Майла Нурми: «Вампира» және қорқыныш киносының жұлдызы

Finnish American actress and television personality

Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi (December 11, 1922 – January 10, 2008), known professionally as Maila Nurmi, was an American Finn actress who created the campy 1950s character Vampira. She was raised in Astoria, Oregon, where she worked in tuna and salmon canneries. She relocated to Los Angeles in 1940, with hopes of becoming an actress. After several minor film roles, she found success with her Vampira character, television's first horror host. Nurmi hosted her own series, The Vampira Show, from 1954 to 1955, on KABC TV. After the show's cancellation, she appeared in the 1959 cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space, directed by Ed Wood. She is also billed as Vampira, despite not playing the character, in the 1959 films The Beat Generation, where she plays a beatnik poet, and crime film The Big Operator. She was portrayed by Lisa Marie in Tim Burton's 1994 biopic, Ed Wood.

Maila Nurmi was born to Onni Niemi (earlier Syrjäniemi), a Finnish immigrant, and Sophia Peterson, an American of Finnish descent. Her place of birth was at one time disputed: According to biographer W. Scott Poole in Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror (2014), she was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. During her career, she claimed to have been born in Petsamo, Finland, claiming she was the niece of Finnish athlete Paavo Nurmi, who began setting long distance running world records in 1921, the year before her birth. Public U. S. immigration records show her father's immigration at Ellis Island in 1910. Additionally, Dana Gould claimed in a 2014 public interview that he had seen Nurmi's birth certificate, which listed her birthplace as Gloucester, Massachusetts. In her personal diary, Nurmi admitted the Petsamo story was fiction. During her childhood, Nurmi relocated with her family from Massachusetts to Ashtabula, Ohio, before settling in Astoria, Oregon, a city on the Oregon Coast with a large Finnish community. Her father worked as a lecturer and editor; her mother also worked as a part time journalist and translator to support the family. Nurmi graduated from Astoria High School in 1940.

In 1940, Nurmi relocated to Los Angeles, California, to pursue an acting career, and later in New York City. She modeled for Alberto Vargas, Bernard of Hollywood, and Man Ray, gaining a foothold in the film industry with an uncredited role in Victor Saville's 1947 film, If Winter Comes. She was fired in 1944 by Mae West from the cast of West's Broadway play, Catherine Was Great, because West feared she was being upstaged. On Broadway, she gained much attention after appearing in the horror themed midnight show Spook Scandals, in which she screamed, fainted, lay in a coffin, and seductively lurked about a mock cemetery. She also worked as a showgirl for the Earl Carroll Theatre and as a high kicking chorus line dancer at the Florentine Gardens along with stripper Lili St. Cyr. In 1949, Man Ray brought a pair of "bat glasses" made by the artist Edward Melcarth for the art collector Peggy Guggenheim from Venice, Italy to Los Angeles for a photo shoot with Nurmi. By the 1950s, she had adopted the glasses as the signature accessory for character Vampira. Before landing her role as Vampira, she was working as a hat check girl in a cloakroom on Hollywood's Sunset Strip. In the 1950s, she supported herself mainly by posing for pin up photos in men's magazines such as Famous Models, Gala and Glamorous Models.

In the 1940s, Nurmi claimed she had a child with Orson Welles; since Welles was married to Rita Hayworth, the child was given up for adoption. On June 20, 1955, a man forced his way into Nurmi's apartment and terrorized her for almost four hours. She escaped and called the police, with help from a local shop owner. In the early 1950s, Nurmi was close friends with James Dean, and they spent time together at Googie's coffee shop on the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. She explained their friendship by saying, "We have the same neuroses." As Hedda Hopper related in a 1962 memoir that included a chapter on Dean: "We discussed the thin cheeked actress who calls herself Vampira on television (and cashed in, after Jimmy died, on the publicity she got from knowing him and claimed she could talk to him 'through the veil'). He said: 'I had studied The Golden Bough and the Marquis de Sade, and I was interested in finding out if this girl was obsessed by a satanic force. She knew absolutely nothing. I found her void of any true interest except her Vampira make up. She has no absolute. The 2010 public radio documentary Vampira and Me by author/director R. H. Greene took issue with Hopper's depiction of the Nurmi/Dean relationship, pointing to an extant photo of Dean and Vampira sidekick Jack Simmons in full Boris Karloff Frankenstein make up as evidence of Nurmi and Dean's friendship. The documentary also described a production memo in the Warner Bros. archive citing a set visit from "Vampira" while Dean was making Rebel Without a Cause. The Warner Bros memo was first mentioned in the 2006 book Live Fast, Die Young: The Making of Rebel Without a Cause by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel, who were given access to the Rebel production files. An interview Frascella and Weisel conducted with actress Shelley Winters also uncovered an instance where Dean interrupted an argument with director Nicholas Ray and Winters so he could watch The Vampira Show on TV. In Vampira and Me, Nurmi can be heard telling Greene that Jimmy Durante once appeared in a live bit on The Vampira Show where Vampira, dressed as a librarian, rapped his knuckles with a ruler because "he was a very naughty boy." She married actor Fabrizio Mioni on June 20, 1961, in Orange County, California.

Nurmi died of natural causes on January 10, 2008, at her garage apartment in Hollywood, aged 85.

Being the originator of the Television Horror Host subgenre of movie shows, Maila Nurmi and The Vampira Show received a special citation at a ceremony on the event of the 50th Anniversary of the television Emmy Awards. Nurmi was inducted posthumously into the Monster Kid Hall of Fame at the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. Vampira: The Movie won a Rondo for Best Independent Production as a tribute to Nurmi.

Ed Wood (1994), Tim Burton's biopic features actress model Lisa Marie as Maila Nurmi. The film recreates parts of The Vampira Show. About Death, Sex and Taxes (1995), a Finnish documentary about Nurmi by Mika J. Ripatti. The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. This 1995 Brett Thompson documentary about the life and films of Ed Wood also includes a recreation of The Vampira Show. Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies (2001), Ray Greene's documentary about the American exploitation and sexploitation films of the 1950s and 1960s features Nurmi alongside cult filmmakers Roger Corman, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman, and others. Vampira: The Movie (2006), Kevin Sean Michaels' documentary about Nurmi, which won the 2007 Rondo Award for Best Independent Feature. Alpha Video distributed it on DVD in 2007. American Scary (2006) a documentary about local late night horror movie hosts includes an interview with Nurmi. Pretty Bloody: The Women of Horror (2009), TV documentary on scream queens and other women in the horror industry. Vampira and Me (2010), radio documentary/podcast about Nurmi by her friend R. H. Greene. First broadcast by KPCC 89.3 FM, a Southern California NPR affiliate. In addition to previously unheard interview clips with Nurmi about her life and career, interviews with friends from Nurmi's declining years are also included. The program is available as a free download through the KPCC website. Vampira and Me (2012), feature documentary by R. H. Greene. Notable for uncovering and restoring two previously unknown kinescopes of Vampira appearing on network television in the 1950s, and for the inclusion of restored and previously unheard audio clips of Nurmi attempting to dictate her autobiography in 1966. Includes the first Vampira related interviews ever conducted with Satan's Cheerleaders, the punk band Nurmi recorded with (as Vampira) in the mid 1980s and an extended interview with "Voluptua" (Nurmi's TV rival at KABC—TV) along with a vocal re enactment of the Voluptua character by actress Gloria Pall.