Maila Nurmi, whose "Vampira" TV persona pioneered the spooky-yet-sexy Goth aesthetic, has died, coroner's officials said. She was 85. By The Associated Press Maila Nurmi, whose “Vampira” TV persona ...

LOS ANGELES – Maila Nurmi, whose "Vampira" TV persona pioneered the spooky-yet-sexy Goth aesthetic, has died, coroner's officials said. She was 85. Nurmi died Thursday afternoon at her Hollywood home, ...

Halloween requires a mention of Astoria’s own Finnish wasp-waisted glamour ghoul, Vampira, aka Astoria High School graduate Maila Nurmi. In 1954 Los Angeles, she was the first late-night horror movie ...

You didn’t need to be a pubescent boy (or his father) to fully appreciate the charms of Maila Nurmi — a.k.a. Vampira — when she first appeared on late-night KABC-TV in the spring of 1954. But it ...

Somewhere, Maila Nurmi is smiling. The woman behind Vampira – the character credited with being the first-ever television horror host, the trailblazer for others like Elvira, and undoubtedly the old ...

Over 11 years and 570 episodes, John Rabe and Team Off-Ramp scoured SoCal for the people, places, and ideas whose stories needed to be told, and the show became a love-letter to Los Angeles. Now, John ...

Vampira, portrayed by Maila Nurmi, was the first television horror hostess who made her debut on screens in 1954 with The Vampira Show. Gothic horror aesthetics and the dark glamour of Morticia Addams ...

Before she ascended to infamy at the helm of The Vampira Show, Nurmi grew up the gawky daughter of immigrant parents, escaping from her small life to find fame in Los Angeles. There she supported ...

In the early days of television, when horror movies were often campy by nature, actress Maila Nurmi created the character Vampira, a glamorous ghoul who as hostess of late-night fright films in the ...

Though most people knew her as Vampira, a late-night, creature-feature host in Los Angeles, Maila Nurmi was so much more. From her relationships with James Dean and other Hollywood luminaries to her ...

LOS ANGELES — Maila Nurmi, whose “Vampira” TV persona pioneered the spooky-yet-sexy Goth aesthetic, has died, coroner’s officials said. She was 85. Ms. Nurmi died Thursday afternoon at her Hollywood ...

Finnish-born actress and television host Maila Nurmi, a.k.a. Vampira, circa 1956. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images) You didn’t need to be a pubescent boy (or his father) to fully appreciate the charms ...