Before Elvira there was Vampira. Full loaded D-cups with more camp in her vamp than Elvira, she was the Betty Page of classic and some not so classic midnight horror B-films on LA television in the 50's. She was more vaginal then virginal, and in fact her career as a fuel injected pin-up girl led to a stint posing seductively for Vargas before her reign as televisions first scream queen horror flick TV host and subsequent film career in bomb after bomb from Plan Nine from Outer Space to the 1959 bombs away cinematic flop "The Beat Generation" where she played the part of a beatnik poet or poetess making a Keeley Smith pre-Goth presentation beating the Goth look by at least 30 years. Sorry Goth kids..it's been done. Everything old is new again, eh?
If you think Vampira is a strange moniker, try Maila Nurmi..yes...the future Ms. Vampira was born in 1922 in Finland with a decidedly Finnish name, ja? Her family moved from Scandinavia and crossed the Finnish line emigrating to the United States when she was two. They landed in msut have been vampire laden Ashtabula, Ohio until 1939 (mere mortals have no reason to move to or visit Ashtabula for any reason believe me) when they for some reason felt the gravitational pull of Oregon, home of the Vortex, Big Foot and strange fog bound people who run for cover when the sun comes out as a sign that the world is ending. What the hell a viking vampy vampire must have felt right at home.
She graduated from high school in Astoria and decided to hit the bright night lights of LA....why not...18, sexy as hell, hot trot and a body that defied normal standards of decency, though fully formed and acceptible in vampire circles. Svelt and sleek, a sexual torpedo that got it's first shot at the coveted coffin of the small screen by modeling for Vargas. If you don't know Vargas..look him up, and then go sit in the corner and play with your putz. Her first cinema gig was an uncredited role in the film "If Winter Comes" (To is a preposition..to come is a verb!)
This led her well formed behind back east to New York as a cast member on Broadway, the great white way of Goeroge M. Cohan, in the city that never sleeps, in a Mae "I'm Really a Man in Drag" West production of "Catherine Was Great." Well, the great Mae didn't like our young budding vampirette as she felt she was trying to upstage her on stage..stage left, stage right, center stage and back stage...so Vampira was fired on the spot and not invited to "go up and see her sometime"
Maila was on a roll anyway..a reall Jewish bagel NYC roll...and appeared in Spook Scandals, also on Braodway where she was laid in a coffin and roamed seductively on stage in a cemetery set. (must have driven the necropheliacs in the audience absolutely mad!) She also moonlighted as a showgirl on various variety shows in NYC kicking those magnificent long lets high encased in frisky ishnets showing off ample leg and cleavage. She also did a bit of nude modeling and posed for mens mags as a scantily clad pin-up.
Back in LA, shooting for the big time west coast style, she attended a masquerade ball as Morticia Addams straight from the pages of New Yorker Magazine. At the party as fate would have it was a TV producee, quite smitten and apparently quite bitten as he fell under her sexual spell and appearance. The idea of late night horror flicks had been bandied about for some time, and now it appeared it would come to life for all the children of the night. It's alive...it's alive! Yes, Vampira rose from the dead on KABC television in LA in 1954. Her character was based on the evil witch in Disney's Snow White and also from the Dragon Lady in the Terry and the Pirates comic strip. I remember having one of my first hard-ons over the the Dragon Lady. (She was competing for the masturbatory championship with those brown skinned naked African tribal babes in Nat Geo's, and ladies underwear ads in JC Penny catalogues.)
Dry ice fog, form fitting dress on a svelt Nordic body, a pasty white face and all punctuated during the shows opening with a ear piercing scream as the camera zoomed in for one hell of a Gothic close-up.."I'm ready for my close-up Mr. Stoker" You can call me Bram. She would pace the set barefoot and surrounded by skulls and a script of bad ghoul jokes and cheesy ad libs. She was a hot commodity as they say in the trades and in a strange case of premonition, Red Skelton had her on his show in a horror skit that also featured Bela Lugosi, Dracula himself..just ask him in a seance and he'll tell you it's true. Later she and Bela would appear in Plan Nine from Outer Space...the blood sucking duo reunited again as has beens. As an aside also in the Skelton skit were Lon (the Wolfman) Chaney, Jr and the snarling sneering Peter Lorre.
