This was the last interview with Maila Nurmi aka Vampira, conducted on December 21, 2007 for Rue Morgue Magazine by Alexia Anastasio. Maila passed away three weeks
later.
Alexia Anastasio: You are an artist, an innovator, a free-spirit and an icon. These are attributes that inspire me. While working on Vampira: The Movie and meeting you, I found out you are a no-holds-barred, no holding back kind of woman. So, I guess it's no surprise that the character has had such staying power.
Maila Nurmi: Well, when I first went on the local show in 1954, it was the first time that a local TV show had developed fan clubs all over the world, it had never happened before and the paparazzi were much smaller & I didn't have any paparazzi to speak of, but lots and lots of photography and just from the still photographs they got excited. All kinds of people all over the world. They didn't even hear it, because it was live, it wasn't recorded just seeing it. The illusion was so strange; it's odd to hear today because so many people look like that. But nobody looked that way. Lots of hairspray was going on, people were civilized in Los Angeles. All over the world I guess there are all kinds of people, but Vampira visually stood out for some reason. And I'll tell you, I was hypnotizing the camera..it was like home cooking.
I would tell the camera man to come closer, closer closer. And I would tell him just focus in on my eyes and then I'd stare into the camera and pretend I was staring into the eyes of my lover. And I am a hypnotist. I hypnotized silently without saying anything. "You're fascinated. You're fascinated..You'll come back to the camera, you'll come back to the camera.." I was saying silently. People would have parties on Saturday nights, and they'd turn on the Vampira show and not listen, they'd have it on in the bedrooms, so people could be entertaining themselves in the living room and somebody would be stationed listening in the bedroom and tell everyone when the commercials is going on and they'd come in to see the commercial. And then the newspapers were writing about that, how people were running in to see the show. I was hypnotizing them and they didn't know it . I mean physically, mentally intending to do it. Not just generating it, but deliberately intending to do it. Maybe that was part of it, staring into the camera that way. I had been for 15 years before that a monologist, so I knew how to handle my crowds. So I was handling my crowds. Or trying to, and I guess it was working.
Alexia Anastasio: When you would go out on the town as Vampira, with celebrity friends, what would the typical reaction be and how did the everyday person react?
Maila Nurmi: Well, the first time that I went out at all was downtown in Los Angeles, and there were tall buildings and office workers in them, then. Office workers would have a break at lunch, and they would have to go out of the building and out on the street to get lunch, to a luncheonette, you know because that was the way the world was structured here. So I knew, I was aware that the streets were crowded just like Manhattan, crowded with people walking to and from lunch, thousands of people, so we rented the car to tour the city, and go down to Pershing Square. So that's when the people let out at noon, right, so we were there when they got out of the office and the the streets were suddenly crowded. My driver, who looked a little like an undertaker... he pulled up in front and rolled a red carpet and picked up a bouquet of lilies and walked in a trance, in trance not seeing the people, over to the statue of my beloved, put flowers there and people were startled they stopped and stared, they were frightened and they were mystified because I wasn't on the air yet. They didn't know what it was. And I tried to behave as though I was real, not a character in costume but a real strange woman who lives alone and who only comes out to leave flowers for somebody long dead. Then I got back in the car and he rolled up the red carpet and we left. Thousands of people were stunned, mystified and then they took me to meet a Hollywood columnist. He was with one of the big newspapers... I knew him personally well; when I was a hat check girl he was a regular customer of mine, maybe two years earlier. So now I was not revealing my identity beneath all the makeup, you know. So my producer said, "Well I'm bringing a woman for you to interview and you know her, but I'm not telling you who she is, so you have to figure that out." So I was brought into his office and He couldn't figure out who I was. He said "I don't know you." I said "Indeed you do, you know me very well. "He tried to figure it out but He couldn't figure it out for the life of him. We had a dinner date at Ciro's, and he still couldn't figure out who I was. I finally said who I was and he said "No, not you're not her, she's a Russian princess." He was one of my favorite columnists. Even when Life magazine interviewed me, they called me by my full name...Maila Syrjaniemi, the name on my birth certificate. He still couldn't believe that it was I, Maila Nurmi, the most publicized person besides President Eisenhower. It felt like that.
Alexia Anastasio: Another question here, were people quick to distance them from you? Such as calling you the "Black Madonna?"
Maila Nurmi: Oh, well you mean the article after James Dean's death? Well the woman who wrote that article was writing for a scandal magazine, Whisper Magazine, and it was all lies. She was called to the fore by America s foremost criminal attorney for slander. A whole bunch of young Hollywood starlets got together and had a suit against the magazine and they said one woman did 90% of the writing and they were 90% lies. The CIA escorted the writer to the Mexican border and was told that as long as she lived she could not step foot in the US. There were many stars that were maligned in that magazine. She wrote the article, and it of course was humbug.
Alexia Anastasio: Did you ever injure yourself trying to maintain the signature Vampira tiny waist?
Maila Nurmi: I think I might have not at the moment that I knew about, but I squeezed and stretched and dieted and it probably wore out my digestive tract. Four years in all. I am not as healthy as I was then. But no doctor has ever said that, although that I abused my intestines. People my age have some digestive disorders anyway. So I don't know how much was due to squeezing. I never did have had a rib removed, as some people say. I did not. I have a peculiar bone structure that is a wide and low ribcage and nothing underneath and the hip bones are very wide. So the waist looked that much slimmer by comparison. Nothing there, nearly nonexistent.
Alexia Anastasio: If you could do it all again and recreate the character, would you change anything?
