Maila Nurmi was the first goth. She was Elvira before that was even a name. She was used up, spit out and stomped all over by Hollywood. But she still continues to inspire.
When Maila Nurmi took to the TV airwaves in 1954 as the prototypal gothic scream queen Vampira, a national craze was set off.
She became a star, appearing in LIFE Magazine, running for Night Mayor of Hollywood, being used as the model for Maleficent in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty and being nominated for a Los Angeles area Emmy Award as Most Outstanding Female Personality in 1954. She lost to Lucille Ball. And as soon as fame came to her, it went away.
The name Maila Nurmi may not necessarily ring any bells even to devout followers of quirky pop culture phenomena but the name Vampira probably does. Whether you know her from her appearance in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space or just know the name from the Misfits song, while she may have passed on a few years ago the legend of Nurmi’s alter ego continues to grow. Enter filmmaker R. H. Greene who interviewed Nurmi quite extensively for a documentary he was making. They got to know one another in the process and out of those interviews was born Greene’s latest documentary, 2012’s Vampira And Me, a posthumous love letter of sorts that does a fantastic job of letting Vampira’s fans get to know the story behind the iconic TV horror hostess.
This R.H. Greene’s documentary is a testament
to Nurmi as a storyteller and personality
Click Here to Watch it FREE on TubiTV
A recreation of The Vampira Show from the mid 1950s,including Vampira Intro, Outro, the movie The Corpse Vanishes and vintage 1950s TV commercials . . .