Speaker 1: Ephemeral is a production of iHeart three D audio for
Speaker 1: full exposure. Listen with that phones.
Speaker 2: It's that magical time of year, full of monsters, ghouls,
Speaker 2: and all manner of horror movies. In the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: a new idea in horror hit the airwaves, repurposing vintage
Speaker 2: scary films for a TV audience. The host of this
Speaker 2: endeavor was also something the public had never seen before,
Speaker 2: iconic for her piercing screams, morbid humor, and suggestive costume.
Speaker 2: Her name was Myla Nermi, better known by the character
Speaker 2: she created, Vampira, not to be confused with Elvira, but
Speaker 2: more on that later. Today, producer Trevor Young takes us
Speaker 2: through the haunting life and legacy of one of horror's
Speaker 2: most influential character, Vampire.
Speaker 3: What I need is a vampire of cocktails to settle
Speaker 3: my nose. It'll not only settle them, it will petrifize
Speaker 3: a vampire cockpail. You like it, it hates you.
Speaker 1: She was sexy, but she was untouchable. She had a
Speaker 1: sense of humor, a bizarre sense of humor.
Speaker 3: I've had several letters asking whether olives or carries should
Speaker 3: be used in making my cocktail. Well, actually neither is necessary,
Speaker 3: since they'd only disintegrate upon being put into the cocktail. However,
Speaker 3: if you want to use some gun, if you can
Speaker 3: drop in an eyeball once you happen to have an
Speaker 3: extra one around the house.
Speaker 1: This was the nineteen fifties, this was during the Eisenhower administration,
Speaker 1: and no one had ever seen a person like my
Speaker 1: And she was on television and here she was talking
Speaker 1: about how sad it was that her sister had died
Speaker 1: and they had to bury her alive, and that she
Speaker 1: had Yellow Cross insurance that you could buy because if
Speaker 1: you were an unsuccessful suicide, you would have insurance to
Speaker 1: try again. My name is Sandra Niemi, and I am
Speaker 1: the author of the book Glamour Ghoul, which is a
Speaker 1: biography of my aunt Mila Normie aka Vampire.
Speaker 4: Sandra. So she never really knew her aunt Mala all
Speaker 4: that well, but knew about her from TV. Decades later,
Speaker 4: in the nineteen eighties, Sandra decided to track her aunt
Speaker 4: Mila down, who by this point was in her mid
Speaker 4: to late sixties.
Speaker 1: I was always obsessed with her, and I think that
Speaker 1: was because I was an only child and I always
Speaker 1: wanted a family, a bigger family. And I had this
Speaker 1: aunt Mila in Hollywood that I knew was beautiful and
Speaker 1: I thought as a child, kind of a celebrity. And
Speaker 1: I enlisted the help of the Red Cross to try
Speaker 1: to find Myla, and they couldn't find her. Well. At
Speaker 1: that time, she was going by an alias, and that
Speaker 1: alias was Helen Heaven, so that's why they couldn't find
Speaker 1: Mila nor Me. I remained obsessed. I have to know her.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to her. And then one day
Speaker 1: a state would have it. I got a Star magazine
Speaker 1: and there was Mila nor Me suing Alvirah for ten
Speaker 1: million dollars, and I went, she's a live. Mila's alive.
Speaker 1: And I immediately sat down and wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: her attorneys who were mentioned in this article, and I said,
Speaker 1: please for this letter, and they did, and Mila responded
Speaker 1: right away, and we had a long letter writing campaign,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't that long before I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to come to Los Angeles and off my
Speaker 1: daughter and I went to Hollywood to see Mila. I
Speaker 1: spent a week with Mila. I got to know her.
Speaker 1: We continued writing and then at Christmas time of ninety two,
Speaker 1: she quit writing, and that hurt my feelings. I thought
Speaker 1: I had her her feelings or she was mad at
Speaker 1: me for whatever reason. I didn't know. And I even
Speaker 1: called the police to get a welfare check because I
Speaker 1: thought maybe she died, but they said no, she's fine,
Speaker 1: and so I just left her alone. Then I found
Speaker 1: out in the newspaper that she died in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. January tenth went to Los Angeles and got
Speaker 1: granted to go into her apartment and started picking up
Speaker 1: all of her writings.
Speaker 4: Inside Myla's apartment, Sandra found an astoundingly detailed record of
Speaker 4: her aunt's life.
