October 24, 2022 • 60 mins
The original, spooky, late-night TV host and one of the most influential characters in horror media, Vampira was the alter ego of Maila Nurmi, whose personal life was just as interesting offscreen. We talk with Maila's niece Sandra Niemi, author of the new biography "Glamour Ghoul."
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Ephemeral is production of My Heart three D audio for Folix.
Vasure Listen was that phones. It's that magical time of year,
full of monsters, ghouls, and all manner of horror movies.
In the nineteen fifties, a new idea in horror hit
(00:24):
the airwaves, repurposing vintage scary films for a TV audience.
The host of this endeavor was also something the public
had never seen before, iconic for her piercing screams, morbid humor,
and suggestive costuming. Her name was Milon Nurmi, better known
by the character she created, Vampira, not to be confused
(00:49):
with Elvira, but more on that later. Today, producer Trevor
Young takes us through the haunting life and legacy of
one of horror's most influential character, Vampire. What I needed
a vampire cocktail to settle by Note it will not
only settle them, it will petrified. Mm hm a vampire cockpail?
(01:19):
Do you like it? It hates you. She was sexy,
but she was untouchable. She had a sense of humor,
a bizarre sense of humor. I've had several letters asking
whether olives or cherry should be used in making my cocktail. Well,
actually neither is necessary, since they'd only disintegrate on being
(01:41):
put into the cocktail. However, if you want to use
some gone, if you can drop in an eyeball. Do
still happened to haven't actually went around the house. This
was the nifties, This was during the Eisenhower administration, and
no one had ever seen a person like my Isla.
And she was on television and here she was talking
(02:03):
about how sad it was that her sister had died
and they had to bury her alive, and that she
had Yellow Cross insurance that you could buy because if
you were an unsuccessful suicide, you would have insurance to
try again. My name is Sandra nin Me and I
(02:25):
am the author of the book Glamor Ghoul, which is
a biography of my aunt Mila Normi a k a. Vampira.
Sandra says she never really knew her aunt Mila all
that well, but knew about her from TV. Decades later,
in the nineteen eighties, Sandra decided to track her aunt
(02:47):
Mila down, who by this point was in her mid
to late sixties. I was always obsessed with her, and
I think that was because I was an only child.
And I always wanted a family, a bigger family. And
I had this aunt, Mila in Hollywood that I knew
(03:09):
was beautiful and I thought as a child, kind of celebrity.
And I enlisted the help of the Red Cross to
try to find Mila, and they couldn't find her. Well
at that time, she was going by an alias, and
that alias was Helen Heaven, so that's why they couldn't
find Mila Normi. I remained obsessed. I have to know her.
(03:32):
I wanted to talk to her. And then one day
a state would have it. I got a Star magazine
and there was Milan Normie suing Alvira for ten million
dollars and I went, She's alive, mileas alive. And I
immediately sat down and wrote a letter to her attorneys,
(03:55):
who were mentioned in this article, and I said, please
for were this letter, and they did, and Mila responded
right away, and um we had a long letter writing campaign,
and it wasn't that long before I said, you know,
I'm going to come to Los Angeles and off my
daughter and I went to Hollywood to see my leaf.
(04:20):
I spent a week with my La. I got to
know her. We continued writing and then at Christmas time
of ninety two, she quit writing, and that hurt my feelings.
I thought I had heard her feelings or she was
mad at me for whatever reason. I didn't know. And
(04:42):
I even called the police to get a welfare check
because I thought maybe she died, but they said no,
she's fine, and so I just left her alone. Then
I found out in the newspaper that she died in
two thousand eight. January ten, went to Los Angeles and
(05:02):
got granted to go into her apartment and started picking
up all of her writings. Inside Mile's apartment, Sandra found
an astoundingly detailed record of her aunt's life. It was
full of papers and magazines and folders, and I thought, oh, well,
(05:25):
this is how I can know who she really was.
This is exciting to me. And I had a friend
with me helping me, and I told her anything that
you find with Miles's handwriting keeping will put it in
plastic bags and pictures and you know, photos and things
like that. When we came out of there, I had
(05:47):
three black garbage bags full of writing and sometimes there
was a cohesiveness to it. There were pages and pages
and pages on notebook paper that she had written on
both sides, and sometimes it was just a little note,
like a scrap of paper, or written in the margin
(06:10):
of a calendar. I found a half page glued to
the back of a picture that was hanging on the wall.
I found wadded up pieces of notebook paper in pockets
of old clothes, and I just gathered everything up. I
also found a real to reel tape, and when we
(06:34):
played it, she had recorded it in nineteen sixty six.
But anyway, I have two diaries, a nineteen forty forty
one forty two diary and a nineteen fifty six diary.
And boy, am I glad I got the nineteen fifty
six diary because that was a very busy year for vampire.
(06:58):
And since then Sandra has been years sifting through that ephemera,
dedicating herself to chronicling the story of Milon Nurmi a
k a. Vampira. She was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and
then her father got a job in Pittsburgh, Massachusetts, so
they moved there. And in nineteen twenty six, her father,
(07:21):
who was an editor of a Finnish newspaper in America,
there was a civil war going in Finland and he
wanted to be right there to see was going on
so he could report it. And he decided to take
his wife's inheritance and go to Finland for maybe a year,
(07:42):
he said, And he left his wife and his two
small children, and he came back a year later, and
my grandmother had completely changed. She was no longer this
submissive housewife. She was defiant, and she had learned to alcohol.
Then the family moved to Ashfield, Ohio, and they were
(08:04):
there for maybe ten years, my lad friends. And then
in the winter of nineteen thirty four he was sent
to Duluse, and it was in the heart of the depression,
and they almost starved to death when they lost his job.
He was only doing a few hours on the radio
a week and it wasn't enough to sustain them. They
(08:27):
didn't even have electricity, They had very little food. Finally,
and Angel came through and said they wanted him back
in Ashbola. So back they went and thrived. Mila accompanied
her father on lecture tours. He was much in demand,
(08:48):
he said himself. He was the man of ten thousand speeches,
and he lectured against the eagles of alcohol, of course,
and he lectured for a president. He was paid to
stump for Herbert Hoover, and later on he became a
huge roonent of FDR. But Mila went with him and
(09:13):
sometimes she spoke to but she listened to all of
his sermonizing. She knew his fire and brimstone approach. Mila
told her father that she wanted to be an artist,
and my grandfather thought artists meant someone who painted or
drew pictures. He didn't know the meaning of what she meant.
(09:35):
She wanted to be an artiste, you know, to be
free and to be friends with people like her and
nothing to do with domesticity at all, no way. She
wanted freedom to express herself, to be creative. Eventually, the
family settled in a story at Oregon, but apparently Mila
(09:58):
quickly got bored and yearned for more exciting life. She
was going to go to New York, and the parents
put the kai bosh on that and only agreed to
allow her to go to Los Angeles, where her mother's
brother and wife lived. And that's how she got to Hollywood,
and that's where Mila's started looking for work, first as
(10:21):
a radio monologist. She was interested, very very much interested
in being the first female or some wells because she
was enamored with Orson when she heard him speak on
the radio. Strange enough seems to sit in my peaceful
study Princeton writing down this last chapter of the record.
(10:44):
Begun at a deserted farm and groove was new. Strange
to watch children playing in the streets, the sound of
his voice and the words that he chose, and he
was her God. That was who she wanted to be.
But she didn't have much luck getting a job in
that area. You know. She tried a few things. She
(11:05):
worked in a department store and was a model perhaps
and print ads because she had this beautiful face. It
was also around this time that Mila started developing her
unique fashion sense, and it was largely inspired by a
certain Disney movie. She's no alginary apple. It's a magic
(11:27):
rushing apple, wishing apple, one mite, an whole your dream
to come true? Yes, girl. She went to see snow
White and she was watching it and there was snow
white and humming and happy and this good little girl
(11:51):
and washing the dishes of the dwarves and doing their
laundry and singing well doing it, and oh my god,
Mila was his sickened by that. But then when the
Evil Queen came on the stage, all powerful and sexy
and beautiful and demanding and in control, that's when Mila's
(12:12):
brain exploded. And that's when she said, that's who I
want to be. I don't want to be evil, what
I want to be everything. She is the Evil Queen,
and she never forgot that. She adapted the part of
the Evil Queen personna into Vampira. Like many people starting
(12:33):
off in Hollywood, Mila had a number of tough breaks
and terrible experiences. Early on. She went to I can't
remember the person's name, but they were advertising for a
radio monologist, exactly what Mila did, and so she applied,
and mind you, she's only nineteen years old from Astoria
(12:54):
or again, and goes into this shabby little studio type
thing and the guy is there by himself. The tricks
here into signing a piece of paper and he takes
her in the back to take her picture, and then
he asked her to become nude from the waist up,
and all she had to cover herself was some see
through scarves, and Milo was horrified. She knew she was
(13:17):
locked in into that office, to that back part of
that office. She couldn't escape, and it was upstairs. No
one would hear her scream, so she complied, and he
took pictures of her with these scarves. She couldn't wait
to get dressed, and as she flew out of the
(13:39):
office after he unlocked it, he said that the proofs
will be ready on Wednesday or whatever, and she just
stormed out, running away from the man. And of course
it was just a sham because the proofs never showed up,
and even when she went back to the office, the
guy was gone and locked up. He was charlatan. And
(14:01):
then she tried to I can't remember who Mr Clark,
I think his name was. She went to interview for
a job there, and he made a pass at her.
He started moving his hands up her skirt and she
wrestled him and ended up breaking his glasses and ran
(14:21):
out of his office. And then she said to herself,
Hollywood is just filthy. Those were her words that she wrote.
But one day she met someone who had changed her
life forever. She went with a friend of hers because
it was the friend's birthday, ended up at Lusso and Frank's.
They had grabbed a serviceman outside two be their escort
(14:46):
into the bar because Milo wasn't twenty one yet, but
they went in with the soldier and they sat down.
Of course, they got served, and then Mila heard dis
voice in the back of her and she couldn't believe
her ears was Parson Wealth in person, her God, and
she couldn't help herself, and she ran over to his
(15:09):
table and started babbling whatever it is that she did.
