Glamour Ghoul, page 26
The Satans and the 18th Street gangs were waging a bitter battle for supremacy. Maila and Carla walked near the underpass of the Hollywood Freeway, where gang members sprayed reverse swastikas on the concrete and sniped at motorists on the off-ramp. Tire marks were still visible in the spot where a driver had been shot in the head.
They passed the laundromat, where a sign from management hung asking customers to remove bullets from their pockets, as they damage the washing machines. They passed the gas station, where three attendants had been killed in the past year and a half.
The route to the Mini Burger is concrete and asphalt all the way, and Maila apologizes to her companion. No grass. On weekends, they head over to Los Angeles City College where there’s plenty. It’s paradise.
We arrive at the mini burger. I feel guilty because I’m hungry and buy two mini burgers & a cup of coffee. $1.25. That’s twenty-five cents over my daily budget. Carla gets the four bun halves. I feel guilty giving her refined bleached & poisoned flour & also because she’s forced to live in that goddamned heatless, damp tomb of a warehouse. It seems I carry a lot of fucking guilt around. Poor Carla, her tough luck to be stuck with me. I’m ashamed. Please forgive me, dear one.
I got the (juke box) music for free and there’s no tipping in this place & I paid no bus fare to get here. Plus I’ve lost 2 ounces today so my day is made. I feel secure. Tonite I may spend only 20 minutes rather than the usual 45 barricading my doors. If Carla were a Great Dane, I could save 25 barricading minutes each nite & 15 unbarricading minutes each morning. But I say, “Who can afford a Great Dane?”
In 1980, a resurgence of interest in Vampira was sparked by Michael and Harry Medved’s book The Golden Turkey Awards. The Medveds tapped Plan 9 from Outer Space and its director, Edward Wood, Jr., as the worst movie and director of all time.
As a result of the publicity from the book, the Vista Theatre scheduled a screening of Plan 9. At this news, Maila thought the time was right to take her frozen asset, Vampira, out of cold storage.
On April 12, 1980, Maila sent a handwritten letter to Marlon Brando’s accounting firm, Brown Kraft and Company, on San Vicente Boulevard. The rough draft, in part, read:
On April 9, your messenger reached me with a gift from Marlon Brando, your client, for which (I) thank you. Enclosed please find a note of gratitude I would like forwarded to Mr. Brando as I do not have his address.
She used this two-hunded-dollar gift from Marlon to make Vampira T-shirts to sell at the Plan 9 screening at the Vista. The turnout was surprisingly large and included actors Diane Keaton and Warren Beatty. That night, Maila watched Plan 9 in its entirety for the first time. The occasion was 24 years in the making.
John’s Place, a storefront comedy theater, stood next door to Maila’s apartment on Melrose. Over the last two years, John Deaven, the proprietor, and Maila had become sidewalk friends. When one day Maila wore one of her T-shirts, Deaven was delighted to learn that his neighbor was once the celebrated Queen of the Cobwebs, Vampira. He asked if she was willing to make a short 8mm film dressed in character. It was perfect timing and would serve as the beginning of her plan to resurrect Vampira.
The cast of the comedy troupe immediately set about to write Bungalow Invader. As promised, Maila donned a black wig, applied her spooky makeup, and put on a black tattered dress, albeit more modest and roomier than the original—and minus the waist cincher. For her efforts, she was paid 350 dollars.
In February of 1981, a local entertainment trade magazine, Drama-Logue, did a cover story with several stills from the film. Bungalow Invaders was described as “a silly romp through the many rooms of a Hollywood bungalow using many windows, much screaming and burning candelabras.” The next month, Los Angeles magazine picked up the story and ran it in their “People Scape” column.
At KHJ-TV, Walt Baker, the station’s program director, read the article and began a search for Maila Nurmi.
It was an intricate process, as she had no phone and her address was a secret to most. Ultimately, another Melrose shop owner came to Maila’s door with a message to call Walt Baker, who wanted to meet with her. Twenty-five years after being fired over her snake-raping comment, Maila returned to KHJ.
