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September 18, 2025

Page 1

September 18, 2025

Volume 55 - No. 38

MORE ADVENTURES

IN SHOW BUSINESS! By Dawna Kaufmann Recently I was asked to participate in a documentary that’s being made about my friend, Cassandra Peterson, who most folks know best as “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark” from TV and films. My observations dealt with her early years and the origins of her comic character, but her career and life are so much bigger than that. Since I don’t know what will be included when they edit, here are the stories I told on camera.

The program should air somewhere early next year, so keep your eyes open. Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert was my first job in TV variety programming, a 90-minute weekly network series that featured the biggest bands of the era, performing live on tape, plus up-and-coming standup comics. The series had been on since 1973, but I came on board in 1978, for its last couple years. I was the receptionist. One day the

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boss told me another person was joining the staff, so I’d have someone I could order around. In comes Cassandra Peterson, an astonishingly beautiful gal, with natural red hair, giant blue eyes, and a body so perfect Michelangelo would have begged to sculpt her. In those days the phone was a call director, with about 20 lines. A call would come in, I’d ask who they wanted to talk to, put them on hold, and tell the party they called to pick up whatever line was flashing. Easy. I told

Cassandra to take over the phones while I did some Xeroxing. I soon saw that she was hanging up on all the callers, unable to put the calls on hold and connect them to whomever. So, I handed her a pile of scripts and said I needed 30 collated copies. She had no idea what I meant. I first learned office work when I was a fetus, so I couldn’t understand why she didn’t know these basic skills. She said she’d been doing other things -- she had been the youngest topless showgirl

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September 18, 2025 by The Paper - Issuu