Speaker 1: It was full of papers and magazines and folders, and
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, well, this is how I can know
Speaker 1: who she really was. This is exciting to me. And
Speaker 1: I had a friend with me helping me, and I
Speaker 1: told her anything that you find with Mila's handwriting, keep
Speaker 1: it well, put it in plastic bags and pictures and
Speaker 1: you know, photos and things like that. When we came
Speaker 1: out of there, I had three black garbage bags full
Speaker 1: of writing, and sometimes there was a cohesiveness to it.
Speaker 1: There were pages and pages and pages on notebook paper
Speaker 1: that she had written on both sides, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: was just a little note, like a scrap of paper,
Speaker 1: or written in the margin of a calendar. I found
Speaker 1: a half page glued to the back of a picture
Speaker 1: that was hanging on the wall. I found wadded up
Speaker 1: pieces of notebook paper in pockets of old clothes, and
Speaker 1: I just gathered everything up. I also found a real
Speaker 1: Turreal tape, and when we played it, she had recorded
Speaker 1: it in nineteen sixty six. But anyway, I have two diaries,
Speaker 1: a nineteen forty forty one forty two diary and a
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six diary. And boy, am I glad I
Speaker 1: got the nineteen fifty six diary because that was a
Speaker 1: very busy year for Vampire.
Speaker 4: And since then Sandra has spent years sifting through that ephemera,
Speaker 4: dedicating herself to chronicling the story of Myela Nurmi aka Vampire.
Speaker 1: She was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and then her father
Speaker 1: got a job in Pittsburgh, Massachusetts, so they moved there.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen twenty six, her father, who was an
Speaker 1: editor of a Finnish newspaper in America, there was a
Speaker 1: civil war going in Finland and he wanted to be
Speaker 1: right there to see what was going on so he
Speaker 1: could report it. And he decided to take his wife's
Speaker 1: inheritance and go to Finland for maybe a year, he said,
Speaker 1: And he left his wife and his two small children,
Speaker 1: and he came back a year later, and my grandmother
Speaker 1: had completely changed. She was no longer this submissive housewife.
Speaker 1: She was defiant, and she had learned to alcohol. Then
Speaker 1: the family moved to Ashbuela, Ohio, and they were there
Speaker 1: for maybe ten years. Mila had friends, and then in
Speaker 1: the winter of nineteen thirty four he was sent to Duluth,
Speaker 1: and it was in the heart of the depression, and
Speaker 1: they almost starved to death when they lost his job.
Speaker 1: He was only doing a few hours on the radio
Speaker 1: a week, and it wasn't enough to sustain them. They
Speaker 1: didn't even have electricity, They had very little food. Finally,
Speaker 1: an angel came through and said they wanted him back
Speaker 1: in Ashabula, So back they went and thrived. Mila accompanied
Speaker 1: her father on lecture tours. He was much in demand,
Speaker 1: he said himself. He was the man of ten thousand speeches,
Speaker 1: and he lectured against the evils of alcohol, of course,
Speaker 1: and he lectured for a president. He was paid to
Speaker 1: stump for Herbert Hoover, and later on he became a
Speaker 1: huge ponent of FDR. But Mala went with him and
Speaker 1: sometimes she spoke too, but she listened to all of
Speaker 1: his sermonizing. She knew his fire and brimstone approach. Mala
Speaker 1: told her father that she wanted to be an artist,
Speaker 1: and my grandfather thought artists meant someone who painted or
Speaker 1: drew pictures. He didn't know the meaning of what she meant.
Speaker 1: She wanted to be an artiste, you know, to be
Speaker 1: free and to be friends with people like her and
Speaker 1: nothing to do with domesticity at all, no way. She
Speaker 1: wanted freedom to express herself, to be created.
Speaker 4: Eventually, the family settled in a story at Oregon, but
Speaker 4: apparently Mala quickly got bored and yearned for a more
Speaker 4: exciting life.
Speaker 1: She was going to go to New York, and the
Speaker 1: parents put the kibosh on that and only agreed to
Speaker 1: allow her to go to Los Angeles, where her mother's
Speaker 1: brother and wife lived. And that's how she got to Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and that's where Mila started looking for work, first as
Speaker 1: a radio moonologist. She was interested, very very much interested
Speaker 1: in being the first female or some wells because she
Speaker 1: was enamor with Orson when she heard him speak on
Speaker 1: the radio.