She was nervous. Deaven had succeeded in concealing her cane and her missing teeth. But what would Baker think when he saw her?
If he noticed, he didn’t let on, greeting Maila in the second-floor corridor at KHJ.
“You’re Vampira,” Baker said. “I’m honored to meet you. You’re a very famous lady!”
He informed Maila they were looking for a horror host and had tested a waiter who didn’t work out.
“We want your fame,” he said. “We’d like for you to play Vampira’s mother.”
“No, I’m afraid I couldn’t do that,” Maila said. “Vampira was born magically. She has no mother.”
Baker ignored her response and launched into a story about his wife, who, as Hobo Kelly on television, retired the character when she wearied of the role. “No one could play it but her. Just like no one can play this character but you.”
“Mr. Baker, with all due respect, that simply is not who Vampira is.”
“You remember we had Larry Vincent,” Baker continued, nonplussed. “Larry’s gone now. Cancer. But if you aren’t interested, Moona Lisa is waiting in the wings.”
Both Vincent, known for his character Seymour, and Moona Lisa, a mildly Vampira-inspired character, were former KHJ horror hosts.
“Fine, then,” Maila conceded. “If your only alternative is that I play Vampira’s mother, which is out of the question, then do what you must. But I’ll tell you what. I will find a girl and train her myself. And if you like, to lend credence to the show, I’ll be on it from time to time as other characters.”
“Then you’ll appear on the show?” Baker sounded hopeful.
“Yes, as odd relatives and such. I have a wonderful new character who’s like the Elephant Man. You know, it’ll be like Carol Burnett, or like Laugh-In, with guest regulars.”
“But you’ll have to appear frequently. At least at first. Maybe every other week.”
“Yes, that would be fine,” Maila said.
Baker asked about money, reminding Maila they were a small independent station without network affiliation.
“I’ll do the acting for AFTRA minimum. But for the use of my character Vampira, I want a flat four hundred dollars each time you air a segment. Out of this, I will pay my girl.”
“How will you find her? The girl for the part, I mean.”
She suggested a contest from which she would choose someone who was innately self-absorbed yet intelligent, with a great sense of timing. Looks were secondary; the visual image was achieved with makeup. Most importantly, Maila maintained, it was imperative that she be allowed six weeks to train the girl properly.
Baker asked if she could write the scripts.
“No, I’m not good at entire segments. One-liners are my forte. But I could assist the writer.”
“Do you have old Vampira Show scripts?”
“Yes. I have a few. Very few. It’s a format that’s relatively easy to clone. Once you get the puns in your blood, they spew out.”
Baker’s mind was racing ahead. “Larry Thomas is not at the station,” he said. “We’d have to find him and pay him extra. That’ll be expensive, but he’s worth it.”
Inwardly, Maila cringed. Larry Thomas was the script writer for Vincent’s Seymour character.
I found his writing truly adolescent. “Seymour” utterly appalled me. Everything about it, the set included, was embarrassing beyond peer. Hadn’t I sheltered Vampira for a quarter of a century? Did he really think I was going to allow hack artistry to wash over her now? I tried, in the name of diplomacy, to couch my horror at this suggestion, all the time I was thinking—how am I going to get away from here?
The more she thought about the meeting with Baker, the more uneasy Maila felt. At this point, Maila wasn’t convinced KHJ was completely serious about resurrecting Vampira, and so she thought that maybe instead of a horror hostess, the role should be for a man. So, she encouraged her neighbor, John Deaven, to audition for the role of horror host. As a comedian, he seemed an appropriate choice.
Deaven wasn’t hired. But during his audition at KHJ, he told Baker that he and his friends had pooled their energies and monies to get Maila camera-ready for Bungalow Invader. Now Baker was armed with the knowledge that Maila had no money. He may have already assumed as much, seeing as Maila had no phone.
When KHJ had indeed interviewed Deaven as a prospective horror host, Maila began to believe that perhaps the station was sincere in their plans. If she could have chosen anyone to be the new Vampira, it would have been singer and dancer Lola Falana, who then enjoyed superstar status as the highest-paid female performer in Las Vegas. So Falana wasn’t available.