Then realized that she had interrupted him in his inner
companions and apologized and went back to her table, which
was now gone. Her friend and the soldier boy had
decided to will be gone out, so now she was alone.
(15:31):
So she just sat there wondering what to do. And
here comes ours and Wealth over to her cable by
himself and invites her over to his table. So she
goes over there, and it's time to go, and he
calls the cab and gives her a kiss. She lived
in a hotel then, I think the Commodore hotel. He
(15:54):
got out of the cab and he said, I want
to see where you live, and he walked her to
the door. Didn't guess her again. He left shortly thereafter,
a bouquet of flowers arrived at the desk. They began
a romance at the time. It was during the war,
and Orson was always into magic, and he was putting
(16:17):
up a type of carnival off lab Brea in Los Angeles,
where there were all kinds of tints and games, and
he had his celebrity friends come and do tricks like
sawing a woman in half and eating snakes and all
of this sort of carnival kind of stuff. Well, Orson
(16:39):
had quit sending flowers or coming after Mila and had
been quite a while, and Mila was getting a little alarmed.
What has happened? As he ditched me? Is he not
interested in me anymore? What's going on? She went to
the little house on Hacienda that she had been seeing
Orson that and a man and showed up in a bathrobe,
(17:02):
and it wasn't Orson, and he said he didn't know
Mr Wells, and so Mila left. She thought, well, maybe
he's moved. I don't know that man. Then she went
to the carnival to look for Orson. There were pictures
of all these celebrities that were going to be appearing,
and she looked at one of these pictures and it
(17:22):
was a man in the bath robe and his name
was Joseph Cotton. He was a famous actor in those
days and also a very close friend of ors and Belts.
So then myla the tune two together. Uh huh. These
two men have rented this house to entertain their girlfriends,
(17:46):
whoever they may be, and so I'm just one of
his girlfriends. Got only knows how many more girlfriends he's gone. Then,
while Marla was stewing in her apartment and not working,
she realized she was pregnant and it was Orson Wells child.
(18:09):
And very shortly, like the same day or the next day,
she was listening to the radio and they announced that
Orson Wells had married Rita Hayward that morning at City Hall.
So Mila's world was plunged into complete blackness, and you
can imagine the sun was put up for adoption, and
(18:33):
up until only very recently, no one knew who the
secret child was. But after she gave birth, Mila decided
to shake off her grief and focus on her career,
and that's when she got her first big break. After
(18:56):
an initial string of disasters in Los Angeles, Milare fully
moved to New York City and there she nailed a
role in a stage play called Katherine was Great with
May West. She got a part as a handmaiden in
Katherine Was Great, but she irritated May West because she overacted,
(19:17):
and May said, as an asside to the director, does
it have to be so big? Because Mila was supposed
to scream and fall to the floor and faint as
she was informed her husband died and Mila went overboard,
and May didn't like it. She didn't want to be
up staged, and eventually May fired Mila after several months
(19:42):
on Broadway. While she was in New York, Mila made
another celebrity friend, Marlon Brando. And yet before this evening
is over, your ma give me the brush. You might
forget your manners, You might refuse to st He was
(20:03):
in his first Broadway plate and it was called I
Remember Mama. So they were both on Broadway at the
same time. And one of the other handmaidens that was
in Katherine Was Great was dating Marlon Brando and she
was bitching and complaining about what a cad he was.
He was there one time for her and then he
(20:24):
was missing, and she just didn't take it anymore. So
Mila listened and listen, thought, you know, give me this
guy's address. I'm going to go over here and take
care of him. He's just not going to treat you
like that. So she did. She went over there about
two thirty three o'clock one morning, knocked on the door
and this guy answered, and it was Marlin, and she
(20:44):
started reading him the Riot Act and he invited her
into his apartment and she didn't leave until noon the
next day. And her friend from the play never spoke
to her again, because obviously Milon enjoyed herself with Marlon Brando.
They started, uh, well, she never came right out and
(21:04):
said it was a romance, but I'm pretty sure it
was because she said I have to keep my female
side under control, because obviously she found him very attractive,
and they dated. I have a photo. It's an eight
by ten and Marlon is in costume for a movie.
It looks like a revolutionary war type uniform and Mila
(21:28):
is dressed to the nines like she's going out for dinner.
I have it, and it's very very important to me.
Then Mila got cast in a horror slash burlesque Broadway
show called Spook Scandals, and it only played for one night,
but that one night turned out to be pretty great
(21:50):
for my love. Because she was inundated with offers from
Hollywood by famous directors and producers, and she had her
pick of who to choose to go to Hollywood and
be interviewed by, and she chose Howard Hawks. He was
the man who discovered Lauren the Call, and he was very,
(22:13):
very famous. Everybody knew Howard Hawks. He was a big deal.
And she went home. She had a contract with Howard Hawks,
and she waited for I don't know how long, maybe
it was a couple of days, and the phone never rang. Well,
Mila was incensed, and she went back to Howard Hawks
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and sat in his office and took out the contract
from her first and ripped it up into pieces and
threw it on his desk and said to him, and
she wrote this down, please kindly dispose of these in
your nearest waste basket. And out the door she went,
thus killing any opportunities she would ever have to be
(22:58):
an actress since she was blacklisted from traditional acting rules,
Mila decided she would work on doing her own thing,
something entirely unique in fringe from Hollywood, and in October
of nineteen fifty three, she unveiled a new persona at
the bal Caribe Masquerade Ball. Apparently, this val Koreb was
(23:20):
an annual event right before Halloween. It was a costume
ball and it was held at the Moulin Rouge. So
he told Mila about it, and he said, you have
to come and just put on a costume. Income It's
so much fun and they'll be prizes and mile about. Wow,
maybe I should do that because I'm wanting to get discovered.
(23:41):
I want to be on television. Because she knew the
door to movies was shut, so she decided to go
as Charles Adams unnamed character at the time from his
cartoon strip The Adams Family. So I went there and
I practiced my victory in kurach. She could, I expect
(24:01):
it to win. But I had lavender makeup, you know,
powdy with a little lavender, looking as though I had
risen from the grave turned onto the blue. You know
their footage like that. That lady was flat chested. She
bought some ray on from a fabric store, and she
rented a wig from Max Factor and Indian wig, so
(24:21):
it was a long black wig, and then she applied
her own makeup. She went barefoot and the dress was
low in the back, high in the front. She did
not sense her waist. She just wore it. The dress
loose and raggedy. The sleeves were tattered and the ham
line was tattered. And she put on tomb like makeup,
(24:43):
she said, very very white, with a little bit of
purple lavender. They went to the ball and Mila one
the costume prize, which was a transistor radio. But she
had caught the eye of a Stromberg program and Jeer
ABC Channel two, Los Angeles, and he looked for her
(25:05):
for five months, from October to March. He finally talked
to this guy, the one who had encouraged her the
beginning to go to the ball, Thrieve, and he says, oh,
she's easy to find. So they found me and they
told me to come in, and I came in, he said,
coming in costume. And I came in during the Eyes
(25:26):
of March wearing a great Violenciaga cape coat, and the
winds winds of the Eyes of March were flapping it
and people were coming out of a little bubalure saying, Ah,
there's Hunt's vampire, There's I had no hair. You just
didn't see ladies with crew cuts in those days. But
I had all sorts of things women didn't see in
those days, you know. And Milo was interviewed by Hunt Stromberg.
(25:48):
He told her what he wanted. He wanted her to
be the horror host. And she said, well, who else
are you going to have? From Adam's family. It was
a cartoon and that was published in the New Yorker
in those days. And he said, oh, well, you know,
we can't afford anybody else. We just want you. And
Mila said, well, I can't possibly do it then, because
he would be ripping off Charles Adams. This particular character
(26:12):
is his character. And he says, well, then I don't
know what we're going to do. And she says, well,
can I come up with something a little different? And
he says, I'll give you four days. So Mila went
home and she took her costume from October and turned
it backwards. So then I saw a book by John
(26:33):
Willie Bondage and Discipline. I said, huh, that's it. I
had been a pin up model. I've been doing cheesecake
right at that time. So I took the cheesecake and
the Bondage and Discipline, and I since your wasted her waist.
She sins too in those days, nineteen inches. And I
put in the fishnet hose, I slipped the dress, I
(26:55):
changed more tissues. Statement right, I gave her Hollywood makeup,
and remembering too that there was a bit of Greta
Garbo in hearing something a little Dostoyevsky and something just
a wee bit spooky, like Norma Desmond, who had just
turned me on big and some set boulevard. I admit,
of my mind, we'll bury him in the garden, and
(27:16):
he said he laws against that. I wouldn't know. I
don't care anyway. I want the coffin to be white,
and I wanted specially lined with seconds. Now when you
see it, it looks like I'm imitating Norma Desmond, which
I was, but I didn't know it, you know, a subliminal.
She wore bust pads because she wanted to bust in
the hips, to be remarkably larger than this teeny tiny ways.
(27:40):
She wanted to look like she was not even human,
like she came in parts. Then she glued on some
fall fingernails that were three inches long and painted the nails.
She made them out of margarine tubs, and she got
herself a black wig that she rented from a store downtown.
(28:03):
She walked in to an interview with Hunt Stromberg four
days later, dressed as what we know now as Vampira.
Aunt Stromberg goes forward. Of course, this was exactly who
he wanted, and a star was born, and so Mila
(28:25):
was signed to bring her character to live TV on
The Vampire Show Me That. So it premiered on April
Theory four, and then the next night it was on
(28:47):
at its regular time midnight. Made first nineteen fifty four.
She didn't have the beginning where she walked down the
corridor with my asthma dry eye. She didn't have that yet.