Speaker 5: Strange.
Speaker 6: It now seems to sit in my peaceful study, Princeton
Speaker 6: writing down.
Speaker 3: This last chapter of the record. Begun at a deserted
Speaker 3: farm and.
Speaker 6: Grover's new Strange to watch children playing in the streets.
Speaker 1: The sound of his voice and the words that he chose,
Speaker 1: and he was her God. That was who she wanted
Speaker 1: to be. But she didn't have much luck getting a
Speaker 1: job in that area.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: She tried a few things. She worked in a department
Speaker 1: store and was a model perhaps and print ads because
Speaker 1: she had this beautiful face.
Speaker 4: It was also around this time that Mala started developing
Speaker 4: her unique fashion sense, and it was largely inspired by
Speaker 4: a certain Disney movie.
Speaker 1: This is no Alder.
Speaker 3: It's a magic wishing apple, wishing apple, one Mike and
Speaker 3: all your dreams come true.
Speaker 1: Real, yeah, girl. She went to see snow White and
Speaker 1: she was watching it and there was snow White and
Speaker 1: coming and happy and this good little girl and washing
Speaker 1: the dishes of the dwarfs and doing their laundry and
Speaker 1: singing while doing it, and oh my god, Mila was
Speaker 1: sickened by that. But then when the Evil Queen came
Speaker 1: on the stage, all powerful and sexy and beautiful and
Speaker 1: demanding and in control. That's when Mila's brain exploded, and
Speaker 1: that's when she said, that's who I want to be.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be evil, but I want to
Speaker 1: be everything. She is the evil Queen, and she never
Speaker 1: forgot that. She adapted part of the evil Queen persona
Speaker 1: into vampire.
Speaker 4: Like many people starting off in Hollywood, Mila had a
Speaker 4: number of tough breaks and terrible experiences. Early on.
Speaker 1: She went to I can't remember the person's name, but
Speaker 1: they were advertising for a radio monologist, exactly what Mila did,
Speaker 1: and so she applied. Now, mind you, she's only nineteen
Speaker 1: years old from Astoria, Ore again and goes into this
Speaker 1: shabby little studio type thing and the guy is there
Speaker 1: by himself, and he tricks her into signing a piece
Speaker 1: of paper and he takes her in the bag to
Speaker 1: take her picture, and then he asked her to become
Speaker 1: nude from the waist up, and all she had to
Speaker 1: cover herself was some see through scarves. And Mila was horrified.
Speaker 1: She knew she was locked in and to that office,
Speaker 1: to that back part of that office, she couldn't escape,
Speaker 1: and it was upstairs. No one would hear her scream,
Speaker 1: so she complied, and he took pictures of her with
Speaker 1: these scarves. She couldn't wait to get dressed, and as
Speaker 1: she flew out of the office after he unlocked it,
Speaker 1: he said, the proofs will be ready on Wednesday or whatever,
Speaker 1: and she just stormed out, running away from the man.
Speaker 1: And of course it was just a sham because the
Speaker 1: proofs never showed up, and even when she went back
Speaker 1: to the office, the guy was gone and locked up.
Speaker 1: He was charlatan. And then she tried to I can't
Speaker 1: remember who mister Clark, I think his name was. She
Speaker 1: went to interview for a job there, and he made
Speaker 1: a pass at her. He started moving his hands up
Speaker 1: her skirt and she wrestled him and ended up breaking
Speaker 1: his glasses and ran out of his office. And then
Speaker 1: she said to herself, Hollywood is just filthy. Those were
Speaker 1: her words that she wrote.
Speaker 4: But one day she met someone who had changed her
Speaker 4: life forever.
Speaker 1: She went with a friend of hers because it was
Speaker 1: the friend's birthday, ended up at Musso and Franks. They
Speaker 1: had grabbed a serviceman outside to be their escort into
Speaker 1: the bar because Mila wasn't twenty one yet. But they
Speaker 1: went in with the soldier and they sat down. Of course,
Speaker 1: they got served, and then Mala heard this voice in
Speaker 1: the back of her and she couldn't believe her ears
Speaker 1: was Orson Wells in person, her God, and she couldn't
Speaker 1: help herself, and she ran over to his table and
Speaker 1: started babbling whatever it is that she did. Then realized
Speaker 1: that she had interrupted him in his dinner companions and
Speaker 1: apologized and went back to her table, which was now gone.
