Vampira = Dead
Maila Elizabeth Nurmi, whose “Vampira” TV persona pioneered the spooky-yet-sexy Goth aesthetic, has died at her Hollywood home. She was 85-years-old. Nurmi’s Vampira character paved the way for countless other horror-show hosts.
Nurmi created her ‘Vampira’ character — reminiscent of Charles Addams’ spooky New Yorker cartoons — to host horror movie broadcasts on KABC TV in Los Angeles in 1954. With darkly mascaraed eyes and blood-red lipstick, Nurmi appeared each week in her revealing black dress and slinky fishnets to introduce such films as “Revenge of the Zombies” and “Devil Bat’s Daughter.”
“The Vampira Show” was canceled after about a year on the air, but Nurmi remained a cult figure among B-movie buffs and is thought to have inspired the vampish ‘Morticia Addams’ character on “The Addams Family,” which premiered about 10 years later.
In 1989, Nurmi lost a $10 million lawsuit that contended Cassandra Peterson’s late-night horror hostess ‘Elvira’ was a rip-off of her character.
“There is no Elvira. There’s only a pirated Vampira…. Cassandra Peterson slavishly copied my product and made a fortune. America has been duped.”
Among Nurmi’s scattered film appearances following her TV career was a cameo in Ed Wood’s 1959 cult classic, “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” Nurmi was played by Lisa Marie in “Ed Wood,” Tim Burton’s 1994 tribute to the B-movie director.
Nurmi was born Maila Elizabeth Syrjaniemi in Finland on December 11, 1922, and emigrated with her family to Ohio. In her late teens she went to New York, where she fell in with a clique of actors and artists and moved with them to Hollywood to seek a film career. She worked as a chorus girl and model before appearing as Vampira.
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