Maila Nurmi
Actress

Maila Nurmi Net Worth

Maila Nurmi, born Maila Syrjäniemi, was a Finnish-American actress, writer, and producer best known for her iconic role as "Vampira" on 1950s late night television. She was discovered by director Howard Hawks while performing in a midnight show and was brought to Hollywood with the hopes of becoming the next Lauren Bacall. After a few years of modeling and dancing, she created the "Vampira" persona for a masquerade contest and caught the attention of local television. She earned an Emmy Award nomination for her performance and became a worldwide sensation. She appeared in various magazines and even in the worst cinematic failure of all time, Edward D. Wood Jr.'s Plan 9 from Outer Space. By the late 1950s, her fame had faded and she retired from acting. She later became involved in animal protection rights and painted portraits of her "Vampira" character. She passed away in 2008 at the age of 85.
Maila Nurmi is a member of Actress

Age, Biography and Wiki

Who is it? Actress, Writer, Producer
Birth Day December 11, 1922
Birth Place  Petsamo, Finland, Finland
Age 98 YEARS OLD
Died On January 10, 2008(2008-01-10) (aged 85)\nLos Angeles, California, U.S.
Birth Sign Capricorn
Resting place Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Other names Maila Syrjaniemi Nurmi Maila Elizabeth Nurmimioni Vampira
Education Astoria High School (Astoria, Oregon)
Occupation Actress
Spouse(s) Dean Riesner (m. 1949) John Brinkley (m. 1958) Fabrizio Mioni (m. 1961)

💰 Net worth

Maila Nurmi, a renowned actress, writer, and producer hailing from Finland, is expected to have a net worth ranging from $100K to $1M in 2024. Best known for her iconic portrayal of the legendary horror character Vampira, Nurmi gained international recognition through her impressive acting skills and captivating on-screen presence. In addition to her acting career, she has also ventured into writing and producing, showcasing her versatility and creativity. With her remarkable talents and enduring legacy, it comes as no surprise that Maila Nurmi has amassed a considerable net worth over the years.

Biography/Timeline

1922

Maila Nurmi was born Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi in 1922 to Onni Syrjäniemi, a Finnish immigrant, and Sophia, an American. Her place of birth is disputed: According to biographer W. Scott Poole in Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror (2014), Nurmi was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. However, during her career, Nurmi claimed to have been born in Petsamo, Finland, claiming she was the niece of Finnish athlete Paavo Nurmi, who began setting long-distance running world records in 1921, the year before her birth. Public U.S. immigration records show her father's immigration at Ellis Island in 1910. Additionally, Dana Gould claimed in a 2014 public interview that he had seen Nurmi's birth certificate, which listed her birthplace as Gloucester, Massachusetts.

1932

She also ran as a candidate for Night Mayor of Hollywood with a platform of "dead issues". In another publicity stunt, KABC had her cruise around Hollywood in the back of a chauffeur-driven 1932 Packard touring car with the top down, where she sat, as Vampira, holding a black parasol. The show was an immediate hit, and in June 1954 she appeared as Vampira in a horror-themed comedy skit on The Red Skelton Show along with Béla Lugosi, and Lon Chaney, Jr.. That same week Life magazine ran an article on her, including a photo-spread of her show-opening entrance and scream. A kinescope of her Red Skelton Show appearance was discovered in 2014. It is available as part of the Shout Factory DVD box set Red Skelton: The Early Years.

1940

In 1940, Nurmi relocated to Los Angeles, California to pursue an acting career, and later in New York City. She modeled for Alberto Vargas, Bernard of Hollywood, and Man Ray, gaining a foothold in the film industry with an uncredited role in Victor Saville's 1947 film, If Winter Comes.

1944

She was reportedly fired by Mae West from the cast of West's Broadway play, Catherine Was Great, in 1944 because West feared she was being upstaged.

1949

She married her first husband, Dean Riesner, in 1949, a former child actor in silent films and later the Screenwriter of Dirty Harry, Charley Varrick, Play Misty for Me, and numerous other movies and TV episodes.

1950

In the early 1950s, Nurmi was close friends with James Dean, and they spent time together at Googie's coffee shop on the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. She explained their friendship by saying, "We have the same neuroses."

1953

The idea for the Vampira character was born in 1953 when Nurmi attended Choreographer Lester Horton's annual Bal Caribe Masquerade in a costume inspired by Morticia Addams in The New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams. Her appearance with pale white skin and tight black dress caught the attention of television Producer Hunt Stromberg, Jr., who wanted to hire her to host horror movies on the Los Angeles television station KABC-TV, but Stromberg had no idea how to contact her. He finally got her phone number from Rudi Gernreich, later the designer of the topless swimsuit. The name Vampira was the invention of Nurmi's husband, Dean Riesner. Nurmi's characterization was influenced by the Dragon Lady from the comic strip Terry and the Pirates and the evil queen from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

1954

Nominated for a Los Angeles area Emmy Award as 'Most Outstanding Female Personality' in 1954, she returned to films with Too Much, Too Soon in 1958, followed by The Big Operator and The Beat Generation. Her best known film appearance was in Ed Wood's camp classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space, as a Vampira-like zombie (filmed in 1956, but released in 1959). In 1960 she appeared in I Passed for White and Sex Kittens Go to College, followed by 1962's The Magic Sword. The classic clip from Plan 9 from Outer Space featuring Vampira walking out of the woods with her hands pointing straight out was used to start the original opening sequence of WPIX Channel 11 New York's Chiller Theatre in the 1960s.

1955

On June 20, 1955, Nurmi was the target of an attempted murder when a man forced his way into her apartment and proceeded to terrorize her for close to four hours. Nurmi eventually escaped and managed to call the police, with assistance from a local shop owner.