Speaker 1: Her friend and the soldier boy had decided to googigan out,
Speaker 1: so now she was alone. So she just sat there
Speaker 1: wondering what to do. And here comes Orson Wells over
Speaker 1: to her cable by himself and invites her over to
Speaker 1: his table. So she goes over there and it's time
Speaker 1: to go, and he calls the cab and gives her
Speaker 1: a kiss. She lived in a hotel then, I think
Speaker 1: the Commodore hotel. He got out of the cab and
Speaker 1: he said, I want to see where you live, and
Speaker 1: he walked her to the door. He didn't kiss her again.
Speaker 1: He left shortly thereafter. A bouquet of flowers arrived at
Speaker 1: the desk they began a romance. At the time, it
Speaker 1: was during the war, and Orson was always into magic,
Speaker 1: and he was putting up a type of carnival off
Speaker 1: LaBrea in Los Angeles, where there were all kinds of
Speaker 1: tints and games, and he had his celebrity friends come
Speaker 1: and do tricks like sawing a woman in half and
Speaker 1: eating snakes and all of this sort of carnival kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Well, Orson had quit sending flowers or coming
Speaker 1: after Mila and had been quite a while, and Mila
Speaker 1: was getting a little alarmed. What has happened? Has he
Speaker 1: ditched me? Is he not interested in me anymore? What's
Speaker 1: going on? She went to the little house on Hacienda
Speaker 1: that she had been seeing Orson at, and a man
Speaker 1: showed up in a bath robe and it wasn't Orson,
Speaker 1: and he said he didn't know him, mister Wells, And
Speaker 1: so Mila left. She thought, well, maybe he's moved. I
Speaker 1: don't know that man. Then she went to the carnival
Speaker 1: to look for Orson. There were pictures of all these
Speaker 1: celebrities that were going to be appearing, and she looked
Speaker 1: up one of these pictures and it was the man
Speaker 1: in the bath robe and his name was Joseph Cotton.
Speaker 1: He was a famous actor in those days and also
Speaker 1: a very close friend of Orson else. So then Mylea
Speaker 1: put tuned two together. H these two men have rented
Speaker 1: this house to entertain their girlfriends, whoever they may be,
Speaker 1: and so I'm just one of his girlfriends. God only
Speaker 1: knows how many more girlfriends he's gone. Then, while Myla
Speaker 1: was stewing in her apartment and not working, she realized
Speaker 1: that she was pregnant and it was Orson Wells's child.
Speaker 1: And very shortly, like the same day or the next day,
Speaker 1: she was listening to the radio and they announced that
Speaker 1: Arson Wells had married Rita Haywarth that morning at city Hall.
Speaker 1: So Mala's world was plunged into complete blackness, if you
Speaker 1: can imagine.
Speaker 4: The sun was put up for adoption, and up until
Speaker 4: only very recently, no one knew who the secret child was.
Speaker 4: But after she gave birth, Mala decided to shake off
Speaker 4: her grief and focus on her career, and that's when
Speaker 4: she got her first big break. After an initial string
Speaker 4: of disasters in Los Angeles, Mala moved to New York
Speaker 4: City and there she nailed a role in a stage
Speaker 4: play called Catherine was great with May West.
Speaker 1: She got a part as a handmaiden, and Catherine was great,
Speaker 1: but she irritated May West because she overacted, and May said,
Speaker 1: as an asside to the director, doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: so big, because Mala was supposed to scream and fall
Speaker 1: to the floor and faint as she was informed her
Speaker 1: husband died and Mala went overboard, and May didn't like it.
Speaker 1: She didn't want to be upstaged, and eventually May fired
Speaker 1: Mila after several months on Broadway.
Speaker 4: While she was in New York, Mila made another celebrity friend,
Speaker 4: Marlon Brando.
Speaker 1: And yet before this evening is over your mind and
Speaker 1: give me the brush, you might forget your manners. You
Speaker 1: might refuse to stay. He was in his first Broadway
Speaker 1: plate and it was called I Remember Mama. So they
Speaker 1: were both on Broadway at the same time. And one
Speaker 1: of the other handmaidens that was in Catherine was Great
Speaker 1: was dating Marlon Brando, and she was bitching and complaining
Speaker 1: about what a cad he was. He was there one
Speaker 1: time for her and then he was missing, and she
Speaker 1: just couldn't take it anymore. So Mila listened and listened, thought,
Speaker 1: you know, give me this guy's address. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go over here and take care of him. He's just
Speaker 1: not going to treat you like that. So she did.