A strange curiosity was her close friendship with James Dean at the time. She said, "We share the same neuroses." She also claimed later that she could speak to him from the great beyond. He even appeared..when he was alive of course, in a small bit on Vampira's show as bad boy getting his knuckles rapped by the teacher..the fetching Vampira.Sado-mascochism...the catechism of lust.
Magazines plastered her pallid puss on their covers and photo spreads appeared everywhere including those rag mags where she was spread. But as life takes a nose dive...the show was cancelled eventually, but Vampira, the astute denizen of the night wasn't ready to drive a ratings stake in her heart just yet. She took the show and her well packaged self and body to another station across town as she owned the rights to the character.
By now Vampira had made her mark in show biz and stations across the country were creating their own hosts and hostesses for midnight madness and monster mayhem on local television. Of course there were many look a likes and knock offs with knockers but there will always only be on Vampira. Vampira was nominated as Most Outstanding Female Personality of 1954 and her film career spun off from there including the aforementioned Beat Generation and the Ed Wood Classic...Plan Nine. In 1960 she was in the film "I Passed for White" (don't ask, I haven't seen it but now it's on the shit hit list....) along with her portrayal in "Sex Kittens Go To College" ( I wonder if they met Bonzo?)
By the early 1960s, Vampira opened Vampira's Attic, an antiques boutique where she sold handmade jewelry and clothing. She made items for several celebrities, including Grace Slick and the Zappa family. She also did a stint as a linoleum installer along with carpentry (must have been the pine box coffin thing again. Then as all things old are new again...she was asked to recreate her Vampira role in 1981 for KHJ-TV. She eventually left the project over creative differences (there's a Hollywood cliche term eh?) They wanted her as it turns out as a consultant, but the actual character was to be portrayed by a young comedy actess, Cassandra Peterson...yep...Elvira.
Vampira passed away at her small Hollywood apartment in 2008 to wherever horror hostesses go..perhaps for a menage a trois with Bela Lugosi and James Dean and is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. If I could contact her..I'd ask her to make it a foursome!
Bela Lugosi and Sister Morphine Bram Stoker's "Dracula" published in 1897 was a Gothic horror story based on a weird fornication of superstition and fact to create one of the most chilling and sexy of all monsters. The story of vampires ravishing young virgins and terrorizing old world villages have been around for a long time, but, Stoker managed to congeal the elements into a compost to create one hell of a blood sucking character that has spanned the ages and spawned a plethora of vampire movies, monster magazines, monster cults and cinematic blood sucking blockbusters. Most of the vampire mythology can be attributed to the real life and slightly deranged Vlad the Impaler of Hungary who impaled his victims on poles at this castle in a blood dripping display of his power.
Dracula has been portrayed on the silver scream screen by many actors, but the undisputed king of vamping is Bela Lugosi. Unlike most cinematic fiends, he was the ladies choice. After all who wanted to have sex with Mary Shelley's mutant Frankenstein Monster who was put together with various body parts as though assembled from an automotive junk yard one piece at a time. Dracula also had a penchant for the ladies, and Bela Lugosi knew how to work the room with his staring glaring eyes and come hither hand movements that hypnotized the hapless wenches who fell under his spell only to beome his sex slaves in a Transylvanian bordello fronting as a private harem of the "Children of the Night" It must have been a fully loaded menstruation fetish..now there's a Niagara Falls of blood that beats a simple bit on the neck. It would be the difference between a shot glass and a full keg of beer. Fill 'er up!
Lugosi himself is just as interesting as his literary and cinematic alter ego. Some say he carried the role too far and had a split personality that was a psychological duplex with his notorious counterpart sharing his psyche. Lugosi pulled it off in spades. His background may explain why his portrayal was the most effective of them all. Just as there is only one James Bond, Sean Connery to most of us, there is only one Dracula..Bela Lugosi.