That came a few weeks Slater. But she would just
introduce herself, Hello, I am Vampira. And she had this tiny,
tiny waist and this low cut blouse and this tattered
(29:11):
sleeves and hemline and like she said, my tall cold shoes,
black hair, bizarre makeup with boomerang eyebrows that are sway,
and an overly pronounced red lip where she didn't see
it because it wasn't color television, but you could tell
it was a different color lip. And started talking about
(29:33):
death and how beautiful death was and d a team
and electric chairs. I've often been asked why I don't
like my ethics electricity everybody no electricity, which is and
you can imagine what the audience thought in this Eisenhower era,
(29:56):
like what is this? Who is that? Woman that never
seen anything like that? The idea was that Vampire would
host a new horror movie each night. She'd introduced the movie,
come back for ad bricks, and close it out when
it was finished, all while making clever quote unquote jokes
(30:18):
are Little Fairy Care United. It's called their Guest. The
thirteen makes it timely, topical and terrified. It's about a
humorous fellow who dies telling a joke something of a
dead pen comedian. Yees, put me dark in the room
(30:45):
and we shall come in. And right from the get
go she was insanely popular. People were riding to the
station wanting to know more, more information, and within a
couple of weeks they had to bump up the time
(31:06):
start from twelve to eleven so more people would be awake.
And then Life Magazine called Life Magazine. If you made
Life Magazine in those days, you were a star. You
had made it. And Life Magazine sent a photographer here
(31:27):
found to Los Angeles to film myla, and that's when
the hallway Candelabra dry Eyes entrance mark its beginning. They
did that for Life magazine. I think she had a
four page spread. It wasn't just one page, it was
four pages. It might have even been five. He took
(31:49):
pictures of her in the back of I can't remember
what make car was, but it was a convertible and
was an old, tiny Victorian age car, and Islao was
sit in the back with a parasol over her head
to keep the sun out, but the parasol was all
shredded up. And then she would scream at green light
(32:13):
and I want the convertible to go through the red lights.
So she was photographed doing that, people staring at her,
like in broad daylight, like who is that woman dressed
like that screaming. She was a hit. She was a
huge hit. It was nineteen fifty before somebody talking about
(32:34):
death and beautiful suicides and eyeballs and frog brains and
the eighteens and all my words, what else is she
going to come up with? Sandra says that Mila felt
more comfortable as Vampira than she did as herself, especially
at the beginning. I think that was her alter ego,
(32:55):
because sometimes she would just put on Vampira makeup. She
had short blonde hair, and she would just leave her
short blonde hair and put on her Mila clothes and
go down to Googie's with a vampire face. I think
there's a quote in the book something about hiding behind
(33:15):
the makeup. She could be more aloof, she could feel
more powerful, she could be more distant if she had
her vampire face. Some vampire gave her permission to be
how she wanted to be. It was that little bit
of the evil queen persona. She liked it. Mila claimed
(33:37):
that she herself was very, very shy. She said that
several times. I don't see that. I don't see Mila
is being shy, but she claims that she was. Maybe
she was when she was younger. I don't know. But
she enjoyed being Vampira. She enjoyed every moment of it.
(33:57):
She loved her. She's I love vampire. I reshoosed my child.
I brought her up and I fed her and I
took care of her. And now when Milo was older,
she would say, now it's time for her to take
care of me. As Vampire became more popular, Mila was
invited to join Bella Lagosi on the Red Skeleton show.
(34:20):
I think there's somebody it's my sister that i'mpire. Yeah.
The Vampire show was eventually canceled in nine, but Mila
briefly took the show over to k h J t V,
where she retained rights to the Vampire character. Meanwhile, Mila
(34:43):
started hanging out among the Hollywood elite. Schwabs was the
celebrity hangout drug store. Everybody went to Schwabs. That's where
they got their medicine, their pills, and their narcotics and
everything else that they needed to function. And the is
oftentimes is standing lonely, and so Mila hung out there too.
(35:05):
But then a new coffee shop was built next door.
In fact, they shared a common wall, Schwab's and Googies.
Googies was a coffee shop. You walked in and to
the left there was a horseshoe type counter, probably with
a Fike case in the middle. So the people like
(35:27):
Mila started hanging out in Googies. It was the place
to be in Hollywood if you were just starting out
in the movies, if you hope to be an actor
or an actress. If you were a rebel, if you
were a free spirit, if you were young, you went
to Googies. The old school stayed at Schwab's, and Mila
(35:52):
often said that there almost was a battle between the
Schwaby Arrows and the Googie Els, and every once in
a while they back and forth. Maryland and Rowe would
come from Schwabs and come over and hang out at
Googies once in a while, and so would Sakabor, and
a few of the others would drop in to stay hi,
but mostly it was the young rebel type people. One
(36:16):
of those rebels was perhaps the most famous rebel of
all time, James Dean. You're tearing me up. Fire what
you say? One thing? He said another and everybody changed
his back again. She didn't know who he was. So
Mila is sitting there with another guy, and a motorcycle
(36:37):
drives up, and that was James Dean, and into google
Eas he comes, and she said she jumped up out
of her boot and banged her crazy bones. And the
guy with Jack and her said he thought Mila had
a stroke because she was just messprises, staring with a
(36:57):
peculiar look on her face at the didn't change and
he said, what what what, mylon miless. Is that guy
right there, right there, right there, that came in the door,
who is that? I must meet him? And the guy
turned around and looked. He said, Oh, that's James Dean.
I was just in a movie with him. I want
to meet him. I've got to meet him right now.
(37:20):
They were introduced over by the cigarette machine. Anyway, that
very same day he asked her to go on his
motorcycle up to his apartment. They became thick and fast
friends after that very platonic relationship, because I think from
the get go this is nothing, Mila wrote. Jimmy became
(37:41):
the son she had to give up for adoption, and
Mila became Jimmy's surrogate mother. She was always giving him
advice because she was eight years older than he was,
not a lot of years, but she was more mature
and wise her and she was always giving it, don't
(38:02):
do that, don't do that, do it this way, do
you know? And usually he just ignored her, but he
listened and they were good friends. And then here's the
bizarre part. Jimmy was an unknown when they met. He
had just completed East of Eden, which was his very
first movie. He only made three. In East of Eden,
(38:27):
his character name was Cal spelled with the sea, and
Mila had given her adopted son and name, so she
talked to him even though he wasn't there, and she
named him Cal with the Cave. So I wonder what
Mila thought when she went, oh, he's Cal prassed and
I have a cow. So this is the Great Universe
(38:50):
telling me you're not alone. Your surrogate son is here.
That's my thoughts. Mila and James Dean developed a passionate
friendship that lasted for years, but it was also a
friendship that would end in disaster for both of them.
(39:14):
On sept James Dean died in a tragic car accident
and it blew apart miss World. I don't think Mila
ever loved anyone in this world as much as she
loved James Dean. She never got over his death ever.
(39:35):
She loved him like a mother would. She couldn't believe
that twenty four years in his life was snuffed out.
She had to leave town because there were too many
memories of Jimmy here. She was going to go to
New York. Marlon hurt. She was going to go to
New York, and he offered to give her some money
to get to New York, and she wouldn't take it.
(39:56):
She had a couple hundred bucks, and so off she
went to New York and beout herself an apartment. And
as soon as she got back to Los Angeles, here
was Whisper magazine on the news stand. And Whisper magazine
was the lesser cousin of Confidential magazine. It was the
gossip magazine of all the stars, and on the cover
(40:21):
was a picture of Vampira and James Stein, and the
headlines screamed something about that Vampira had caused the death
of James Dean because she put a curse on him,
and Mila contemplated suicide. That was it. That was the
straw that broke the Camals back, the person that she
(40:43):
loved more than anything in the world, she was accused
of killing him. With her show canceled and her best
friend killed, Mila fell out of work in Hollywood. However,
in she got an offer from director Ed Wood to
play a part in one of his movies, Can Your
(41:05):
Heart Stand? The shocking facts about Great Robbers brought out
of space. She didn't leave a lot of information behind
about the Edwit movie, but I know that she had
met Edwood add a birthday party for Bella Lagossie's son.
(41:28):
He had said something to her, well, you're going to
have to be in one of my movies sometimes, and
Mila said to herself, not a check, are you kidding me?
She thought he was pathetic. One way to kill your
career is star with ned Wood movie. So then he
sent one of his people over to Mila's apartment to
(41:53):
ask her to be in his movie. Mila had lost
her job as Vampira due to creative differences. Let's say
Jimmy was dead and she said, nah, I don't think so,
and he says two dollars, And boy did that look
good for my La because she was almost like a
(42:13):
cat food, like she said, and she had all these
cats to be so well, maybe just leave the script here,
but Adam. At first, Mila decided to leave Edward hanging
and instead took a few other gigs. A few months later,
Liberacci came calling the Las Vegas Hilton takes great pleasure
(42:34):
in presenting the Liberaci Show at starring Liberaci because Bella
Lagosi was supposed to be co starring with Liberaci in
Las Vegas, but Bella became very very ill and couldn't
dropped out, so he suggested my La. So Liberaci took
(42:54):
him out upon it and he asked Myla to be
his co star in Las Vegas for two weeks, and
she jumped at the chance because Liberaci was the highest
paid celebrity at the time. That's where she went, and
that's where she met Elvis. Mila would keep running into
these people, I tell you. Elvis was starting at exactly
(43:17):
the same time across the street at the Old Frontier
and Mila was across the street at the Riviera. So
they formed a romance. But when she got home, Mila
found waiting at her doorstep the script for Edwards new
movie then Cold Grave Robbers from outer space. Greetings, my friend,
(43:39):
we are all interested in the future, for that is
where you and I are going to spend the rest
of all lives. And remember, my friend Fujun, events such
as these will affect you in the future. Mila never
touched it. It just sat there, and then finally Edwards
friend came back and said, we're going to start filming
(44:02):
here in November. You know, are you on, and she says, well,
I've looked at the script now, and the script is
so inane. I can't say any of it. I can't
bring myself to say a word. It's so stupid. And
this guy apparently said, well, we don't care. We only
want your name anyway, and so that's why she didn't
(44:27):
speak the word during the entire movie. Vampire's role in
the eventually titled Plan nine from Outer Space was entirely silent,
but her presence was a huge part of the film.
I was initially offered some lines, but the fact is
(44:48):
that the character, although I was billed as Vampire, the
character wasn't Vampire as I had conceived her. Vampire as
I had conceived her was giddy, outrageous, and this was
a different kind of She was in a trance, and
I just thought it would better if she was in
a trance, and I asked her, please do it mutely. Still,
Mila was embarrassed to have done it. She didn't think
(45:10):
anyone would see it. She was hoping that nobody would
see it or recognize her or think about it. And
I don't think she saw the movie in its entirety
until like but she was shocked, surprised that it had
become a cult favorite, and it was also voted the
(45:32):
worst movie of all time. And I used to like
to think about Citizen Kane Orson Well's the best movie
of all time, Plan nine the worst movie of all time,
and they had a baby for better or worse. Plan
nine is considered one of Vampire's most famous and iconic roles.
