By Greg Goodsell
"The grief of his wife's death became greater and greater agony. The home they had so long shared together became a tomb. A sweet memory of her joyous living. The sky, to which she had once looked, was now only a covering for her dead body. The ever-beautiful flowers she had planted with her own hand became nothing more than the lost roses of her cheeks. Confused by his great loss, the old man left that home, never to return again."
… From Plan 9 from Outer Space
An original oil painting of Vampira from her role in Plan 9 from Outer Space hangs in a prominent place in my living room. Three flying saucers flank the ghoulish matron, as she rises from a misty graveyard of tumbledown gravestones against a miasmic background of violet and blue smoke. Sporting her trademark long black hair, chalk white skin and wasp waist cinched in a clinging black dress, Vampira stares into the void with a "come hither" look, her long red fingernails threatening to clutch the unwary. The painting, by Woody Welch, along with its customized metal frame cost me in excess of $300, of which its inspiration, Maila Nurmi -- who passed away on January 10 at the ripe age of 87 -- was not paid a cent.
I have a feeling that Maila wouldn't have minded. The grand old dame that I had met at numerous horror conventions over the years had long made peace with her scandalous – and some would say highly tragic past, and was just happy that people remembered this spry octogenarian. Born on December 21, 1921, Nurmi immigrated with her parents to the United States from her native Finland at a very young age. Blonde and very pretty, she pursued a career in acting and modeling, and for a short while was Mae West's understudy on Broadway. In Hollywood, she caught the eye of a local talent scout when she attended a costume ball dressed as "glamour ghoul" Morticia Addams from Charles Addams' classic comic strips in the New Yorker magazine. Paid the princely sum of $75 a week, Nurmi hosted The Vampira Show on KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles, which ran Saturday nights at midnight from 1954 to 1955. The only surviving footage from the program shows Nurmi walking towards the camera down a shadowy, cobwebbed hallway. In close-up Vampira lets out a blood curdling scream, then smiles warmly and says, "Screaming is so relaxing, don't you think?"
Whereas the other brunette sexual icon of the Fifties, Bettie Page traded on the inherent innocence of sex, Vampira served up the far headier cocktail of sex combined with death – something that struck a responsive chord in the staid, repressed Eisenhower era. Drawing international attention and fan adulation, Nurmi along with her TV show were canned after a single year. Unemployed and destitute, and living with her mother after the dissolution of her marriage opportunity came knocking in the person of director Edward D. Wood Jr.
The name of the project was Gravediggers from Outer Space, which certainly didn't make any sense as the gravediggers that do appear in the film are strictly terrestrial. The film became known as Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Nurmi wanted no part of it. After a Wood flunky came to her door with 200 one dollar bills as down payment for her role, she agreed to the part on the condition she wouldn't have to speak any of Wood's turgid purple dialogue.
As depicted in Tim Burton's 1994 biopic Ed Wood, Nurmi (played in the film by Burton's then-girlfriend Lisa Marie) hopped on a city bus in full Vampira makeup and costume to a woebegone studio in an alley.
"The graveyard set was only three feet wide. Wood told me to turn this way, turn that way and turn this way. My part took an entire fifteen minutes to shoot," Nurmi told this writer. "I was wearing my paper dress, and there was a tear up around my crotch area. I was wearing lacy panties, so it looked like something else. I said to myself at the time, 'Well, who's going to see this thing?' It turned out to be more than seventeen million people!" she said with a wry laugh. Plan 9 from Outer Space was voted by a wide majority of film fans as the Worst Film Ever Made, leading to endless revival screenings, cult appreciation and wide recognition, but not a penny for Nurmi.
Like her mythical namesake, Nurmi would be resurrected time and again by journalists seeking intimate details about Hollywood royalty – she was a good friend of actor James Dean, as well as her involvement with Tinseltown's deepest dregs, such as Wood and company. Nurmi would go on to unsuccessfully sue Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira for plagiarism in the Eighties. Seeing as she appropriated her Vampira character from equal parts of Chas Addams' Morticia, the Dragon Lady from the Terry and the Pirates comic strip, as well as the fetish cartoons and photos of John Willie, Nurmi really couldn't make any valid claims to "artistic theft!"
Just before she died, Nurmi consented to being the subject of the documentary Vampira the Movie. The film combines talking head interviews, rare archival footage and celebrity testimonials to her lasting impact on popular culture. Filmmaker Kevin Sean Michaels confided to me last year that Nurmi, now in her late Eighties, no longer left her seedy Hollywood apartment. While her life may have been steeped in disappointment and poverty, Nurmi remained bright and personable to end, very much aware of the lasting impact her Vampira character had on the worlds fashion and lifestyles. The next time you're at the mall, and you spot a girl wearing dead-white makeup, black clothes and a plunging neckline, you have this indomitable Finnish granny to thank ….