But there was someone else—a young, talented bass player named Patricia Morrison, whose look was a blend of punk and goth. A dark priestess. Still in her teens, she was already a veteran of several popular punk bands and recalls the first time she met Maila.
“I was amazed at how gorgeous she still was. Those cheekbones and piercing eyes—wow. It was obvious she could be trouble very easily, but I liked that too. A rare thing, someone who speaks their mind and the consequence be damned!
“I remember she was hired by channel 11 [sic] to find someone to be a new horror host, based on what she had done. She contacted me via [Long Gone] John, suggesting I may be good for it. I was in two minds, as I was in a band and thought, in my youthful way, that that was my destiny. But because it came from Maila, I was interested in the idea or at least open to it, as to me she was the prototype of that gothic look that we now all know so well and is easily recognized worldwide.
“She was the original, and to me, no one has come close and I doubt ever will. I felt safe if she was going to be involved. I would never have wanted to carry on from her and do it wrong, but it never went any further than her registering her interest in me.”
Soon after Deaven’s meeting with Baker, a message arrived at the Heliotrope House for Maila to call Baker immediately and set up another meeting before he left on vacation.
She looked forward to this meeting, for it would resolve any questions of the station’s intent. Maila came with sketches she’d prepared for potential characters, and she found Baker full of conviction and ideas. The Vampira Show would air Saturday night at six and again on Sunday afternoon at four. Vampira had never aired in prime time. Maila’s hope was restored.
This second meeting generated so much promise that Maila was comfortable showing the sketches she’d made of her favorite new horror character, Wretch. Without so much as a glance, Baker dismissed them and waved in a tall man standing in the hallway. “Maila,” he said, “this is Dick Johnson. He’s going to produce your show.”
He entered Baker’s office and shook hands with Maila.
She was told that only a meager two hundred dollars were budgeted for Vampira’s costume, but that now Maila was to appear on the show every week, and her duties would include that of associate writer and producer.
For Maila, the most exciting part of this meeting occurred next when Baker handed her a piece of paper that read: “Search for Vampira—Procedures.”
The plan would run from July 13th to July 24th and be broadcast Mondays through Fridays on KHJ’s Mid-Morning L.A. talk show. Each day, the top five contestants would be chosen from a submitted photograph and a written essay titled “Why I Think I’m Vampira.” Each girl would provide their own costume, makeup, and transportation to the studio and appear on the morning show. Before their appearance, each would be given a short audition script to study, which would appear on the teleprompter during the on-air audition.
The contestants would be judged by Maila Nurmi, Dick Johnson, and Larry Thomas on their delivery and imagination of scripted material, their appearance as Vampira, their personality, their improvisation skills, and their pre-show interview. From each days’ top five contestants, one would be chosen as the winner and announced during the final segment of Mid-Morning L.A.
Baker left for Ireland in May, and Maila had but one meeting with Dick Johnson. The meeting was a rehash of old news—except for one thing.
“Walt said we’re going to audition for a girl rather than having a contest.”
Maila didn’t like it, but she was certain Baker was clear that she would choose the girl and train her. Whether it be by contest or not, she would sit through their auditions. That was fine.
Three weeks later, Johnson called the Heliotrope House with the message he, too, was leaving on vacation and Cal Brady was now in charge of preproduction.
Maila met Cal, a lighting and set man, in Walt Baker’s still-empty office. She was told to assemble scripts, stills, sketches, old publicity tear sheets, and anything she thought would be relevant to the recreation and production of The Vampira Show.
“Bring them to me right away and leave them at the information desk marked ‘urgent,’” he instructed. As Maila was leaving, almost as an afterthought, Cal informed her that Larry Thomas, Seymour’s writer, was now in charge. Maila, as associate writer, again held out hope that once Larry Thomas learned about Vampira, the scripts they produced together would work.
As luck would have it, when Maila returned to KHJ with a thick folder of the requested items, there was Walt Baker standing just inside the door.
He was obviously startled to see her, as he hadn’t bothered to tell Maila he was home from vacation. He reddened and asked, “What are you doing here? Are you here to see Dick Johnson?”
