Tall, dark, and sexy, this glamorously morose woman is an image we’re all familiar with, but few know the name or origins of televisions first horror movie host, Vampira.

Her ploy worked, and KABC-TV producer Hunt Stromberg Jr. took notice of her and spent five months after the party looking for her. While Stromberg wasn’t interested in Maila’s idea to create an Addams Family tv show because of how expensive it would be, he did want to use her and the look she’d created to host syndicated horror movies without getting the rights from Charles Addams. Maila was utterly opposed to the idea of stealing the character but didn’t want to lose her chance to be on tv and asked for a few extra days to create a new character for the network. Maila wanted to keep the vampiric nature of the Addams matriarch while also creating something new. She found the solution in the bondage and shoe fetish magazine Bizarre. She decided a combination of “sex and death” would be the perfect new direction for her new character. When creating this new character, she decided to start with the wig she’d bought for the ball and dressed she’d made but deepened the dress’s V-neckline, added a slit in the skirt. To create a more pinup look, she got a padded pushup bra and corset that cinched her waist into 17 inches. She also added fishnet stocking and stilettos, and long manicured nails. Finishing up the look with extremely glam makeup and exaggerated eyebrows giving the newly dubbed Vampira her signature look. Executes at KABC-TV loved her and green-lit The Vampira Show. 

Maila Nurmi retained Vampira’s rights and appeared as her character in Ed Wood’s b-movie cult class Plan 9 From Outer Space alongside Bela Lugosi but was never able to recreate the success of the show with Vampira. One possible explanation for this is that she may have been blacklisted after refusing to sell Vampira’s rights to The Addams Family tv show producers. In the early ’80s, Maila was contacted to take part in a Vampira Show revival but parted ways with the production early on takes her rights to Vampira with her. However, the producers simply renamed it to Elvira’s Movie Macabre program, cast Cassandra Peterson as the titular host, updating Vampira’s look for the ’80s. Maila sued the production for Copy-write infringement but ultimately lost.

Vampira was cemented as a pop-culture icon when Lisa Marie portrayed her in the Tim Burton’s 1994 film Ed Wood. While contributing much to pop-culture as Vampira, it wasn’t until years after her death in 2008 that perhaps Vampira’s most significant contribution to pop-culture was substantiated. It had been rumored for decades that Disney villain Maleficent had been modeled after Vampira for their 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty. The exaggerated eyebrows and high cheekbones were dead giveaways to Vampira fans, but the production was so secret no one knew for sure. That was until her niece Sandra Niemi found entries in her aunt’s diaries that showed two separate days where Maila was scheduled to be a live-action model for Maleficent during the production. Disney confirmed this when an extensive exploration of their Sleeping Beauty archive was done ahead of the live-action remake. Maila Nurmi’s “ghoul queen” Vampira created a sexy and creepy icon that stays with us today.