When the movie had a cult resurgence in the nineteen eighties,
(45:55):
Vampira also had a new boost and popularity then Tim
Burton biopic called ed Wood, where actor Lisa Marie portrayed
Vampire in the film, pardon me, miss Vampire. Yes, you
don't know me, but I'm Edward. I'm a film producer
and I'm currently in production on a science fiction piece
with Bella Legosi and Swedish wrestler Toward Johnson. I don't understand.
(46:17):
Do you want my autograph? No? I I think my
film is perfect for you. You want me to show
it on my TV program? Well, I have nothing to
do with that. You should call the station man and
dredge Hannel seven. No, no, no, no, no no. I
don't want you to show the movie. I want you
to be in it. Look, I'm with some friends and
we're about to eat Lese. It would just take one second.
(46:37):
Come on over at meet the backers. There is a
really nice dentist from Oxnark. Look, buddy, I've got real
offers from real studios. I don't need to blow some
dentists for apart. Forget it. She went out to lunch
with Lisa Marie and she liked her because she was
fellow Sagittarian. They both had, you know, November d Stamper birthdays.
(46:58):
The one thing she didn't lie that Lisa Marie did,
and she says, when I posed as Vampira, I crooked
my elbows and put my hands on my abdomen so
you could see my tiny waist. That was very, very
important to the character. And Lisa Marie would put her
hands on her hips. That's not the way it's done.
(47:19):
And I told her before she did it how to
pose herself. Mila was very particular about her character and
that's one thing she did not like. I didn't think
it was that true to Vampira. I thought it showed
Mila as Mila. She had long blonde hair. Mila had
short blonde hair always and sort of Gloomy Cuss. Mila
(47:45):
really was a funny person. She cracked jokes, she was
very personable. In the movie, she was just sort of angry.
That's how I looked at it, so I didn't think
it was accurate. Mila didn't do much act or make
too many vampire appearances after Plan nine. She instead ran
an antique store called Vampire's Attic, on top of a
(48:07):
few other odd jobs. But when she got a second
wind of fame from the Edwood hype in the eighties
and nineties, she reveled in the spotlight. I think it
did have an effect on her. I think she loved
it because then on top of being in demand, she
was able to sell her artwork on eBay and support herself.
(48:31):
That made her very excited, and so she did a
lot of drawings and paintings, and I don't think she
ever did any pros. She did some sketching that were
very good. She did a pencil catching of Armond Brando,
she did Jimmy very well. And then paintings. I have
(48:51):
one of her paintings. A fan of hers sent it
to me and I treasure it. And she was able
to sell photographs and she went to conventions, horror conventions,
and she was able to sell her photos for twenty
dollars a piece autographs, so that put money in her
(49:12):
coffers and she desperately needed it. Fifteen silent minutes, which
has given me an entire new career. Thank you, Mr Wood.
You're listening with such renewed interest in Vampira. K h
J TV decided they wanted to resurrect the Vampire Show,
so in they asked Mila to return to TV, but
(49:34):
it didn't quite go as planned. They had done a
lot of talking to Mila. They wanted to revive the
Vampire show, and Mila finally said, okay, but I'm not
going to appear on camera. I'm too old. And they
finally talked her into making appearances as Vampira's mother, and
she said, well, Vampira doesn't have a mother. She just evolved.
(49:56):
And eventually she says, okay, I'll appear on came briefly
once in a while and mostly in voice only, but
you will hire a vampire of my choice, and they
agreed to it, and they had a contest to select
a Vampira. Mila wasn't too keen on that because she
(50:18):
wanted Lola Falana to be vampire, which wasn't going to
happen because Lola Plana was a big deal in Las
Vegas at the time. They requested if she had anything
from the original show, and she said, yeah, she had
some scripts and she had pictures of the set. She
would bring those over to Cage J so that they
(50:41):
could peruse them, so they would know how to set
up this new show and how to make the set
look like her set original set that was such a
success for poison bar or marble coffee table, rolled the spider,
the death's head pouch, the color of the sofa red.
And she didn't hear from them anymore, and she tried
(51:04):
to contact them and tried to contact them nothing. So
she finally went to the studio and says, hey, but
gifts well such and those on vacation and such and
so sick and blah blah blah. And then she finally
what she found out was if you come back here,
we've selected a vampiro and we'd like for you to
(51:24):
meet her. Mila thought, now, wait a minute, you told
me I was going to be able to pick the
new vampire. But she thought, well, the least I can
do is go and take a look at her. So
she went to back to the station and Cassandra Peterson
had not arrived yet, and she eventually showed up late
(51:45):
and she was wearing a red wig and some kind
of a full black skirt, and Mila thought, oh brother,
what is this. And one of the bosses of Page Shay,
said to her, this is the new Vampira, and we
gave her the rights. It's between you two girls who
quieted out and Mila lost her stuff right in and
(52:09):
there you did what you gave her the rights, My rights,
she said, some expletive deleted. Let's just say. Out the
door she went, and that was the end of that.
They started production the first day, calling it the Vampire Show,
(52:31):
and Mila had a cease and desist letters sent to them.
You stop right now or I'm gonna sue your butts off,
And they changed the name to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
But she was a rip off, Mila. Mila said, the
only thing that was different between them was the big
boobs and the top not on her head. Other than that,
(52:54):
they were the same. Elvirus. First show called Elvirus Movie
macab Ran from one to ninety six. Hello darling, Yes, sire,
is Lilo Mate that girl with a shape that drives
net a Elvira Mistress of the Dark. It was a
huge success. In the entire time, Mila was attempting to
(53:17):
sue Elvira and k h J TV for taking the
rights to her character. She never won that lawsuit. It
impacted her the rest of her life. She says, she's
going to the bank with my money and she's buying fancy,
million dollar homes. I don't even have electricity. I can't
afford to feed my dog. And you can't blame her.
(53:41):
You can't blame Mila for feeling that way. I would too.
That was supposed to be her show. She was supposed
to be making the money. There was noel Vira at
the beginning. There was only Vampira. I'm bitter about it too. Still,
Mala had acquired enough fame from the Edward Io Pick
that she was doing pretty well. She started to appear
(54:03):
in a number of documentaries about wood and this man
said that he he yearned he had planned to have
a hope to have Vampire in his production. I thought
he was to grab a hold of my heels and
pull me back down into the you know, Nichols and
dimes Meyer from which I had clawed my way up,
and I was instnsed. I thought I wouldn't work for
that idiot. How dare he aspire to me? Right? And
(54:27):
she was successfully selling her art and memorabilia to fans
across the world. Things went very well until I think
around the turn of the century she got evicted from
her house. She lived in a converted garage. She eventually
in two thousand five moved right off sinse At Boulevard
(54:48):
and she was much happier there, and that's where she
passed away. Off Serrano of Sunset in Los Angeles. Mila
Nermie passed away of natural causes on January t was
an eight at the age of This is when her
niece Sandra collected her writings and started to catalog Mila's life.
(55:09):
I asked Sandraw what she admired most about her aunt.
The fact that she never sold out. That has impressed
people a lot. Here she had this character that she created,
and she was offered lots of money to sell her rights.
(55:29):
KBC wanted to syndicate the show. Mila said no, no, no,
I would rather be poverty stricken then lose control of
my character Vampira and her honesty. Mila was brutally honest
and like I said, never sold out, never gave up.
(55:51):
She lived for over six years, most of those years
as a disabled woman and a single woman, and she
served live Hollywood, which is a cutthroat town. Let me
tell you, I've learned that those things really impressed me
about Milo. Finally, Sandra set out to find her long
(56:13):
lost cousin, the child of vampire and Orson Wells, and
eventually she did. He was identified a seventy six year
old David Putter through d n a ancestry dot com
and they matched my daughter and David as first cousin
(56:35):
once removed or something. So he called her on the phone.
And I had been at the grocery store and I
walked in and my daughter had this smug look on
her face, and she says, I know who my lisssn is.
I know his name, I know where he lives, and
I have his phone number. I said, come on, get
(56:58):
out of here. You know that's not even funny. She said, no,
I'm serious. I know his name. And I looked at
her and I said, give it to me now. So
she did, and I was on the phone within one minute.
I mean I was calling, that's how anxious I was.
(57:19):
And I got him on the first call. He asked
me my mother is and I said, oh my god.
Because I had not sold my book yet, it was
not quite finished. I had another chapter and a half
maybe to finish, and then I was going to be done.
And I said, you're talking to the only person in
(57:41):
the world that can tell you everything you'd ever want
to know about your mother. I'm writing a book about
her wife. Really, I said, yes, your mother is my
la Ormi a k a. Vampira And he was silent,
and he says, oh my god, I've waited seventy five
(58:04):
years to know who my mother was, and I find
out she's a vampire distract up. I was so happy.
I have not met him in person yet, but he's
sending for my daughter and I to come visit him
in Vermont from Oregon, and he apparently has his mother's eyes,
and so I'm very anxious to meet David in person.
(58:28):
He'll be the closest thing I'll ever have to a brother.
David's adopted mother died when he was only three, so
he's never known a mother, and I've sent him a
vampire a statue which he proudly displays in his home.
And he feels his mother around him. Now he knows
(58:49):
who she is. He talks to her and calls her mom.
It just touches my heart. He thinks that Mila's there
around Allen. That makes my heart happy. Can come in.
(59:11):
I can have a nice little step on the cat's
tale being a cat, but we don't have a cat tale.
This episode of Ephemeral was written and produced by Trevor Young,
with producers Max and Alex Williams. Sandra Nemi is author
(59:35):
of Glamour Cool, The Passions and Pain of the Real
Vampira Milon Nurmi. Big thanks to Ferrellhouse Publishing for coordinating
the interview. And we want to hear from you. Are
you a vampire fan? Who are your favorite characters from
the horror universe? Let us know on social media. We're
at Ephemeral show and for more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
(01:00:00):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Happy Halloween, mm hm
Ephemeral is production of My Heart three D audio for Folix.
