VAMPIRA

CREATING VAMPIRA

Maila Nurmi got her big break in TV via Hollywood’s “Bal Caribe”, an annual Halloween costume ball, in 1953. Her winning outfit drew inspiration from the same source that The Addams Family later did…

“There was a hugely successful show on at the time called The Websters. It was sort of a soap opera and I personally found it to be incredibly boring. But I thought maybe I could do a parody of them, have this weird family go about doing everyday, mundane things. Then I realised Charles Addams was already doing that in his cartoon The Homebodies, which was published in the New Yorker. So I thought, I’ll bring Charles Addams to television.”

Beating 2,000 other attendees to the prize of a portable radio, Nurmi also attracted the attention of Hunt Stromberg Jr, programme director of LA-area TV channel KABC…

He explained that the studio was looking for a host to introduce a line-up of late-night horror films. They were interested in the Charles Addams character she’d portrayed at the Bal Caribe.

Excited as she was, she was also curious as to who would portray the rest of Addams’s cartoon family. Stromberg’s answer came as a shock: “We only want you.” The proposed programme was really just an experiment tethered to a skimpy budget.

Maila asked if Addams would receive credit. Stromberg’s answer was clear. “No need to. These are horror films, not cartoons.” “Well then, I