Maila Nurmi 1921 to 2008 - TV's Vampira Has Died

My California friend and I both like James Dean. We're not obsessives -- we don't go to car cruises dressed in blue jeans, white T-shirts, and red nylon jackets -- but we like Dean as a personality. We've been to the crash site, and I've stopped by the grave site a couple times. My friend is a movie historian, and I find it fascinating that the actor who became synonymous with 50s teenage rebellion, now a Hollywood legend, like me, grew up in rural Indiana.

On California visit number one, we got the touristy stuff out of the way and, from then on, concentrated on more vital things. One was the building on Melrose Avenue that had housed Boss Radio KHJ, where Boss Jocks Humble Harve, Robert W. Morgan, and The Real Don Steele defined top-40 radio in the Sixties. The station had been sold, but AM 93 still appeared on the sign out front. If it was to be photographed, then was the time.

I took my pictures, and we headed off for nowhere in particular. We turned down a side street and pulled into a driveway. There, waiting for us at the curb, was . . . Vampira!

That explained the phone call made during the photo shoot.

Maila Nurmi, costumed as a witch, hosted late-night horror movies on KABC-TV in the early 1950s. James Dean had just made "East Of Eden" and was waiting to start "Rebel Without A Cause." He was the one person in Hollywood she really wanted to meet. She pulled it off the easy way. One day, she walked up and introduced herself.

Vampira/Maila lived on the fringes of showbiz. Dean was a star but still a Hollywood outsider. They hit it off. She introduced him to something they didn't have back in Indiana: a coven of witches, that occasionally met at the home of actor Samson DeBrier. The Barton Avenue house where "Inauguration Of The Pleasuredome," an occult classic, was filmed had become a gathering place for showbiz folk whose interests lay outside the mainstream.

"Jimmy and I would sit right over there," Ms. Nurmi told us, indicating a booth at Lucy's El Adobe restaurant, down Melrose from the former Boss Radio studios. "We talked for hours. About everything."

Everyone plays the six degrees of separation game. Connect to a celebrity or newsmaker one person at a time. Show business is just that; business, and geekery can brand anyone as a wide-eyed tourist who just doesn't get it. We listened to her stories about a Hollywood that isn't there anymore, casual per the custom; two hepcats having a late lunch with Maila Murmi, awash in the fact that they were one person away from James Dean.

A couple weeks later, back home in Michigan, a flat, hard envelope was among the things that came in the mail. Inside was an 8 by 10 photo of Maila Nurmi in her Vampira outfit, autographed to me. It's occupied a spot on the walls of every home I've had since then. I'm not a geek, I remind myself; I'm NOT a geek . . .

On January 10, 2008, Maila Nurmi was found dead at home. Her website, Vampira's Attic, has a simple, elegant tribute. Cult Sirens has a detailed biography.

The world now has one less link to James Dean, one less link to the era of live TV, one less link to film history, and one less very cool person.

And now, of all the Hollywood moments from all the road trips, one shines a little brighter.