VAMPIRA
SHE-DEVIL
AS VAMPIRA, ’50S TV HORROR HOST AND STAR OF PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, Maila Nurmi BECAME A GOTH ICON. A NEW BIOGRAPHY BY HER NIECE SANDRA NURMI USES EXTRACTS FROM MAILA’S WRITINGS TO DOCUMENT A REMARKABLE LIFE
GETTY
CREATING VAMPIRA
Maila Nurmi got her big break in TV via Hollywood’s “Bal Caribe”, an annual Halloween costume ball, in 1953. Her winning outfit drew inspiration from the same source that The Addams Family later did…
“There was a hugely successful show on at the time called The Websters. It was sort of a soap opera and I personally found it to be incredibly boring. But I thought maybe I could do a parody of them, have this weird family go about doing everyday, mundane things. Then I realised Charles Addams was already doing that in his cartoon The Homebodies, which was published in the New Yorker. So I thought, I’ll bring Charles Addams to television.”
Beating 2,000 other attendees to the prize of a portable radio, Nurmi also attracted the attention of Hunt Stromberg Jr, programme director of LA-area TV channel KABC…
He explained that the studio was looking for a host to introduce a line-up of late-night horror films. They were interested in the Charles Addams character she’d portrayed at the Bal Caribe.
Excited as she was, she was also curious as to who would portray the rest of Addams’s cartoon family. Stromberg’s answer came as a shock: “We only want you.” The proposed programme was really just an experiment tethered to a skimpy budget.
Maila asked if Addams would receive credit. Stromberg’s answer was clear. “No need to. These are horror films, not cartoons.” “Well then, I can’t possibly do it,” Maila said. “I can’t infringe upon Charles Addams’s creation.”
Stromberg wanted Maila. Badly. He asked her if she could change up the character.
“You could make her a vampire instead of a zombie.” Maila asked for two weeks. Stromberg gave her four days.
“I started by thinking what people said was inevitable, that being sex, death and taxes. Hunt wanted a vampire. So then I thought what about a sexy vampire? Addams’s flat-chested, barefoot mute certainly wasn’t that. I could be a sexy vampire pondering death in all sorts of crazy and urbane ways. The taxes? I’d leave those up to the Republicans.”