Maila Nurmi, the woman who brought life to the pop culture icon Vampira, passed away on January 10 ironically "of natural causes" at the age of 86.  Inspired by Charles Addams' cartoon characters from "The New Yorker" magazine, Nurmi’s Vampira became TV's first horror host, debuting to local Los Angeles audiences in 1950s late-night television.  But in a short period of time, the character would become infamous.   Her image today can be placed beside well-known horror icons Dracula and Frankenstein and be identified.  An amazing feat, since episodes of her TV show have long been destroyed and her most famous movie appearance was in Ed Wood’s “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”

Maila was born Maila Syrjaniemi on December 21, 1921 in Petsamo, Finland.   At age 2, she moved with her family to Ashtabula, Ohio, which was one of the largest Finnish communities in the U.S.  At age 17, she moved out to find fame and fortune. She adopted the simpler surname of a distant uncle, world record distance runner Paavo Nurmi.  Bouncing from Los Angeles to New York, she became a pin-up model for photographers Alberto Vargas and Man Ray and an exotic dancer.

In 1944, she was cast in two of producer Michael Todd’s New York productions:  Mae West’s risqué Broadway sensation, “Catherine was Great”, and the avant-garde off-Broadway “Spook Scandals.”  It was the “closed after one-night” appearance in “Spook Scandals” that caught famed director Howard Hawks’ eye.  Hawks brought Nurmi back to Los Angeles hoping to groom her into his next Lauren Bacall.  The vehicle would be an adaptation of a 1942 violent gothic horror novel, “Dreadful Hollow.” Hawk’s buddy, William Faulkner, wrote the screenplay but the movie was never produced.  (The actual script has been discovered by Faulkner’s daughter, Jill, and is now once again being considered for production).  Meanwhile, Nurmi’s first on-screen appearance would be a mere uncredited role in a 1947 Deborah Kerr movie “If Winter Comes.”    

Nurmi’s first husband was Dean Riesner. Riesner was a former child-actor (Dinky Dean) who had worked with Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan.  He had also worked with silent film director Hunt Stromberg, whose son would be instrumental in giving Nurmi her taste of infamy.  Attending a costume ball in 1954, Nurmi donned an outfit a la Morticia Addams. (The actual name Morticia was not given to the character until the 1964 TV series).  Her pale make-up, long black wig, carefully slit black dress, and goth persona won her first prize-- and the attention of Stromberg’s son, Hunt Jr., who was also attending the ball and was now a producer at Los Angeles local TV station KABC.  

Stromberg came up with the idea of having Nurmi's gothically provocative creature host his Saturday night horror features.   Adding a ten-inch cigarette holder, threateningly long fingernails, a torn slinky black dress that showed off her reported 38-17-36 measurements, Nurmi transformed into Vampira (her husband gave her the moniker). On Friday April 30, 1954 a preview show “Dig Me Up Later Vampira” debuted the character to L.A. audiences and subsequently the world.  She then appeared every Saturday night for a year drinking bubbling brews from her poison bar, playing with pet spider Rollo, and spewing double entendre jokes and puns while introducing the likes of “Devil Bat’s Daughter” or  “King of the Zombies.”  

The show was an immediate hit.   Her deadpan delivery of irreverent humor melded perfectly with the low budget films she was hosting.  
 
Even though it was a local show, Vampira was written about in Life, Newsweek and other major magazines. She was nominated for an Emmy award in 1954 as “most outstanding female personality.”   She appeared on the Red Skelton and Ed Sullivan shows.  She became a favorite of both Liberace and James Dean—appearing in Liberace’s TV program and Las Vegas act and setting off tabloid rumors with Dean.  (Dean was fascinated with her because of his interest in the occult).    

Her tenure at KABC however lasted only a year. When she refused to give up the rights to her character, she took her act to another local station KHJ-TV in 1956 for a short run.  Shortly thereafter Universal released a collection of old horror movies for syndication under “Shock Theatre” where local stations could have their own ghoul host the Saturday Night movie series.  A new TV genre had been born.  It has continued to this day, launching hundreds of macabre hosts from Vampira look-alikes, to gravediggers, to Frankenstein monsters.  The most famous of hosts is Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, whom Nurmi accused of ripping off her shtick in the mid-80s.  

In the late 50s, Nurmi was cast in an Ed Wood movie under the working title of “Grave Robbers from Outer Space.”  

Wood had been working on the film since 1956, wanting to use the last footage of the recently deceased Bela Lugosi.  Nurmi was hired for one day at $200.  Appalled at the poor dialogue, she requested to not say anything.  Her mute but over-the-top 10-minute performance as Bela Lugosi’s dead (but un-dead) wife walking through a make-shift cemetery of cardboard gravestones and fake brush has preserved the image of the classic icon of Vampira.  It will also ensure her permanent link to Ed Wood for better or worse.  

By the time the newly named “Plan 9 from Outer Space” was released in 1959, Vampira was starting to appear in low budget features.  1959/1960 include uncredited performances in “Too Much, Too Soon” and “I Pass for White.”  She also appeared in two campy Mamie Van Doren flicks (her cohort from modeling days)---“The Beat Generation” and “Sex Kittens Go to College.”  Her last appearance of that era was in 1962’s “The Magic Sword” with Gary Lockwood and Basil Rathbone.  It was a dual role—playing a hag and then a sorceress.  

Amidst claims that she was being blacklisted, Nurmi retired from show business becoming an animal activist.  By the end of the 1970s, Vampira was only slightly remembered in rare stills and people’s remote memories.  All known episodes of Vampira’s late night movie show had been destroyed.  But the 1980s would mark her resurgence from an unlikely source.  A 1980 book "The Golden Turkey Awards” caught on in the media.  “Plan 9 from Outer Space" was crowned Golden Turkey of all-time.  Ed Wood and everything associated with “Plan 9” gradually seeped into the nation’s consciousness. Re-issues of the movie were called for and the images of Vampira became more popular than ever before.

But the reclusive Maira Nurmi rarely gave interviews.  In 1994, Lisa Marie brilliantly portrayed Vampira in the Tim Burton classic, “Ed Wood.”  Meanwhile, the character of Vampira was referred to in film, TV, and music.  Halloween masks were made in the Vampira image.  

In 1995, Nurmi appeared in a Finnish documentary, “About Death, Sex, and Taxes.”  In 1998, she finally winked to Ed Wood himself with a cameo appearance in “I Woke Up Early the Day I Died”, a resurrected script which was written by Ed Wood in the 1950s.   Nurmi’s final celluloid appearance was in 2006, in her own documentary, “Vampira.”  Nurmi died in her sleep, but Vampira lives on.  This cultural icon is truly undead.