Here are some of Peterson’s self-learned tips for how to turn a fan-favorite character into an immortal fandom brand:
Own who you are
Back in 1981, Peterson said she viewed getting into the Elvira drag as a job, not a career. “I mean, I was a struggling actress!” she exclaims, thinking back on her early months lounging on the Mistress of the Dark’s red velvet couch. “I felt lucky to have a gig, and I always knew it could get canceled tomorrow.”
The first hint that she had stumbled onto something more than a $350-per-week acting gig came when she made her first in-character appearance at a podunk L.A. fan convention. Despite suffering from a bad case of the flu, she spent hours shaking hands and signing autographs for dozens of gawking admirers and walked away with $100—enough for Peterson and her then-husband and manager, Mark Pierson, to cover their monthly rent.
That was her lightbulb moment or, to put it in geekspeak, her George Lucas moment. Prior to the release of the original Star Wars in 1977, the filmmaker made a big bet that owning the film’s licensing and merchandise rights would be more valuable than simply accepting a director’s fee. That decision wound up being the Kyber crystal that powered Lucas’ resulting creative empire.
Returning home from that first convention appearance, Peterson felt a similar disturbance in the Force. “I said to [Mark]: ‘Wait a minute—we could actually make some money with this thing,’” she remembers.
With the help of talent manager Eric Gardner and lawyer Vance Van Petten, Peterson and Pierson set about acquiring Elvira away from KHJ, one piece at a time. “We would say, ‘Hey, can we make an Elvira T-shirt and sell it?’” Peterson explains. “They’d say, ‘No problem,’ and gave us the merchandising rights. Then we’d say, ‘What about a fan club?’ and the answer was, ‘Yeah, sure.’ We kept that up until we had all the rights.”
Peterson took ownership of Elvira just in time, too. By the end of the 1980s, KHJ had gone out of business, and her ambitions for the Mistress of the Dark would have disappeared in a puff of smoke.