Bela Fernc Dezso Blasco was born in Lugos, Hungary in 1882, quit school and ran away from home at the age of 11 and worked at odd jobs including stage acting. He eventually ended up in German films of the early expressionist film makers of the time such as Fritz Lang. Films that portrayed the dark side and explored fear of the unknown, mythology and the future. Another future superstar, of horror Peter Lorre also got his start in German films, in fact playing the part of a pedophile killer! Lugosi's first film was the German "The Head of Janus" in 1920 which was an adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde ...German expressionist style! On the German stage he mastered Shakespearean plays and would today be considered the Hungarian Gielgud of the German stage.
Bela came to America in 1921 and had somewhat of a stage reputation from his European years. He quickly learned the English language and while making his stage bones, joined a Hungarian theatrical troupe in NYC and starred in and directed many of the plays. He finally ended up in American plays and was cast as Dracula in the new Broadway production of the Bram Stoker novel in 1927, and subsequently in the Universal Pictures release in 1931. By now he was known as Bela Lugosi (after his birthplace of Lugos) Interestingly enough Lugos where he was raised until he left home was only 50 some miles from the Transylvanian border and Poenari Castle, home of the infamous Vlad the Impaler and his wild parties with hapless victims posing as human corn dogs.
It was Bela who injected the sex into vampire mythology. He loved women with a passion and therefore felt as he said in an interview later in his waning years, "I was like Jekyll and Hyde, I hated boys but loved the girls. With boys I was a brute, with the girls I was a lamb"
The brute/lamb saw the bright lights of Broadway but the lights of Hollywood were brighter and more lucrative so he ventured to Hollywood and as it was still the silent era, his language barrier was not an impediment but his sexual presentations of characters landed him numerous roles where body movement and facial expressions told the whole cinematic story.
By the time "Dracula" was released by Universal, he was on a roll as the leading star of horror flicks. This turned out to be a double edged sward as he became so typecast he couldn't get legitimate work that might garner him an Oscar. He claimed that he was doomed to always be the bogey man and not the leading man. But when it came to Dracula...he was the Elvis of the horror genre and while Graceland may have eluded him, he knew he would have to dwell in Heartbreak Hotel where the desk clerks even dressed in black.
Eventually the horror film genre degenerated into spoofs and farce and Bela was relegated to second banana status as the foil of people like Abbott and Costello and even the Dead End Kids where he was forced to play a parody of the creature he in fact refined to cult status. Not only was his star beginning to fade away but his reckless spending had left him in a coffin of debt and drug addicted. Brother Bela was having an incestuous affair with his Sister Morphine which took it's toll and while he portrayed the definitive blood sucker, morphine was sucking the life out of him. He did rebound somewhat in the 1950's with television appearances as Dracula and even did a stint on Broadway in Arsenic and Old Lace.
Dracula may have been his legacy but his true cult status was a result of a chance meeting with a young film maker destined to be labeled "the worst filmmaker of all time"..Ed Wood, Jr. Bela was cast in Plan 9 From Outer Space, a crazed inventive cult masterpiece that also starred another vampire icon of the times, Vampira in 1956, but alas, real vampires may last forever, but the real Bela drug addicted, bankrupt and broken in spirit died at the age of 73 during filming on August 16, 1956. The film was not released until a few years later so he never knew the new found fame that would come with that campy portrayal.
Part of his last request was to be buried in his trademark cape and lie in state in his coffin. I suppose the assembled were waiting for him to rise from the dead as he had so many times before on screen, but the hypodermic needles of morphine were the final stake in the heart and soul of this screen legend. His films still send a chill down the spine as his portrayal was as honest as it gets. Somewhere in Monster Heaven Bela is probably hobnobbing with Karloff and Vincent Price, and somewhere on late night TV somewhere in the world you can turn on the telly or pop a Dracula DVD on and hear the immortal Lugosi say in his sexual delivery...I Vant To Suck Your Blood!!! Suck away Bela..You Don't Suck...You Rock!