Immigrant of the Day: Maila Nurmi (a/k/a Vampira) (Finland)

We hope that our Immigrant of the Day does not offend celebrating the holiday season.  Maila Nurmi (1922–2008) was an actress who created the campy 1950s character Vampira.

Maila Nurmi moved to the United States with her family at the age of 2 and grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio. Arriving in Los Angeles at age 17, she modeled and appeared in an uncredited role in a film. In the 1950s she supported herself mainly by posing for pin-up photos in men’s magazines. Immediately before landing her signature role as Vampira, Nurmi was working as a hat-check girl in a cloakroom on the Sunset Strip.

The idea for the Vampira character was born in 1953 when Nurmi attended a masquerade party in a costume inspired by a character in The New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams. Her appearance with pale white skin and tight black dress caught the attention of television producer Hunt Stromberg, Jr.. The name Vampira was the invention of Nurmi’s husband, Dean Riesner. On April 30, 1954, KABC-TV aired a preview, Dig Me Later, Vampira, at 11:00 p.m. The Vampira Show premiered on the following night, May 1, 1954.  Each show opened with Vampira gliding down a dark corridor flooded with dry-ice fog. At the end of her trance-like walk, the camera zoomed in on her face as she let out a piercing scream. She would then introduce (and mock) that evening’s film while reclining on a skull-encrusted Victorian couch. The show was an immediate hit.  When the series was cancelled in 1955, she retained rights to the character of Vampira and took the show to a competing Los Angeles television station, KHJ-TV.

Nominated for an Emmy Award as “Most Outstanding Female Personality” in 1954, Nurmi returned to films. Her most notable film appearance was in Ed Wood’s camp classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space, as a Vampira-like zombie. In 1960 she appeared in I Passed for White and Sex Kittens Go to College.

In the early 1950s, she was close friends with James Dean, and they hung out together at Googie’s coffee shop on the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

On January 10, 2008, Nurmi died of natural causes at her home in Hollywood, aged 85. For a tribute video, click here.

KJ