Halloween recipe fun includes memories of Vampira and James Dean
While it’s a new animated “Addams Family” film and actress Cassandra Peterson (a.k.a. the spooky and kooky Elvira) has her new tellall memoir published last month that have everyone buzzing this Halloween, my favorite Halloween haunted memories include a chilling tribute nod to Vampira, the ghoulish TV gal who started it all in the 1950s.
An early local late night TV scary movie hostess from Los Angeles, Vampira, who real name was Maila Nurmi, also had the distinction of being a gal pal of our own late Hollywood Hoosier claim-to-fame James Dean.
Nurmi died at age 85 in 2008. While I never had the chance to meet Nurmi in person, I did chat with her by telephone years ago and she mailed me a classic black-and-white publicity photo of herself, which I still display every Halloween. The photo is classic 1950s and she’s in full Vampira garb and make-up, holding a large carved Jacko-lantern while pouring a large, clearly labeled bottle of poison into the pumpkin.
The rather reclusive Nurmi died in her Hollywood home, a small apartment, according the Los Angeles County coroner’s office and the actress had no known family.
What is most amazing
about Nurmi’s career is that when she made the trek to Hollywood (originally from Finland and then a short time transplanted to Ohio with her family), she was a young unknown starlet looking for work.
As luck would have it, she found work very quickly.
However, as “unluck” would have it, the work she found in 1954 was for a role no other actress or model-wanna-be would touch: wearing garish make-up and a long black wig as an alter-ego named “Vampira,” hosting low-budget horror movie screenings, broadcast on Los Angeles’s local television station KABC-TV.
As a hopeful star, this was
a gig that not only didn’t portray her in a the best light (no pun intended), and it also erased her own identity. Before long, her trademarks became her long black tresses, ghostly white make-up, painted-on arched eyebrows, long black nails and form-fitting black dress, with a tiny cinched waist.
Even more amazing is her program, “The Vampira Show,” only lasted a year, while her new “larger than unlife” character continued to live on, something she always considered both a blessing and a curse.
In her spooky and stoic identity, she made TV appearances on popular black and white variety
shows of the day, including those hosted by Red Skelton, George Gobel and others. She even made guest appearances on stage in Liberace’s early nightclub act in Las Vegas. She was a favorite photo opportunity for the press when she was on the arm of rebel James Dean as the two made the L.A. nightclub scene.
When she couldn’t find work, she reluctantly accepted an offer from a fan, a then-obscure would-be film director named Ed Wood, who paid her $200 star as her popular character opposite the great Bela Lugosi in his last film, the awful 1959 cult classic, “Plan 9 From Outer Space.”
Years later, character actress Lisa Marie played Nurmi in the popular 1994 depiction opposite Johnny Depp’s title character in the film “Ed Wood,” directed by Tim Burton.
Her last time making news headlines was in 1989, when she lost a $10 million lawsuit against actress Cassandra Peterson a.k.a. late-night TV horror hostess Elvira, alleging she pirated her Vampira character.
“There is no Elvira. There’s only a pirated Vampira,” she was quoted as saying in her Associated Press obituary.
“Cassandra Peterson slavishly copied my product and made a fortune. America has been duped.”
I’ve interviewed Peterson a.k.a. Elvira a few times and asked her about Nurmi’s claim.
She told me her character Elvira was born from “several scraps of paper thrown into a hat by the television station crews who came up with name suggestions.”
“The name ‘Vampira’ was the popular draw, but when the television station creating my show and myself went to register it, we found it was already held by an actress named Maila Nurmi, who wore this female vampire costume and hosted a local horror movie show in L.A. in the 1950s,” Peterson told me.
Peterson said Maila had even met with her early one and agreed to give permission for the name use.
However, she said when Maila’s lawyer submitted a contract and the fee, Peterson
said it “asked for an outrageous” amount.
“To make a long story short, we came up with our own name, and she brought the lawsuit against us that was later thrown out,” Peterson said.
“It was ridiculous.” While filmed hosting her TV show, Vampira was often shown sipping from a smoking cocktail, which she told viewers: “You would love it. But it would hate YOU.”
She said she received many letters from viewers begging her reveal the recipe or at least hint whether she garnished the cocktail with an olive or a maraschino cherry.
“I use NEITHER,” she stated on-air.
“Why bother. Either of them would just disintegrate once they were dropped into the glass!”
To be safe this Halloween 2021, it’s best I not share Vampira’s cocktail recipe with readers. Instead, I have a rare recipe for a favorite simple coleslaw recipe from James Dean’s Aunt Ortense Winslow, who raised young Dean after the death of his mother on the Winslow Farm in Fairmont, Ind. The recipe was given to me in September 1992 from David Loehr, an avid Dean fan and proprietor of the James Dean Gallery in Fairmont.