Speaker 1: She went over there about two thirty three o'clock one morning,
Speaker 1: knocked on the door, and this guy answered, and it
Speaker 1: was Marlon, and she started reading him the Riot Act
Speaker 1: and he invited her into his apartment, and she didn't
Speaker 1: leave until noon the next day. And her friend from
Speaker 1: the play never spoke to her again, because obviously Myla
Speaker 1: enjoyed herself with Marlon Brando. They started well. She never
Speaker 1: came right out and said it was a romance, but
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it was because she said I have
Speaker 1: to keep my female side under control, because obviously she
Speaker 1: found him very attractive. And they dated. I have a
Speaker 1: photo as an eight by ten and Marlon is in
Speaker 1: costume for a movie. It looks like a revolutionary four
Speaker 1: type uniform and Mala's dressed at the nines like she's
Speaker 1: going out for dinner. I have it and it's very
Speaker 1: very important to me.
Speaker 4: Then Mala got cast in a horror slash burlesque Broadway
Speaker 4: show called Spook Scandals.
Speaker 1: And it only played for one night, but that one
Speaker 1: night turned out to be pretty great for my love,
Speaker 1: because she was inundated with offers from Hollywood by famous
Speaker 1: directors and producers, and she had her pick of who
Speaker 1: to choose to go to Hollywood and be interviewed by,
Speaker 1: and she chose Howard Hawks. He was the man who
Speaker 1: discovered Lauren Bacall, and he was very, very famous. Everybody
Speaker 1: knew Howard Haws. He was a big deal. And she
Speaker 1: went home. She had a contract with Howard Hawks, and
Speaker 1: she waited for I don't know how long, maybe it
Speaker 1: was a couple of days, and the phone never rang. Well.
Speaker 1: Mila was incensed, and she went back to Howard Cox
Speaker 1: and sat in his office and took out the contract
Speaker 1: from her purse and ripped it up into pieces and
Speaker 1: threw it on his desk and said to him, and
Speaker 1: she wrote this down, please kindly dispose the piece in
Speaker 1: your nearest wastebasket. And out the door she went, thus
Speaker 1: killing any opportunities she would ever have to be an actress.
Speaker 4: Since she was blacklisted from traditional acting roles, Mila decided
Speaker 4: she would work on doing her own thing, something entirely
Speaker 4: unique and fringe from Hollywood, and in October of nineteen
Speaker 4: fifty three, she unveiled a new persona at the bow
Speaker 4: Karribe Masquerade Ball.
Speaker 1: Apparently this val Cared was an annual event right before Halloween.
Speaker 1: It was a costume ball and it was held at
Speaker 1: the Moulin Rouge. So he told Mila about it, and
Speaker 1: he said, you have to come and just put on
Speaker 1: a costume. Income it's so much fun and they'll be prizes.
Speaker 1: And Mila thought, wow, maybe I should do that because
Speaker 1: I'm wanting to get discovered. I want to be on television.
Speaker 1: Because she knew the door to movies was shut, so
Speaker 1: she decided to go as Charles Adams unnamed character at
Speaker 1: the time from his cartoon strip The Adams Family.
Speaker 5: So I went there and I practiced my mctory Marian
Speaker 5: Kourtchy because I expected to win. But I had lavender makeup,
Speaker 5: you know, partty with a little lavender looking as I
Speaker 5: had risen from the grave turned a little blue, you know.
Speaker 5: Therefooted like that. The lady was flat chested.
Speaker 1: She bought some rayon from a fabric store, and she
Speaker 1: rented a wig from Max Factor and Indian Wig, so
Speaker 1: it was a long black wig, and then she applied
Speaker 1: her own makeup. She went barefoot and The dress was
Speaker 1: low in the back, eye in the front. She did
Speaker 1: not sins her waist, She just wore it. The dress
Speaker 1: loose and raggedy. The sleeves were tattered and the hamline
Speaker 1: was tattered. And she put on tomb like makeup. She said,
Speaker 1: very very white, with a little bit of purple lavender.