Vasure Listen was that phones. It's that magical time of year,
full of monsters, ghouls, and all manner of horror movies.
In the nineteen fifties, a new idea in horror hit
(00:24):
the airwaves, repurposing vintage scary films for a TV audience.
The host of this endeavor was also something the public
had never seen before, iconic for her piercing screams, morbid humor,
and suggestive costuming. Her name was Milon Nurmi, better known
by the character she created, Vampira, not to be confused
(00:49):
with Elvira, but more on that later. Today, producer Trevor
Young takes us through the haunting life and legacy of
one of horror's most influential character, Vampire. What I needed
a vampire cocktail to settle by Note it will not
only settle them, it will petrified. Mm hm a vampire cockpail?
(01:19):
Do you like it? It hates you. She was sexy,
but she was untouchable. She had a sense of humor,
a bizarre sense of humor. I've had several letters asking
whether olives or cherry should be used in making my cocktail. Well,
actually neither is necessary, since they'd only disintegrate on being
(01:41):
put into the cocktail. However, if you want to use
some gone, if you can drop in an eyeball. Do
still happened to haven't actually went around the house. This
was the nifties, This was during the Eisenhower administration, and
no one had ever seen a person like my Isla.
And she was on television and here she was talking
(02:03):
about how sad it was that her sister had died
and they had to bury her alive, and that she
had Yellow Cross insurance that you could buy because if
you were an unsuccessful suicide, you would have insurance to
try again. My name is Sandra nin Me and I
(02:25):
am the author of the book Glamor Ghoul, which is
a biography of my aunt Mila Normi a k a. Vampira.
Sandra says she never really knew her aunt Mila all
that well, but knew about her from TV. Decades later,
in the nineteen eighties, Sandra decided to track her aunt
(02:47):
Mila down, who by this point was in her mid
to late sixties. I was always obsessed with her, and
I think that was because I was an only child.
And I always wanted a family, a bigger family. And
I had this aunt, Mila in Hollywood that I knew
(03:09):
was beautiful and I thought as a child, kind of celebrity.
And I enlisted the help of the Red Cross to
try to find Mila, and they couldn't find her. Well
at that time, she was going by an alias, and
that alias was Helen Heaven, so that's why they couldn't
find Mila Normi. I remained obsessed. I have to know her.
(03:32):
I wanted to talk to her. And then one day
a state would have it. I got a Star magazine
and there was Milan Normie suing Alvira for ten million
dollars and I went, She's alive, mileas alive. And I
immediately sat down and wrote a letter to her attorneys,
(03:55):
who were mentioned in this article, and I said, please
for were this letter, and they did, and Mila responded
right away, and um we had a long letter writing campaign,
and it wasn't that long before I said, you know,
I'm going to come to Los Angeles and off my
daughter and I went to Hollywood to see my leaf.
(04:20):
I spent a week with my La. I got to
know her. We continued writing and then at Christmas time
of ninety two, she quit writing, and that hurt my feelings.
I thought I had heard her feelings or she was
mad at me for whatever reason. I didn't know. And
(04:42):
I even called the police to get a welfare check
because I thought maybe she died, but they said no,
she's fine, and so I just left her alone. Then
I found out in the newspaper that she died in
two thousand eight. January ten, went to Los Angeles and
(05:02):
got granted to go into her apartment and started picking
up all of her writings. Inside Mile's apartment, Sandra found
an astoundingly detailed record of her aunt's life. It was
full of papers and magazines and folders, and I thought, oh, well,
(05:25):
this is how I can know who she really was.
This is exciting to me. And I had a friend
with me helping me, and I told her anything that
you find with Miles's handwriting keeping will put it in
plastic bags and pictures and you know, photos and things
like that. When we came out of there, I had
(05:47):
three black garbage bags full of writing and sometimes there
was a cohesiveness to it. There were pages and pages
and pages on notebook paper that she had written on
both sides, and sometimes it was just a little note,
like a scrap of paper, or written in the margin
(06:10):
of a calendar. I found a half page glued to
the back of a picture that was hanging on the wall.
I found wadded up pieces of notebook paper in pockets
of old clothes, and I just gathered everything up. I
also found a real to reel tape, and when we
(06:34):
played it, she had recorded it in nineteen sixty six.
But anyway, I have two diaries, a nineteen forty forty
one forty two diary and a nineteen fifty six diary.
And boy, am I glad I got the nineteen fifty
six diary because that was a very busy year for vampire.
(06:58):
And since then Sandra has been years sifting through that ephemera,
dedicating herself to chronicling the story of Milon Nurmi a
k a. Vampira. She was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and
then her father got a job in Pittsburgh, Massachusetts, so
they moved there. And in nineteen twenty six, her father,
(07:21):
who was an editor of a Finnish newspaper in America,
there was a civil war going in Finland and he
wanted to be right there to see was going on
so he could report it. And he decided to take
his wife's inheritance and go to Finland for maybe a year,
(07:42):
he said, And he left his wife and his two
small children, and he came back a year later, and
my grandmother had completely changed. She was no longer this
submissive housewife. She was defiant, and she had learned to alcohol.
Then the family moved to Ashfield, Ohio, and they were
(08:04):
there for maybe ten years, my lad friends. And then
in the winter of nineteen thirty four he was sent
to Duluse, and it was in the heart of the depression,
and they almost starved to death when they lost his job.
He was only doing a few hours on the radio
a week and it wasn't enough to sustain them. They
(08:27):
didn't even have electricity, They had very little food. Finally,
and Angel came through and said they wanted him back
in Ashbola. So back they went and thrived. Mila accompanied
her father on lecture tours. He was much in demand,
(08:48):
he said himself. He was the man of ten thousand speeches,
and he lectured against the eagles of alcohol, of course,
and he lectured for a president. He was paid to
stump for Herbert Hoover, and later on he became a
huge roonent of FDR. But Mila went with him and
(09:13):
sometimes she spoke to but she listened to all of
his sermonizing. She knew his fire and brimstone approach. Mila
told her father that she wanted to be an artist,
and my grandfather thought artists meant someone who painted or
drew pictures. He didn't know the meaning of what she meant.
(09:35):
She wanted to be an artiste, you know, to be
free and to be friends with people like her and
nothing to do with domesticity at all, no way. She
wanted freedom to express herself, to be creative. Eventually, the
family settled in a story at Oregon, but apparently Mila
(09:58):
quickly got bored and yearned for more exciting life. She
was going to go to New York, and the parents
put the kai bosh on that and only agreed to
allow her to go to Los Angeles, where her mother's
brother and wife lived. And that's how she got to Hollywood,
and that's where Mila's started looking for work, first as
(10:21):
a radio monologist. She was interested, very very much interested
in being the first female or some wells because she
was enamored with Orson when she heard him speak on
the radio. Strange enough seems to sit in my peaceful
study Princeton writing down this last chapter of the record.
(10:44):
Begun at a deserted farm and groove was new. Strange
to watch children playing in the streets, the sound of
his voice and the words that he chose, and he
was her God. That was who she wanted to be.
But she didn't have much luck getting a job in
that area. You know. She tried a few things. She
(11:05):
worked in a department store and was a model perhaps
and print ads because she had this beautiful face. It
was also around this time that Mila started developing her
unique fashion sense, and it was largely inspired by a
certain Disney movie. She's no alginary apple. It's a magic
(11:27):
rushing apple, wishing apple, one mite, an whole your dream
to come true? Yes, girl. She went to see snow
White and she was watching it and there was snow
white and humming and happy and this good little girl
(11:51):
and washing the dishes of the dwarves and doing their
laundry and singing well doing it, and oh my god,
Mila was his sickened by that. But then when the
Evil Queen came on the stage, all powerful and sexy
and beautiful and demanding and in control, that's when Mila's
(12:12):
brain exploded. And that's when she said, that's who I
want to be. I don't want to be evil, what
I want to be everything. She is the Evil Queen,
and she never forgot that. She adapted the part of
the Evil Queen personna into Vampira. Like many people starting
(12:33):
off in Hollywood, Mila had a number of tough breaks
and terrible experiences. Early on. She went to I can't
remember the person's name, but they were advertising for a
radio monologist, exactly what Mila did, and so she applied,
and mind you, she's only nineteen years old from Astoria
(12:54):
or again, and goes into this shabby little studio type
thing and the guy is there by himself. The tricks
here into signing a piece of paper and he takes
her in the back to take her picture, and then
he asked her to become nude from the waist up,
and all she had to cover herself was some see
through scarves, and Milo was horrified. She knew she was
(13:17):
locked in into that office, to that back part of
that office. She couldn't escape, and it was upstairs. No
one would hear her scream, so she complied, and he
took pictures of her with these scarves. She couldn't wait
to get dressed, and as she flew out of the
(13:39):
office after he unlocked it, he said that the proofs
will be ready on Wednesday or whatever, and she just
stormed out, running away from the man. And of course
it was just a sham because the proofs never showed up,
and even when she went back to the office, the
guy was gone and locked up. He was charlatan. And
(14:01):
then she tried to I can't remember who Mr Clark,
I think his name was. She went to interview for
a job there, and he made a pass at her.
He started moving his hands up her skirt and she
wrestled him and ended up breaking his glasses and ran
(14:21):
out of his office. And then she said to herself,
Hollywood is just filthy. Those were her words that she wrote.
But one day she met someone who had changed her
life forever. She went with a friend of hers because
it was the friend's birthday, ended up at Lusso and Frank's.
They had grabbed a serviceman outside two be their escort
(14:46):
into the bar because Milo wasn't twenty one yet, but
they went in with the soldier and they sat down.
Of course, they got served, and then Mila heard dis
voice in the back of her and she couldn't believe
her ears was Parson Wealth in person, her God, and
she couldn't help herself, and she ran over to his
(15:09):
table and started babbling whatever it is that she did.
Then realized that she had interrupted him in his inner
companions and apologized and went back to her table, which
was now gone. Her friend and the soldier boy had
decided to will be gone out, so now she was alone.