Maila Nurmi: Not that I know of. And it was not all my creation. Like when a chef makes a famous dish to eat, there is inventing and things he knows from history. Everything comes into the creation, my inspirations were manyfold. And I worked on it and some of it was accidental. Well Morticia didn't have a name so I was Mrs. Addams at first. And that was what I was trying to sell. But when the local station brought me in they said they can't afford to do the whole Addams Family. So if it was going to be the one character, I had to change it. So I added the bondage and discipline. I threw that in and it wasn't intended. I was only going to emulate Morticia, but that became very different from Vampira. So the whole thing came together incidentally... the creature that she was. A Victorian, matronly dominatrix! A strange mixture. I didn't design that intellectually, it just came about.
Alexia Anastasio: I have an Ed Wood question for you...do you think he was a huge Vampira fan, do you think he wanted a recognizable face in his film?
Maila Nurmi: I don't know why he wanted Vampira, but when I first found out it was from an article in the newspaper. At the time, three major movie picture companies wanted to do a movie with me. The story would have Vampira as the central figure. I was owned 49% by my little station and they said no to all of them, for what reason I don't know. There was a bidding war for my services as a leading lady in major motion pictures. Then I read in an article that this little jerk was going to make a movie and wanted Vampira. I said "How dare he, how dare he!" I'd worked so hard to try to get up to where I am from the bottom of the ladder. And now he was going to pull me down into the slop with him! That stupid little no talent, is what I thought. So I said "that ignorant man." I was incensed. That was my initial reaction. Oh, whatever.
Alexia Anastasio: What can you tell me about your friendship with Forrest Ackerman and Famous Monsters?
Maila Nurmi: He hardly ever mentioned Vampira. I don't know what year he started Famous Monsters. He was a big Vampira fan and a personal friend of mine. But I was black listed very quickly and everyone avoided me. Forry did not. He was hanging around anyway. Until one day he dropped out of my life and pretended that he never heard of me. After he created Vampirella and he said that. Vampirella had the same opening as I did, and she said "Hello my name is Vampirella, but you may call me Vampy." I originally said that I was Vampy. They had the same wordage. And the article that he sold to Harris Publications was exactly the same thing we were doing on my show. He stole the whole thing for $25. How valuable he deemed them to be! He claims to have created that character which is disgusting and shameful. He is not a very creative man, but he is a very bright man for finding talent. He found many gifted people.
Alexia Anastasio: I wanted to talk about your artistic endeavors, drawing and painting for example. When and how did you get into doing that?
Maila Nurmi: I haven't done anything now for several years. I've been drawing since I was a very little kid. Laying on my stomach in the living room the way people do. I'd ask my mother, what should I do now? And she'd say to shut up. But it was doing something with my creative energy. I was an artist doodling. I was never a trained artist. I was gifted with imagination and courage and that's about it.
Alexia Anastasio: Are there any modern horror shows and movies that you like to watch?
Maila Nurmi: I am not a moviegoer. I like black and white movies. I detest color. Soft colors are nice; everything else feels like razor blades on my eyeballs. I hate the high-definition color that they use now. I am not a moviegoer but I do watch television. So there are classic movies that I'd love to see, our motion picture theatre is out of business. I never say to someone let's go see a movie. I would be dragged by my first husband to see movies. He was a screenwriter. And we'd go every Saturday night to see the new biggie. Cowboys were big in those days. How I hated it. I would go to the ladies room and sit in the lobby and watch people because to me that was interesting. Universal energy. People dressing a certain way and buying buttered popcorn. I wanted to know why that people wanted to buy popcorn. I wanted to know the real pure psychology of life, not canned imagination. I always found their imagination pale to my own, so it was boring to watch. But no, I have not been a movie goer of my own volition. Especially today's horror movies, which are not horror, they're violence. I don't like to see violence or think about it. I like the vintage horror. I like Nosferatu.
Alexia Anastasio: What do you think of Vampira: The Movie?
Maila Nurmi: You know the cover photo for the box that was the end of Plan 9 From Outer Space and that was the final shot. Ed Wood said that you have to walk toward the camera, in an alpha-state and when you get to the camera "SCREAM..." I was startled by the camera. And that's better horror then when a monster goes "Boo." That doesn't compare to this. When the monster is frightened, the monster is out of control. That is dangerous. That's scary to me. That picture was taken when I was actually scared. Coming out of my alpha-state, startled. That's a good photograph. Kevin Sean Michaels, the director of Vampira: The Movie is a nice fellow who would come to visit. He gave me a book on Andy Warhol.
Alexia Anastasio: So Vampira was scary but also sensual, do you agree?
Maila Nurmi: Lilith stole Eve away from Adam. She was the first woman with that instinct. To seduce away another one's love, just to see them crushed. To be superior to her. That's who Vampira is in another incarnation. I am just the opposite of that. I have never to my knowledge ever dated a married man or even one with a steady girlfriend. I am too moral for that. I am a prissy creature.
Alexia Anastasio: Will you ever launch Vampira with someone else in the role? Is she permanently married to Maila? Or is the character its own entity?
Maila Nurmi: Oh no, I was looking for a new Vampira in 1980. I couldn't play it. I think she has to be 34, the age that she is. I played her three years older than I was. But I felt that the she had to be in early middle age, because that is more appealing to men than a woman who doesn't know anything yet. To have the woman who has the beauty of youth but with some of the wisdom that has been accrued. A woman is in her peak of beauty at 35. It doesn't have to be me at all. I didn't want to do it again myself in the first place in 1980. I wanted someone else to do it and they couldn't find anyone. I certainly wasn't going to do it when I was 58 years-old. I wouldn't do that again.