Speaker 1: They went to the ball and Mila won the costume prize,
Speaker 1: which was a transistor radio. But she had caught the
Speaker 1: eye of Hunt Stromberg program manag ABC Channel two, Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and he looked for her for five months, from October
Speaker 1: to March. He finally talked to this guy, the one
Speaker 1: who had encouraged her the beginning to go to the
Speaker 1: Bowl thrib and he says, oh, she's easy to find.
Speaker 5: So they found me and they told me to come in,
Speaker 5: and I came in. He said, come in costume. And
Speaker 5: I came in during the Eyes of March wearing a
Speaker 5: great Valenciaga cape coat and the winds winds of the
Speaker 5: Eyes of March were flapping it and people were coming
Speaker 5: out of a little bummelow saying, oh, there's Hunts vampire there.
Speaker 5: I had no hair. You just didn't see ladies with
Speaker 5: crew cuts in those days. But I had all sorts
Speaker 5: of things women didn't see in those days, you know.
Speaker 1: And Mila was interviewed by hunt Stromberg. He told her
Speaker 1: what he wanted. He wanted her to be the horror host.
Speaker 1: And she said, well, who else are you going to have?
Speaker 1: From Adam's family. It was a cartoon that was published
Speaker 1: in the New Yorker in those days. And he said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we can't afford anybody else. We just want you.
Speaker 1: And Mala said, well, I can't possibly do it then,
Speaker 1: because you would be ripping off Charles Adams. This particular
Speaker 1: character is his character. And he says, well, then I
Speaker 1: don't know what we're going to do. And she says, well,
Speaker 1: can I come up with something a little different? And
Speaker 1: he says, I'll give you four days. So Mila went
Speaker 1: home and she took her costume from October and turned
Speaker 1: it backwards.
Speaker 5: So then I saw a book by John Willie Bondage
Speaker 5: and Discipline. I said, ah, that's it. I had been
Speaker 5: a pinup model. I've been doing cheesecake right at that time.
Speaker 5: So I took the cheesecake and the Bondage and Discipline,
Speaker 5: and I sinched to waste.
Speaker 1: Her waist she sensed to in those days, nineteen inches,
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 5: Put in the fish net hose, I slipped the dress.
Speaker 5: I changed Mortitio's statement. I gave her Hollywood makeup, and remembering.
Speaker 1: Too that there was a.
Speaker 5: Bit of Greta Garbo in here in, something a little Dostoevsky,
Speaker 5: and something just a wee bit spooky like Norma Desmond.
Speaker 5: Were just turned me on big and Suset Boulevard. I've
Speaker 5: made up my mind we'll bury him in the garden.
Speaker 1: Any city laws against that, I wouldn't know. I don't
Speaker 1: care anyway.
Speaker 5: I want the coffin to be white, and I wanted
Speaker 5: specially lined with second. Now when you see it, it
Speaker 5: looks like I'm imitating Norma Desmond, which I was, but
Speaker 5: I didn't know it, you know, a subliminal.
Speaker 1: She wore bust pads because she wanted the bust in
Speaker 1: the hips to be remarkably larger than this teeny tiny ways.
Speaker 1: She wanted to look like she was not even human,
Speaker 1: like she came in parts. Then she glued on some
Speaker 1: false fingernails that were three inches long and painted the nails.
Speaker 1: She made them out of margarine tubs, and she got
Speaker 1: herself a black wig that she from a store downtown.
Speaker 1: She walked in to an interview with hunt Stromberg four
Speaker 1: days later, dressed as what we know now as Vampira.
Speaker 1: Hunt Stromberg goes forward. Of course, this was exactly who
Speaker 1: he wanted, and a star was born.
Speaker 4: And so Milo was signed to bring her character to
Speaker 4: live TV on The Vampire Show.
Speaker 5: Me Reading that show.
Speaker 1: It premiered on April thirty, nineteen fifty four, and then
Speaker 1: the next night it was on at its regular time midnight.
Speaker 1: Made first nineteen fifty four. She didn't have the beginning
Speaker 1: where she walked down the corridor with miasthma of dry eyes.
Speaker 1: She didn't have that yet. That came a few weeks Slater.
Speaker 1: But she would just introduce herself. Hellow, I am vampire.