(15:31):
So she just sat there wondering what to do. And
here comes ours and Wealth over to her cable by
himself and invites her over to his table. So she
goes over there, and it's time to go, and he
calls the cab and gives her a kiss. She lived
in a hotel then, I think the Commodore hotel. He
(15:54):
got out of the cab and he said, I want
to see where you live, and he walked her to
the door. Didn't guess her again. He left shortly thereafter,
a bouquet of flowers arrived at the desk. They began
a romance at the time. It was during the war,
and Orson was always into magic, and he was putting
(16:17):
up a type of carnival off lab Brea in Los Angeles,
where there were all kinds of tints and games, and
he had his celebrity friends come and do tricks like
sawing a woman in half and eating snakes and all
of this sort of carnival kind of stuff. Well, Orson
(16:39):
had quit sending flowers or coming after Mila and had
been quite a while, and Mila was getting a little alarmed.
What has happened? As he ditched me? Is he not
interested in me anymore? What's going on? She went to
the little house on Hacienda that she had been seeing
Orson that and a man and showed up in a bathrobe,
(17:02):
and it wasn't Orson, and he said he didn't know
Mr Wells, and so Mila left. She thought, well, maybe
he's moved. I don't know that man. Then she went
to the carnival to look for Orson. There were pictures
of all these celebrities that were going to be appearing,
and she looked at one of these pictures and it
(17:22):
was a man in the bath robe and his name
was Joseph Cotton. He was a famous actor in those
days and also a very close friend of ors and Belts.
So then myla the tune two together. Uh huh. These
two men have rented this house to entertain their girlfriends,
(17:46):
whoever they may be, and so I'm just one of
his girlfriends. Got only knows how many more girlfriends he's gone. Then,
while Marla was stewing in her apartment and not working,
she realized she was pregnant and it was Orson Wells child.
(18:09):
And very shortly, like the same day or the next day,
she was listening to the radio and they announced that
Orson Wells had married Rita Hayward that morning at City Hall.
So Mila's world was plunged into complete blackness, and you
can imagine the sun was put up for adoption, and
(18:33):
up until only very recently, no one knew who the
secret child was. But after she gave birth, Mila decided
to shake off her grief and focus on her career,
and that's when she got her first big break. After
(18:56):
an initial string of disasters in Los Angeles, Milare fully
moved to New York City and there she nailed a
role in a stage play called Katherine was Great with
May West. She got a part as a handmaiden in
Katherine Was Great, but she irritated May West because she overacted,
(19:17):
and May said, as an asside to the director, does
it have to be so big? Because Mila was supposed
to scream and fall to the floor and faint as
she was informed her husband died and Mila went overboard,
and May didn't like it. She didn't want to be
up staged, and eventually May fired Mila after several months
(19:42):
on Broadway. While she was in New York, Mila made
another celebrity friend, Marlon Brando. And yet before this evening
is over, your ma give me the brush. You might
forget your manners, You might refuse to st He was
(20:03):
in his first Broadway plate and it was called I
Remember Mama. So they were both on Broadway at the
same time. And one of the other handmaidens that was
in Katherine Was Great was dating Marlon Brando and she
was bitching and complaining about what a cad he was.
He was there one time for her and then he
(20:24):
was missing, and she just didn't take it anymore. So
Mila listened and listen, thought, you know, give me this
guy's address. I'm going to go over here and take
care of him. He's just not going to treat you
like that. So she did. She went over there about
two thirty three o'clock one morning, knocked on the door
and this guy answered, and it was Marlin, and she
(20:44):
started reading him the Riot Act and he invited her
into his apartment and she didn't leave until noon the
next day. And her friend from the play never spoke
to her again, because obviously Milon enjoyed herself with Marlon Brando.
They started, uh, well, she never came right out and
(21:04):
said it was a romance, but I'm pretty sure it
was because she said I have to keep my female
side under control, because obviously she found him very attractive,
and they dated. I have a photo. It's an eight
by ten and Marlon is in costume for a movie.
It looks like a revolutionary war type uniform and Mila
(21:28):
is dressed to the nines like she's going out for dinner.
I have it, and it's very very important to me.
Then Mila got cast in a horror slash burlesque Broadway
show called Spook Scandals, and it only played for one night,
but that one night turned out to be pretty great
(21:50):
for my love. Because she was inundated with offers from
Hollywood by famous directors and producers, and she had her
pick of who to choose to go to Hollywood and
be interviewed by, and she chose Howard Hawks. He was
the man who discovered Lauren the Call, and he was very,
(22:13):
very famous. Everybody knew Howard Hawks. He was a big deal.
And she went home. She had a contract with Howard Hawks,
and she waited for I don't know how long, maybe
it was a couple of days, and the phone never rang. Well,
Mila was incensed, and she went back to Howard Hawks
(22:34):
and sat in his office and took out the contract
from her first and ripped it up into pieces and
threw it on his desk and said to him, and
she wrote this down, please kindly dispose of these in
your nearest waste basket. And out the door she went,
thus killing any opportunities she would ever have to be
(22:58):
an actress since she was blacklisted from traditional acting rules,
Mila decided she would work on doing her own thing,
something entirely unique in fringe from Hollywood, and in October
of nineteen fifty three, she unveiled a new persona at
the bal Caribe Masquerade Ball. Apparently, this val Koreb was
(23:20):
an annual event right before Halloween. It was a costume
ball and it was held at the Moulin Rouge. So
he told Mila about it, and he said, you have
to come and just put on a costume. Income It's
so much fun and they'll be prizes and mile about. Wow,
maybe I should do that because I'm wanting to get discovered.
(23:41):
I want to be on television. Because she knew the
door to movies was shut, so she decided to go
as Charles Adams unnamed character at the time from his
cartoon strip The Adams Family. So I went there and
I practiced my victory in kurach. She could, I expect
(24:01):
it to win. But I had lavender makeup, you know,
powdy with a little lavender, looking as though I had
risen from the grave turned onto the blue. You know
their footage like that. That lady was flat chested. She
bought some ray on from a fabric store, and she
rented a wig from Max Factor and Indian wig, so
(24:21):
it was a long black wig, and then she applied
her own makeup. She went barefoot and the dress was
low in the back, high in the front. She did
not sense her waist. She just wore it. The dress
loose and raggedy. The sleeves were tattered and the ham
line was tattered. And she put on tomb like makeup,
(24:43):
she said, very very white, with a little bit of
purple lavender. They went to the ball and Mila one
the costume prize, which was a transistor radio. But she
had caught the eye of a Stromberg program and Jeer
ABC Channel two, Los Angeles, and he looked for her
(25:05):
for five months, from October to March. He finally talked
to this guy, the one who had encouraged her the
beginning to go to the ball, Thrieve, and he says, oh,
she's easy to find. So they found me and they
told me to come in, and I came in, he said,
coming in costume. And I came in during the Eyes
(25:26):
of March wearing a great Violenciaga cape coat, and the
winds winds of the Eyes of March were flapping it
and people were coming out of a little bubalure saying, Ah,
there's Hunt's vampire, There's I had no hair. You just
didn't see ladies with crew cuts in those days. But
I had all sorts of things women didn't see in
those days, you know. And Milo was interviewed by Hunt Stromberg.
(25:48):
He told her what he wanted. He wanted her to
be the horror host. And she said, well, who else
are you going to have? From Adam's family. It was
a cartoon and that was published in the New Yorker
in those days. And he said, oh, well, you know,
we can't afford anybody else. We just want you. And
Mila said, well, I can't possibly do it then, because
he would be ripping off Charles Adams. This particular character
(26:12):
is his character. And he says, well, then I don't
know what we're going to do. And she says, well,
can I come up with something a little different? And
he says, I'll give you four days. So Mila went
home and she took her costume from October and turned
it backwards. So then I saw a book by John
(26:33):
Willie Bondage and Discipline. I said, huh, that's it. I
had been a pin up model. I've been doing cheesecake
right at that time. So I took the cheesecake and
the Bondage and Discipline, and I since your wasted her waist.
She sins too in those days, nineteen inches. And I
put in the fishnet hose, I slipped the dress, I
(26:55):
changed more tissues. Statement right, I gave her Hollywood makeup,
and remembering too that there was a bit of Greta
Garbo in hearing something a little Dostoyevsky and something just
a wee bit spooky, like Norma Desmond, who had just
turned me on big and some set boulevard. I admit,
of my mind, we'll bury him in the garden, and
(27:16):
he said he laws against that. I wouldn't know. I
don't care anyway. I want the coffin to be white,
and I wanted specially lined with seconds. Now when you
see it, it looks like I'm imitating Norma Desmond, which
I was, but I didn't know it, you know, a subliminal.
She wore bust pads because she wanted to bust in
the hips, to be remarkably larger than this teeny tiny ways.
(27:40):
She wanted to look like she was not even human,
like she came in parts. Then she glued on some
fall fingernails that were three inches long and painted the nails.
She made them out of margarine tubs, and she got
herself a black wig that she rented from a store downtown.
(28:03):
She walked in to an interview with Hunt Stromberg four
days later, dressed as what we know now as Vampira.
Aunt Stromberg goes forward. Of course, this was exactly who
he wanted, and a star was born, and so Mila
(28:25):
was signed to bring her character to live TV on
The Vampire Show Me That. So it premiered on April
Theory four, and then the next night it was on
(28:47):
at its regular time midnight. Made first nineteen fifty four.
She didn't have the beginning where she walked down the
corridor with my asthma dry eye. She didn't have that yet.
That came a few weeks Slater. But she would just
introduce herself, Hello, I am Vampira. And she had this tiny,
tiny waist and this low cut blouse and this tattered
(29:11):
sleeves and hemline and like she said, my tall cold shoes,
black hair, bizarre makeup with boomerang eyebrows that are sway,
and an overly pronounced red lip where she didn't see
it because it wasn't color television, but you could tell
it was a different color lip. And started talking about
(29:33):
death and how beautiful death was and d a team
and electric chairs. I've often been asked why I don't
like my ethics electricity everybody no electricity, which is and
you can imagine what the audience thought in this Eisenhower era,
(29:56):
like what is this? Who is that? Woman that never
seen anything like that? The idea was that Vampire would
host a new horror movie each night. She'd introduced the movie,
come back for ad bricks, and close it out when
it was finished, all while making clever quote unquote jokes
(30:18):
are Little Fairy Care United. It's called their Guest. The
thirteen makes it timely, topical and terrified. It's about a
humorous fellow who dies telling a joke something of a
dead pen comedian. Yees, put me dark in the room
(30:45):
and we shall come in. And right from the get
go she was insanely popular. People were riding to the
station wanting to know more, more information, and within a
couple of weeks they had to bump up the time
(31:06):
start from twelve to eleven so more people would be awake.