1957

Nurmi made television history as the first horror movie hostess. In 1957, Screen Gems released a syndicated package of 52 horror movies, mostly from Universal Pictures, under the program title Shock Theater. Independent stations in major cities all over the U.S. began showing these films, adding their own ghoulish host or hostess (including Vampira II and other lookalikes) to attract more viewers.

1958

She married her second husband, younger actor John Brinkley, on March 10, 1958. She married actor Fabrizio Mioni on June 20, 1961 in Orange County, California.

1959

After the show's cancellation, she appeared in the Ed Wood cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space. She is also billed as Vampira in the 1959 movie, The Beat Generation where she plays a beatnik poet, as well as in the crime film The Big Operator (1959). She was portrayed by Lisa Marie in Tim Burton's 1994 film Ed Wood.

1960

In the early 1960s, Nurmi opened Vampira's Attic, an antiques boutique on Mel Rose Avenue. She also sold handmade jewelry and clothing. She made items for several celebrities, including Grace Slick of the music group Jefferson Airplane and the Zappa family.

1962

As Hedda Hopper related in a 1962 memoir that included a chapter on Dean: "We discussed the thin-cheeked Actress who calls herself Vampira on television (and cashed in, after Jimmy died, on the publicity she got from knowing him and claimed she could talk to him 'through the veil'). He said: 'I had studied The Golden Bough and the Marquis de Sade, and I was interested in finding out if this girl was obsessed by a satanic force. She knew absolutely nothing. I found her void of any true interest except her Vampira make-up. She has no absolute.'"

1981

In 1981, Nurmi was asked by KHJ-TV to revive her Vampira character for television. She worked closely with the producers of the new show and was to get an executive Producer credit, but Nurmi eventually left the project over creative differences. According to Nurmi, this was because the station cast comedic Actress Cassandra Peterson in the part without consulting her. "They eventually called me in to sign a contract and she was there", Nurmi told Bizarre magazine in 2005. "They had hired her without asking me."

1986

In 1986, she appeared alongside Tomata du Plenty of The Screamers in Rene Daalder's punk rock musical Population: 1, which was released on DVD in October 2008. According to a Daalder interview on the 2 disc special edition of Population: 1, "There was a wild lady living out in back in a shed. Tomata befriended her and found out she had played Vampira".

1987

In 1987, she recorded two seven-inch singles on Living Eye records with the band Satan's Cheerleaders. The singles, entitled "I Am Damned" and "Genocide Utopia," were both released on colored vinyl, the second one with a swastika on the label, and are extremely rare collector's items.

1994

Unable to continue using the name Vampira, the show was abruptly renamed Elvira's Movie Macabre with Peterson playing the titular host. Nurmi soon filed a lawsuit against Peterson. The court eventually ruled in favor of Peterson, holding that "likeness means actual representation of another person's appearance, and not simply close resemblance." Peterson claimed that Elvira was nothing like Vampira aside from the basic design of the black dress and black hair. Nurmi claimed that the entire Elvira persona, which included comedic dialogue and intentionally bad graveyard puns, infringed on her creation's "distinctive dark dress, horror movie props, and...special personality." Nurmi herself claimed that Vampira's image was in part based on the Charles Addams The New Yorker cartoon character Morticia Addams, though she told Boxoffice magazine in 1994 that she had intentionally deviated from Addams' mute and flat-chested creation, making her own TV character "campier and sexier" to avoid plagiarizing Addams' idea.

2001

In 2001, Nurmi opened an official website and began selling autographed memorabilia and original pieces of art on eBay. Until her death, Nurmi lived in a small North Hollywood apartment.

2006

The Warner Bros memo was first mentioned in the 2006 book Live Fast, Die Young: The Making of Rebel Without a Cause by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel, who were given access to the Rebel production files. An interview Frascella and Weisel conducted with Actress Shelley Winters also uncovered an instance where Dean interrupted an argument with Director Nicholas Ray and Winters so he could watch The Vampira Show on TV.

2007

A reconstructed episode of The Vampira Show was released on DVD by the Vampira's Attic web site in October 2007. The release imitated a complete episode by using existing footage of the show combined with vintage commercials believed to have been directed by Ed Wood and the full-length 1932 feature film The Thirteenth Guest.

2008

On January 10, 2008, Nurmi died of natural causes at her home in Hollywood, aged 85. She was buried in the Griffith Lawn section of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

2010

The 2010 public radio documentary Vampira and Me by author/director R. H. Greene took issue with Hopper's depiction of the Nurmi/Dean relationship, pointing to an extant photo of Dean and Vampira sidekick Jack Simmons in full Boris Karloff Frankenstein make-up as evidence of Nurmi and Dean's friendship. The documentary also described a production memo in the Warner Bros. archive citing a set visit from "Vampira" while Dean was making Rebel Without a Cause.

2014

Examination of Nurmi's diaries in 2014 by filmmaker and Journalist R. H. Greene verify longtime rumors that in 1956 she was the model for Maleficent, the evil witch in the Disney conception of the classic fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty.” The Disney archivist subsequently confirmed these findings.

Some Maila Nurmi images

About the author

Lisa Scholfield

As a Senior Writer at Famous Net Worth, I spearhead an exceptional team dedicated to uncovering and sharing the stories of pioneering individuals. My passion for unearthing untold narratives drives me to delve deep into the essence of each subject, bringing forth a unique blend of factual accuracy and narrative allure. In orchestrating the editorial workflow, I am deeply involved in every step—from initial research to the final touches of publishing, ensuring each biography not only informs but also engages and inspires our readership.