In the early days of television, when horror movies were often campy by nature, actress Maila Nurmi created the character Vampira, a glamorous ghoul who as hostess of late-night fright films in the 1950s layered on her own brand of camp.
Vampira played with her pet tarantula, gave gruesome recipes for vampire cocktails and bathed in a boiling caldron. With a knack for the double- entendre and the requisite blood-chilling scream, Vampira was a hit.
The character won Nurmi short-lived fame and a dedicated cult following. Nurmi claimed that Vampira also was the uncredited inspiration for later ghoulish yet glamorous female characters in film and television, including Elvira.
Nurmi, who appeared in director Edward D. Wood Jr.'s 1959 film "Plan 9 From Outer Space," was found dead Jan. 10 in her Hollywood home. The cause of death was still being investigated, said Lt. Fred Corral of the Los Angeles County coroner's office.
Nurmi was believed to be 85, although sources offer conflicting dates of birth.
Born Maila Syrjaniemi in Finland, Nurmi immigrated to the United States when she was a toddler. By age 17, she had dropped her surname and taken on that of her famous uncle Paavo Nurmi, a world-class runner known as the "Flying Finn." In her teens, she moved to New York, and then to Los Angeles, to pursue a career in acting.
Little came of Nurmi's efforts to land conventional leading roles in theater or on screen. The unconventional came calling in 1953 after Nurmi attended a Hollywood masquerade ball dressed as the ghoul of Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons.
"I bound my bosoms so that I was flat-chested," Nurmi said, "and I got a wig, and painted my body a kind of a mauve white pancake with a little lavender powder so that I looked as though I'd been entombed."
Nurmi's costume was judged the best at the ball, according to an article posted last week on her website, vampirasattic.com. Months later, a KABC-TV Channel 7 producer tracked her down and offered her work as hostess of a late-night horror show.
In creating Vampira, Nurmi said she went beyond the Addams cartoon, developing an alter ego influenced by beatnik culture and her experiences as a child of the Depression.
Vampira wore a low-cut, tattered black dress that showed off her impossibly small waist (courtesy of a waist cincher) and displayed more cleavage than was common for the day. With her long nails and dark, dramatically arched eyebrows, watching Vampira was "a release for people."
