Elvira, mistress of the dark

From The Philadelphia Daily News:

IT TAKES Cassandra Peterson an hour and a half to transform herself into Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Beehive black wig. Plunging polyester knit gown and uplifting wire bra. Gobs of dark eyeliner and blood-red lipstick. Peterson has the routine down cold — she’s been doing it for 24 Halloweens, ever since a local Los Angeles TV station hired her to introduce a horror movie in 1981. She turned a $350-a-week hosting gig into a lucrative empire of syndication, live appearances, action figures and sexy apparel. snip In another sign of things to come, she never missed an episode of “The Twilight Zone” and had the hots for Vincent Price as a 10-year-old. “While other girls were playing with Barbies I was painting replicas of Dracula and Frankenstein with my Revell model kits,” she said. “When I look at it in retrospect, none of it was planned out but it must have all played in.”

Excellent article. It might seem odd to go from celebrating the light of Rosa Parks to the dark joy of Elvira, but that's The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire for you.