Sandra Niemi - Glamour Ghoul

Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi

2021 Sandra Niemi

Published by Feral House, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

eISBN: 9781627311069

Cover illustration by Mark Hammermeister.

Back cover photo courtesy of the Jove de Renzy collection.

Feral House

1240 W. Sims Way Suite 124

Port Townsend, WA 98368

FERALHOUSE.COM

Glamour Ghoul

THE PASSIONS AND PAIN OF THE REAL VAMPIRA,

Maila Nurmi

SANDRA NIEMI

This book is dedicated to my cousin, David Putter.
Found, at last.

To my family, Amy, Noelle, Liam. David and Judi.
I love you more.

Table of Contents

Bring on the empty hearses that I may people them with my enemies.

Isnt that, after all, why people commit autobiography? To aggrandize themselves and to destroy their enemies?

In any case, of course, the enemy shall be felled quite accidentally as the flailing sword of truth decapitates them. Nowall nonsense asideyou know I have no enemies. Only discarded loversand they have their memories.

Maila Nurmi

Vampira. Courtesy of the Jove de Renzy Collection,

When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back to what shed always been.

But she had wings.

Dean Jackson

Foreword

Dear Aunt Maila:

You grew wings. By the time you reached your 18th birthday, youd begun to display them in splendiferous Technicolor, much to the consternation and confusion of your family. Collectively, they clung fast to their caterpillar consciousnesses, shook their heads, and made excuses. Your youthful impulsivity was only a phase, they said, which would pass with maturity, and then youd commit to the traditional life they longed for you and expected of you. That of marriage and motherhood. But what does a caterpillar know of a butterfly?

Your innate desire for creative expression and the freedom to cultivate a lifestyle far different than their own was never taken seriously, and so you did the only thing you could to survive. You flew away.

Did you know you became a lifetime obsession of mine? From the first time I saw you in 1953, at age six, pre-Vampira, all beautiful blonde hair, red lips, and eyelashes, wearing transparent heels that looked every bit like glass slippers, you became my own private Cinderella.

During Vampiras early years, you appeared on television on The Red Skelton Show. I looked in vain for you throughout the show. It was only afterward I was told that the black shrouded woman, whom I thought was a witch, was you. Although it was only June, I assumed the show was called Red Skeleton as an early homage to Halloween.

It was another two years before I saw you again, and this time, Cinderella was in love. Crazy, silly, mindless love. Short hair, no makeup, baggy sweater, capri pants, and barefootyou uttered barely a word to us and instead perched on your lovers lap and whispered in each others ear, giggling like schoolgirls. At nine years old, I was entranced and secretly wondered if someday this kind of behavior was in my future.

In 1957, Grandma died, and I saw you for the third time. No longer the Cinderella or the giddy girl in love, with your grief etched in your sad, tear-stained face. Considering the wretched occasion of your mamas death, understandably, I think I loved you even more then.

To me, Vampira is Aunt Maila wearing a black dress and wig. To everyone else, she is the first, the original glamour ghoulthe epitome of goth beauty. Vampira was intended to share just a small part of your life. Instead, once the human cartoon burst forth into the world, she clung to you, her creator, like a second skin for the rest of your life. I know you never expected that, 75 years after the momentous birth of Vampira, she would still draw fans from around the world.

You were the architect of the goth phenomenon. From the moment Vampira first slithered onto the television screen, she captivated America. She was emaciated, with a waist so tiny it defied reality, but was somehow at once voluptuous and beautiful. A ghostly complexion, nails honed to dagger-like claws, and boomerang eyebrows, her visage and silhouette were simultaneously disturbing and curiously pleasant. Once she was observed, one couldnt look away.

Vampira was the first goth, and in that sense, you were a pioneer. With the character, you defined goth beauty and inspired and beguiled generationsand you continue to do so to this day.

During those decades, before computers, I searched for you. I wrote letters to magazines and newspapers, seeking information on Maila Nurmi a.k.a. Vampira, without a single response. I spent hours on the phone calling Information, using every name I knew you to employ. In 1977, you still couldnt be located, even as I enlisted the help of the Red Cross, in order to tell you that your brother, Bobbie, was dead.

At long last, in 1989, I found you through an article in the Star magazine. It had been 32 years. As adults, we spent a glorious week together in Hollywood. We laughed, cried, ate, put on the dog for brunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel, got drunk, and because you didnt own a bed or a bedroom, we slept on the floor with your puppy, Bogie. It was heaven. It was the culmination of my lifelong dream. We corresponded through letters for several years, and at Christmas, I sent you a box of assorted tins of fish and a bottle of wine. I never heard from you again after that. I was devastated. Had I upset you somehow?

On Monday, January 14, 2008, I read the news in the local newspaper. You were gone. My own private Cinderella caught the dream and flew away.

I was your only family, and even with my limited funds, I had to find a way to get to Los Angelesand fast. Who else besides family are entrusted with final arrangements? I filled out the death certificate and paid for a future cremation. Through what can only be described as a miracle, I found your apartment. Several authorities had to be appeased before I was allowed to enter, because the county deemed you a celebrity.

Like your mama before you, you died alone. Alone on the only piece of real furniture you owned, a sofa, with your feet propped on a plastic patio chair. My heart was broken.

You lived by yourself, so I can understand why your living room and bedroom were cluttered with castoffs, old clothes, memorabilia, and debris. But you still kept your kitchen and bathroom spotless.

The only thing I wanted were your writings. Even then, I knew you always wanted to tell your story to the world, and I knew that I would get them published, because I loved you and I owed it to you. It took 12 years.

I found those writings scattered about on the floor, in drawers, in pockets of your clothes, in satchels and handbags, in an envelope behind a picture frame. There were letters youd written but never mailed. Sometimes there were pages of writings, and sometimes just a sentence or two. A memory here, a memory there. Written on hundreds of scraps of notebook paper, the margins of newspapers, a calendar, a diary, old hotel stationery. On the backs of photocopies of Vampira. This book is the result of cobbling those pieces together. Everything in