it anymore because I love animals too much. It was really PETA who educated me and brought me in to do various campaigns for them over the years. I still do things for them – and for a lot of other animal charities. I rescue dogs – I rescued my Rottweiler, and I rescue cats. And I’m a big advocate of neutering and spaying, and I just do what I can to help animals because I just love them.

10. Is the Oakridge Boys’ “Elvira” really about you?

CP: You know, it was very funny, I swear that song came out simultaneously with my show – it came out the week that my show aired. They did not write it about me, and it was nothing to do with me having the name Elvira because of them. It was just an honest coincidence. But since then, I’ve spoken to the Oakridge Boys and they said, “Oh, we just tell everybody we wrote it about you.” And I go, “Yeah, I just tell everybody it was written about me.” (Laughs) But it was just a bizarre coincidence. It came out the same week, and people just assume that it is about me, and I’m fine with that. And so are they – the Oakridge Boys. We’re all happy.

11. You’ve played Elvira for 25 years now. Will she ever die?

CP: Well, interesting question because I go back and forth on that all the time. But I don’t think Elvira will ever die, even if I do. I think the character has become so ingrained in pop culture and the culture of Halloween that just like Santa Claus, she’ll go on being Elvira whether it’s in animation form, or another actress playing Elvira in a movie just like several actors have played Batman. There is so much make-up and costume involved that I swear your dog could played me and nobody would know the difference. So, that’s one of the really good things about it. And another thing is I’m also doing a reality show in which I will not pick the next Elvira, but I will pick another Elvira. It’s like I’m looking for a few good Elviras, and we’re going to go all over the country looking for girls – and men – who want to play Elvira. They will audition, and I’ll have to put them through a series of grueling Elvira tests, see which one will come out on top and that person will be given a year’s contract to travel around the country and appear at malls, taking pictures with people for Halloween, autograph sessions, appearing at haunted houses and the various jobs I’m unable to do because there’s only one of me! I’m kind of going in the direction that Santa Claus went – there are hundreds and hundreds of Santas out there, but I hate to tell you, they are not the real one.