And then Life Magazine called Life Magazine. If you made
Life Magazine in those days, you were a star. You
had made it. And Life Magazine sent a photographer here
(31:27):
found to Los Angeles to film myla, and that's when
the hallway Candelabra dry Eyes entrance mark its beginning. They
did that for Life magazine. I think she had a
four page spread. It wasn't just one page, it was
four pages. It might have even been five. He took
(31:49):
pictures of her in the back of I can't remember
what make car was, but it was a convertible and
was an old, tiny Victorian age car, and Islao was
sit in the back with a parasol over her head
to keep the sun out, but the parasol was all
shredded up. And then she would scream at green light
(32:13):
and I want the convertible to go through the red lights.
So she was photographed doing that, people staring at her,
like in broad daylight, like who is that woman dressed
like that screaming. She was a hit. She was a
huge hit. It was nineteen fifty before somebody talking about
(32:34):
death and beautiful suicides and eyeballs and frog brains and
the eighteens and all my words, what else is she
going to come up with? Sandra says that Mila felt
more comfortable as Vampira than she did as herself, especially
at the beginning. I think that was her alter ego,
(32:55):
because sometimes she would just put on Vampira makeup. She
had short blonde hair, and she would just leave her
short blonde hair and put on her Mila clothes and
go down to Googie's with a vampire face. I think
there's a quote in the book something about hiding behind
(33:15):
the makeup. She could be more aloof, she could feel
more powerful, she could be more distant if she had
her vampire face. Some vampire gave her permission to be
how she wanted to be. It was that little bit
of the evil queen persona. She liked it. Mila claimed
(33:37):
that she herself was very, very shy. She said that
several times. I don't see that. I don't see Mila
is being shy, but she claims that she was. Maybe
she was when she was younger. I don't know. But
she enjoyed being Vampira. She enjoyed every moment of it.
(33:57):
She loved her. She's I love vampire. I reshoosed my child.
I brought her up and I fed her and I
took care of her. And now when Milo was older,
she would say, now it's time for her to take
care of me. As Vampire became more popular, Mila was
invited to join Bella Lagosi on the Red Skeleton show.
(34:20):
I think there's somebody it's my sister that i'mpire. Yeah.
The Vampire show was eventually canceled in nine, but Mila
briefly took the show over to k h J t V,
where she retained rights to the Vampire character. Meanwhile, Mila
(34:43):
started hanging out among the Hollywood elite. Schwabs was the
celebrity hangout drug store. Everybody went to Schwabs. That's where
they got their medicine, their pills, and their narcotics and
everything else that they needed to function. And the is
oftentimes is standing lonely, and so Mila hung out there too.
(35:05):
But then a new coffee shop was built next door.
In fact, they shared a common wall, Schwab's and Googies.
Googies was a coffee shop. You walked in and to
the left there was a horseshoe type counter, probably with
a Fike case in the middle. So the people like
(35:27):
Mila started hanging out in Googies. It was the place
to be in Hollywood if you were just starting out
in the movies, if you hope to be an actor
or an actress. If you were a rebel, if you
were a free spirit, if you were young, you went
to Googies. The old school stayed at Schwab's, and Mila
(35:52):
often said that there almost was a battle between the
Schwaby Arrows and the Googie Els, and every once in
a while they back and forth. Maryland and Rowe would
come from Schwabs and come over and hang out at
Googies once in a while, and so would Sakabor, and
a few of the others would drop in to stay hi,
but mostly it was the young rebel type people. One
(36:16):
of those rebels was perhaps the most famous rebel of
all time, James Dean. You're tearing me up. Fire what
you say? One thing? He said another and everybody changed
his back again. She didn't know who he was. So
Mila is sitting there with another guy, and a motorcycle
(36:37):
drives up, and that was James Dean, and into google
Eas he comes, and she said she jumped up out
of her boot and banged her crazy bones. And the
guy with Jack and her said he thought Mila had
a stroke because she was just messprises, staring with a
(36:57):
peculiar look on her face at the didn't change and
he said, what what what, mylon miless. Is that guy
right there, right there, right there, that came in the door,
who is that? I must meet him? And the guy
turned around and looked. He said, Oh, that's James Dean.
I was just in a movie with him. I want
to meet him. I've got to meet him right now.
(37:20):
They were introduced over by the cigarette machine. Anyway, that
very same day he asked her to go on his
motorcycle up to his apartment. They became thick and fast
friends after that very platonic relationship, because I think from
the get go this is nothing, Mila wrote. Jimmy became
(37:41):
the son she had to give up for adoption, and
Mila became Jimmy's surrogate mother. She was always giving him
advice because she was eight years older than he was,
not a lot of years, but she was more mature
and wise her and she was always giving it, don't
(38:02):
do that, don't do that, do it this way, do
you know? And usually he just ignored her, but he
listened and they were good friends. And then here's the
bizarre part. Jimmy was an unknown when they met. He
had just completed East of Eden, which was his very
first movie. He only made three. In East of Eden,
(38:27):
his character name was Cal spelled with the sea, and
Mila had given her adopted son and name, so she
talked to him even though he wasn't there, and she
named him Cal with the Cave. So I wonder what
Mila thought when she went, oh, he's Cal prassed and
I have a cow. So this is the Great Universe
(38:50):
telling me you're not alone. Your surrogate son is here.
That's my thoughts. Mila and James Dean developed a passionate
friendship that lasted for years, but it was also a
friendship that would end in disaster for both of them.
(39:14):
On sept James Dean died in a tragic car accident
and it blew apart miss World. I don't think Mila
ever loved anyone in this world as much as she
loved James Dean. She never got over his death ever.
(39:35):
She loved him like a mother would. She couldn't believe
that twenty four years in his life was snuffed out.
She had to leave town because there were too many
memories of Jimmy here. She was going to go to
New York. Marlon hurt. She was going to go to
New York, and he offered to give her some money
to get to New York, and she wouldn't take it.
(39:56):
She had a couple hundred bucks, and so off she
went to New York and beout herself an apartment. And
as soon as she got back to Los Angeles, here
was Whisper magazine on the news stand. And Whisper magazine
was the lesser cousin of Confidential magazine. It was the
gossip magazine of all the stars, and on the cover
(40:21):
was a picture of Vampira and James Stein, and the
headlines screamed something about that Vampira had caused the death
of James Dean because she put a curse on him,
and Mila contemplated suicide. That was it. That was the
straw that broke the Camals back, the person that she
(40:43):
loved more than anything in the world, she was accused
of killing him. With her show canceled and her best
friend killed, Mila fell out of work in Hollywood. However,
in she got an offer from director Ed Wood to
play a part in one of his movies, Can Your
(41:05):
Heart Stand? The shocking facts about Great Robbers brought out
of space. She didn't leave a lot of information behind
about the Edwit movie, but I know that she had
met Edwood add a birthday party for Bella Lagossie's son.
(41:28):
He had said something to her, well, you're going to
have to be in one of my movies sometimes, and
Mila said to herself, not a check, are you kidding me?
She thought he was pathetic. One way to kill your
career is star with ned Wood movie. So then he
sent one of his people over to Mila's apartment to
(41:53):
ask her to be in his movie. Mila had lost
her job as Vampira due to creative differences. Let's say
Jimmy was dead and she said, nah, I don't think so,
and he says two dollars, And boy did that look
good for my La because she was almost like a
(42:13):
cat food, like she said, and she had all these
cats to be so well, maybe just leave the script here,
but Adam. At first, Mila decided to leave Edward hanging
and instead took a few other gigs. A few months later,
Liberacci came calling the Las Vegas Hilton takes great pleasure
(42:34):
in presenting the Liberaci Show at starring Liberaci because Bella
Lagosi was supposed to be co starring with Liberaci in
Las Vegas, but Bella became very very ill and couldn't
dropped out, so he suggested my La. So Liberaci took
(42:54):
him out upon it and he asked Myla to be
his co star in Las Vegas for two weeks, and
she jumped at the chance because Liberaci was the highest
paid celebrity at the time. That's where she went, and
that's where she met Elvis. Mila would keep running into
these people, I tell you. Elvis was starting at exactly
(43:17):
the same time across the street at the Old Frontier
and Mila was across the street at the Riviera. So
they formed a romance. But when she got home, Mila
found waiting at her doorstep the script for Edwards new
movie then Cold Grave Robbers from outer space. Greetings, my friend,
(43:39):
we are all interested in the future, for that is
where you and I are going to spend the rest
of all lives. And remember, my friend Fujun, events such
as these will affect you in the future. Mila never
touched it. It just sat there, and then finally Edwards
friend came back and said, we're going to start filming
(44:02):
here in November. You know, are you on, and she says, well,
I've looked at the script now, and the script is
so inane. I can't say any of it. I can't
bring myself to say a word. It's so stupid. And
this guy apparently said, well, we don't care. We only
want your name anyway, and so that's why she didn't
(44:27):
speak the word during the entire movie. Vampire's role in
the eventually titled Plan nine from Outer Space was entirely silent,
but her presence was a huge part of the film.
I was initially offered some lines, but the fact is
(44:48):
that the character, although I was billed as Vampire, the
character wasn't Vampire as I had conceived her. Vampire as
I had conceived her was giddy, outrageous, and this was
a different kind of She was in a trance, and
I just thought it would better if she was in
a trance, and I asked her, please do it mutely. Still,
Mila was embarrassed to have done it. She didn't think
(45:10):
anyone would see it. She was hoping that nobody would
see it or recognize her or think about it. And
I don't think she saw the movie in its entirety
until like but she was shocked, surprised that it had
become a cult favorite, and it was also voted the
(45:32):
worst movie of all time. And I used to like
to think about Citizen Kane Orson Well's the best movie
of all time, Plan nine the worst movie of all time,
and they had a baby for better or worse. Plan
nine is considered one of Vampire's most famous and iconic roles.
