Los Angeles, Part II

Maila Nurmi died on January 10th of this year.

If you’re one of the vast multitudes who doesn’t recognize her name, it is my condescending, snobbish contention that you are not making the best of your time here on Earth, and really ought to make a bigger effort to find out what life actually has to offer, beyond talking on your cell phone about the dumbest crap imaginable, and shitty, corporate-manicured top-40 music.

So here’s a chance to learn: Maila Nurmi came very close to not having anyone remember who she was, but for a fateful decision to dress up like Charles Addams’ femme fatale character from his New Yorker cartoons, and attend choreographer Lester Horton's annual Bal Caribe Masquerade in 1953. It was here that TV producer Hunt Stromberg, Jr. saw the Finland-born beauty, and got the idea of having her host a late-night horror movie program. Maila (or her writer-husband Dean Riesner, depending on whose story you believe) christened the character Vampira, and the first episode of The Vampira Show aired on May 1st, 1954.

It is an accident of history that Maila Nurmi and Vampira will forever be associated with Ed Wood and 1959’s Plan 9 from Outer Space. Acting as one of TV's first horror hosts, and pioneering the sex-and-death look that is ubiquitous today, The Vampira Show actually brought Maila a lot of attention: Life, Newsweek, and TV Guide ran articles about her (despite the show only being aired in the Los Angeles area), and she was nominated for the Most Outstanding Female Personality emmy in 1954. This is what she should be remembered for, but the plug was pulled on The Vampira Show after barely a year because the fiercely independent Nurmi refused to sell the rights to her character to ABC.

Somewhat adrift in Hollywood, Nurmi got parts in other movies during her short stint as a movie actress (Sex Kittens go to College and The Magic Sword, among others), but it was her decision to accept 300 one dollar bills from Ed Wood, and dust off her Vampira costume for his tour de force Plan Nine From Outer Space, for which she’ll always be fondly remembered. Nurmi worked for one day only, refusing to utter one word of the dialog Wood had written for her (“I can’t say these words. It’s too moronic. Can I do it as a mute?”), and went on with her life. Twenty years later Wood became the apotheosis of Cult, Plan 9 became the darling of the cult crowd, and Vampira was suddenly a worldwide phenomenon.

The wonder of Maila Nurmi isn’t that she gave us Vampira, and appeared in Ed Wood’s most famous movie. It isn’t that she worked with Lili St. Cyr, or that she dated James Dean. And it isn’t that she was a beautiful woman. The wonder of Maila Nurmi is that she survived it all – she didn’t burn out on drugs and become a raving lunatic, dying young, a la Dean, Marilyn, and hell, even Ed Wood, for that matter. She was a genuine Hollywood survivor who stayed creative, making her own jewelry and clothing, and painting until late in life. And instead of becoming a jaded old crank (Night of the Living Dead’s Duane Jones), refusing to talk about Vampira and Ed Wood, she happily related tales about Ed, and Plan 9, and everything else fanboys like me asked her about for the last 20 years of her life. And she did it with grace and happiness and a calming bliss that she exuded up to the end.

In a world where senseless war, selfishness, avarice, and thoughtlessness overwhelm us from day to day, even hour to hour, I ask you to check out what Maila had to say about life, and see if any of us measures up:

“I used to wake up in the morning, every morning for years and years and years and years. I’d wake up with the first gleam of consciousness from sleep, and – beginning to come awake – I would leap out of bed, leap out of bed and say, ‘Good morning Mary Sunshine!’ To nobody in particular. But no – to the world. If I had a roommate, (she would say) ‘Shut up! Do you have to do that?’ But I had to do it. Every morning: ‘Good morning!’ I had to say, ‘hello world!’ It’s the world, and it’s me in it! It’s the whole miracle of day waiting for me in this world!”