Maila told him she had the materials that Cal Brady requested.
“I’ll take that,” Baker said, as he turned on his heel and walked away.
Shortly thereafter, Baker and Maila talked on the phone. Now he was insistent that she appear every week as Vampira’s mother. It was as if he’d heard nothing of her plans for Wretch or her other characters. For perhaps the first time in negotiations involving Vampira, Maila compromised.
“Okay, I’ll go this far. I’ll do her voiceover if we never see her.”
“Good,” he agreed. “We can show Vampira answering the phone and hear her mother’s voice as we see the girl’s face.”
“Yes,” Maila conceded. “As long as I never, and I mean never, appear as any Vampira type whatsoever.”
It was agreed upon.
KHJ’s preproduction hierarchy was mind-boggling. Within six weeks, The Vampira Show was passed from Walt Baker to Dick Johnson to Cal Brady and now to Larry Thomas. Maila couldn’t begin to figure out how to navigate the maze of executives. She waited ten anxious days with no word from any of them.
There were only eight weeks left to prepare. KHJ had all her materials, and she had nothing in writing. She called the station several times a day.
Finally, Baker called. “Come in tomorrow. The contracts are ready,” he said.
Maila entered Walt Baker’s office where he sat alone.
“We’ve found the girl,” he informed Maila. “You’re going to love her. She has great timing.”
YOU found the girl? Maila kept the thought to herself.
He showed her a stylish, overexposed studio portrait of what appeared to be a high-fashion model. “She looks beautiful,” Maila said.
“Her name’s Cassandra Peterson. You’ll meet her today. She’s coming in. I gave her the merchandising rights.”
Out loud this time. “You WHAT?”
Baker seemed surprised at Maila’s reaction.
“It’s between you girls. You two fight it out.”
What no one could comprehend was Maila’s visceral connection to her creation. In all things Vampira, Maila demanded complete and utter control with little compromise. It may be that her unyielding position that doomed the rebirth of Vampira.
Dick Johnson entered the office with a simple greeting and promptly called to a man who was passing the open doorway. “Larry,” he called. “Come meet Vampira.”
Larry Thomas remained standing just outside the doorway. He forced a reluctant arm into the room by way of introduction, and Maila got up and shook his hand.
The five of them were waiting in the conference room across the hall for the girl: Walt Baker, Dick Johnson, Cal Brady, Larry Thomas, and Maila. For 25 uncomfortable minutes, they waited until Peterson appeared with a smile, carrying a costume sketch of herself. “I stopped by to pick this up,” she said.
The sketch was passed around the table amongst the men. No one volunteered to show it to Maila. She asked to see it.
The top half of the dress was an exact copy of my Plan 9 dress—down to the tear in the forearm—but the bottom part was bizarre. The sketch was of a knee-length accordion-pleated skirt like the famous Marilyn Monroe shot, but in black.
Cassandra told the executives that her friend Robert Redding was making the dress of the sketch. She went on to explain that as fans blew her skirt, colored lights would halo her blowing hair.
“Cassandra,” moaned Larry Thomas, “that doesn’t work with black hair. And you’re not Ann-Margret.”
Cassandra & all the others made no mention of legs. It was pure mammarian monomania. I brought up the subject of legs. Baker asked her, “Do you have legs?”
“Yeah,” she said vacantly. “I have legs” & she raised her cotton jersey shift 2 in. to reveal her knees… no-one asked if she had thighs.
Thomas handed her a type-written page. “This is a sample of our dialogue,” he said.
The phone rings. Vampira answers. “Hi Ma, what’s it this time? Did the shopping cart you were pushing fall off a cliff?”
There it was. Maila was excluded from the entire process. They steamrolled right over the top of her and her precious commodity without so much as a backward glance.
They auditioned the girl, they hired the girl, and they gave her the merchandising rights. Now they wanted Maila to sign the contract. The salient points were as follows:
This agreement shall cover KHJ-TV’s right to utilize your character, “Vampira,” your performance within the program and your duties in assisting the writer and producer in the production of the program.