When the movie had a cult resurgence in the nineteen eighties,
(45:55):
Vampira also had a new boost and popularity then Tim
Burton biopic called ed Wood, where actor Lisa Marie portrayed
Vampire in the film, pardon me, miss Vampire. Yes, you
don't know me, but I'm Edward. I'm a film producer
and I'm currently in production on a science fiction piece
with Bella Legosi and Swedish wrestler Toward Johnson. I don't understand.
(46:17):
Do you want my autograph? No? I I think my
film is perfect for you. You want me to show
it on my TV program? Well, I have nothing to
do with that. You should call the station man and
dredge Hannel seven. No, no, no, no, no no. I
don't want you to show the movie. I want you
to be in it. Look, I'm with some friends and
we're about to eat Lese. It would just take one second.
(46:37):
Come on over at meet the backers. There is a
really nice dentist from Oxnark. Look, buddy, I've got real
offers from real studios. I don't need to blow some
dentists for apart. Forget it. She went out to lunch
with Lisa Marie and she liked her because she was
fellow Sagittarian. They both had, you know, November d Stamper birthdays.
(46:58):
The one thing she didn't lie that Lisa Marie did,
and she says, when I posed as Vampira, I crooked
my elbows and put my hands on my abdomen so
you could see my tiny waist. That was very, very
important to the character. And Lisa Marie would put her
hands on her hips. That's not the way it's done.
(47:19):
And I told her before she did it how to
pose herself. Mila was very particular about her character and
that's one thing she did not like. I didn't think
it was that true to Vampira. I thought it showed
Mila as Mila. She had long blonde hair. Mila had
short blonde hair always and sort of Gloomy Cuss. Mila
(47:45):
really was a funny person. She cracked jokes, she was
very personable. In the movie, she was just sort of angry.
That's how I looked at it, so I didn't think
it was accurate. Mila didn't do much act or make
too many vampire appearances after Plan nine. She instead ran
an antique store called Vampire's Attic, on top of a
(48:07):
few other odd jobs. But when she got a second
wind of fame from the Edwood hype in the eighties
and nineties, she reveled in the spotlight. I think it
did have an effect on her. I think she loved
it because then on top of being in demand, she
was able to sell her artwork on eBay and support herself.
(48:31):
That made her very excited, and so she did a
lot of drawings and paintings, and I don't think she
ever did any pros. She did some sketching that were
very good. She did a pencil catching of Armond Brando,
she did Jimmy very well. And then paintings. I have
(48:51):
one of her paintings. A fan of hers sent it
to me and I treasure it. And she was able
to sell photographs and she went to conventions, horror conventions,
and she was able to sell her photos for twenty
dollars a piece autographs, so that put money in her
(49:12):
coffers and she desperately needed it. Fifteen silent minutes, which
has given me an entire new career. Thank you, Mr Wood.
You're listening with such renewed interest in Vampira. K h
J TV decided they wanted to resurrect the Vampire Show,
so in they asked Mila to return to TV, but
(49:34):
it didn't quite go as planned. They had done a
lot of talking to Mila. They wanted to revive the
Vampire show, and Mila finally said, okay, but I'm not
going to appear on camera. I'm too old. And they
finally talked her into making appearances as Vampira's mother, and
she said, well, Vampira doesn't have a mother. She just evolved.
(49:56):
And eventually she says, okay, I'll appear on came briefly
once in a while and mostly in voice only, but
you will hire a vampire of my choice, and they
agreed to it, and they had a contest to select
a Vampira. Mila wasn't too keen on that because she
(50:18):
wanted Lola Falana to be vampire, which wasn't going to
happen because Lola Plana was a big deal in Las
Vegas at the time. They requested if she had anything
from the original show, and she said, yeah, she had
some scripts and she had pictures of the set. She
would bring those over to Cage J so that they
(50:41):
could peruse them, so they would know how to set
up this new show and how to make the set
look like her set original set that was such a
success for poison bar or marble coffee table, rolled the spider,
the death's head pouch, the color of the sofa red.
And she didn't hear from them anymore, and she tried
(51:04):
to contact them and tried to contact them nothing. So
she finally went to the studio and says, hey, but
gifts well such and those on vacation and such and
so sick and blah blah blah. And then she finally
what she found out was if you come back here,
we've selected a vampiro and we'd like for you to
(51:24):
meet her. Mila thought, now, wait a minute, you told
me I was going to be able to pick the
new vampire. But she thought, well, the least I can
do is go and take a look at her. So
she went to back to the station and Cassandra Peterson
had not arrived yet, and she eventually showed up late
(51:45):
and she was wearing a red wig and some kind
of a full black skirt, and Mila thought, oh brother,
what is this. And one of the bosses of Page Shay,
said to her, this is the new Vampira, and we
gave her the rights. It's between you two girls who
quieted out and Mila lost her stuff right in and
(52:09):
there you did what you gave her the rights, My rights,
she said, some expletive deleted. Let's just say. Out the
door she went, and that was the end of that.
They started production the first day, calling it the Vampire Show,
(52:31):
and Mila had a cease and desist letters sent to them.
You stop right now or I'm gonna sue your butts off,
And they changed the name to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
But she was a rip off, Mila. Mila said, the
only thing that was different between them was the big
boobs and the top not on her head. Other than that,
(52:54):
they were the same. Elvirus. First show called Elvirus Movie
macab Ran from one to ninety six. Hello darling, Yes, sire,
is Lilo Mate that girl with a shape that drives
net a Elvira Mistress of the Dark. It was a
huge success. In the entire time, Mila was attempting to
(53:17):
sue Elvira and k h J TV for taking the
rights to her character. She never won that lawsuit. It
impacted her the rest of her life. She says, she's
going to the bank with my money and she's buying fancy,
million dollar homes. I don't even have electricity. I can't
afford to feed my dog. And you can't blame her.
(53:41):
You can't blame Mila for feeling that way. I would too.
That was supposed to be her show. She was supposed
to be making the money. There was noel Vira at
the beginning. There was only Vampira. I'm bitter about it too. Still,
Mala had acquired enough fame from the Edward Io Pick
that she was doing pretty well. She started to appear
(54:03):
in a number of documentaries about wood and this man
said that he he yearned he had planned to have
a hope to have Vampire in his production. I thought
he was to grab a hold of my heels and
pull me back down into the you know, Nichols and
dimes Meyer from which I had clawed my way up,
and I was instnsed. I thought I wouldn't work for
that idiot. How dare he aspire to me? Right? And
(54:27):
she was successfully selling her art and memorabilia to fans
across the world. Things went very well until I think
around the turn of the century she got evicted from
her house. She lived in a converted garage. She eventually
in two thousand five moved right off sinse At Boulevard
(54:48):
and she was much happier there, and that's where she
passed away. Off Serrano of Sunset in Los Angeles. Mila
Nermie passed away of natural causes on January t was
an eight at the age of This is when her
niece Sandra collected her writings and started to catalog Mila's life.
(55:09):
I asked Sandraw what she admired most about her aunt.
The fact that she never sold out. That has impressed
people a lot. Here she had this character that she created,
and she was offered lots of money to sell her rights.
(55:29):
KBC wanted to syndicate the show. Mila said no, no, no,
I would rather be poverty stricken then lose control of
my character Vampira and her honesty. Mila was brutally honest
and like I said, never sold out, never gave up.
(55:51):
She lived for over six years, most of those years
as a disabled woman and a single woman, and she
served live Hollywood, which is a cutthroat town. Let me
tell you, I've learned that those things really impressed me
about Milo. Finally, Sandra set out to find her long
(56:13):
lost cousin, the child of vampire and Orson Wells, and
eventually she did. He was identified a seventy six year
old David Putter through d n a ancestry dot com
and they matched my daughter and David as first cousin
(56:35):
once removed or something. So he called her on the phone.
And I had been at the grocery store and I
walked in and my daughter had this smug look on
her face, and she says, I know who my lisssn is.
I know his name, I know where he lives, and
I have his phone number. I said, come on, get
(56:58):
out of here. You know that's not even funny. She said, no,
I'm serious. I know his name. And I looked at
her and I said, give it to me now. So
she did, and I was on the phone within one minute.
I mean I was calling, that's how anxious I was.
(57:19):
And I got him on the first call. He asked
me my mother is and I said, oh my god.
Because I had not sold my book yet, it was
not quite finished. I had another chapter and a half
maybe to finish, and then I was going to be done.
And I said, you're talking to the only person in
(57:41):
the world that can tell you everything you'd ever want
to know about your mother. I'm writing a book about
her wife. Really, I said, yes, your mother is my
la Ormi a k a. Vampira And he was silent,
and he says, oh my god, I've waited seventy five
(58:04):
years to know who my mother was, and I find
out she's a vampire distract up. I was so happy.
I have not met him in person yet, but he's
sending for my daughter and I to come visit him
in Vermont from Oregon, and he apparently has his mother's eyes,
and so I'm very anxious to meet David in person.
(58:28):
He'll be the closest thing I'll ever have to a brother.
David's adopted mother died when he was only three, so
he's never known a mother, and I've sent him a
vampire a statue which he proudly displays in his home.
And he feels his mother around him. Now he knows
(58:49):
who she is. He talks to her and calls her mom.
It just touches my heart. He thinks that Mila's there
around Allen. That makes my heart happy. Can come in.
(59:11):
I can have a nice little step on the cat's
tale being a cat, but we don't have a cat tale.
This episode of Ephemeral was written and produced by Trevor Young,
with producers Max and Alex Williams. Sandra Nemi is author
(59:35):
of Glamour Cool, The Passions and Pain of the Real
Vampira Milon Nurmi. Big thanks to Ferrellhouse Publishing for coordinating
the interview. And we want to hear from you. Are
you a vampire fan? Who are your favorite characters from
the horror universe? Let us know on social media. We're
at Ephemeral show and for more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
(01:00:00):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. Happy Halloween, mm hm
Ephemeral News
Host
Alex Williams
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