Speaker 1: And she had this tiny, tiny waist and this low
Speaker 1: cut blouse and the tattered sleeves and hemline and like
Speaker 1: she said, my tall tall shoes, black hair, bizarre makeup
Speaker 1: with boomerang eyebrows that arch sway up, and an overly
Speaker 1: pronounced spread lip where she didn't see it because it
Speaker 1: wasn't colored television, but you could tell it was a
Speaker 1: different color of lip. And started talking about death and
Speaker 1: how beautiful death was, and diatines and electric chairs.
Speaker 3: You know, I've often been asked why I don't like
Speaker 3: My attic is electricity.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows electricity.
Speaker 8: Is the chairs.
Speaker 1: And you can imagine what the audience thought in this
Speaker 1: Eisenhower era, like what is this? Who is that woman
Speaker 1: that had never seen anything like her?
Speaker 4: The idea was that Vampire would host a new horror
Speaker 4: movie each night. She'd introduce the movie, come back for
Speaker 4: ad breaks, and close it out when it was finished,
Speaker 4: all while making clever quote unquote jokes.
Speaker 3: Our little fairy tale to night. It's called the thirteenth Guest.
Speaker 3: The thirteen makes it timely, topical and terrifying. It's about
Speaker 3: a humorous.
Speaker 5: Fellow who dies telling a joke, something of a dead
Speaker 5: pan comedian. Yes, put me.
Speaker 3: Down in the room and we.
Speaker 1: Come in. And right from the get go, she was
Speaker 1: insanely popular. People were writing to the station wanting to
Speaker 1: know more, more information, and within a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: they had to bump up the time start from twelve
Speaker 1: to eleven so more people would be awake. And then
Speaker 1: Life Magazine called Life Magazine. If you made Life Magazine
Speaker 1: in those days, you were a star. You had made it,
Speaker 1: And Life Magazine sent a photographer here down to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles to film Myla, and that's when the hallway Candelabra
Speaker 1: dry Ice entrance mark is beginning. They did that for
Speaker 1: Life Magazine. I think she had a four page spread.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just one page, it was four pages. It
Speaker 1: might have even been five. He took pictures of her
Speaker 1: in the back of I can't remember what make car
Speaker 1: it was, but it was a convertible and was an old,
Speaker 1: tiny Victorian age car, and Myla would sit in the
Speaker 1: back with a parasol over her head to keep the
Speaker 1: sun out, but the parasol was all shredded up. And
Speaker 1: then she would scream at green lights and want the
Speaker 1: convertible to go through the red lights. So she was
Speaker 1: photographed doing that, people staring at her, like in broad daylight,
Speaker 1: like who is that woman dressed like that screaming. She
Speaker 1: was a hit. She was a huge hit. It was
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, somebody talking about death AND's beautiful suicides
Speaker 1: and eyeballs and frog brains and beteens and oh my word,
Speaker 1: what else is she going to come up with?
Speaker 4: Sandra says that Mila felt more comfortable as vampire than
Speaker 4: she did as.
Speaker 1: Herself, especially at the beginning. I think that was her
Speaker 1: alter ego because sometimes she would just put on vampire makeup.
Speaker 1: She had short blonde hair, and she would just leave
Speaker 1: her short blonde hair and put on her Mala clothes
Speaker 1: and go down to Googie's with a vampire face. I
Speaker 1: think there's a quote in the book something about hiding
Speaker 1: behind the makeup. She could be more aloof, she could
Speaker 1: feel more powerful, she could be more distant if she
Speaker 1: had her vampire face. Some vampire gave her permission to
Speaker 1: be how she wanted to be. It was that little
Speaker 1: bit of the evil queen persona. She liked it. Mala
Speaker 1: claimed that she herself was very, very shy. She said
Speaker 1: that several times. I don't see that. I don't see
Speaker 1: Mala as being shy, but she claims that she was.
Speaker 1: Maybe she was when she was younger. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But she enjoyed being vampira. She enjoyed every moment of it.
Speaker 1: She loved her. She's I love vampire irishoes my child.
Speaker 1: I brought her up and I fed her and I
Speaker 1: took care of her. And now when Mila was older,
Speaker 1: she would say, now it's time for her to take
Speaker 1: care of me.
Speaker 4: As Vampire became more popular, Mila was invited to join
Speaker 4: Bella Lagosi on the Red Skeleton Show.
Speaker 3: I think there's somebody cold as it's my sister, the Vampire.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The Vampire Show was eventually canceled in nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 4: but Mala briefly took the show over to KHJATV, where
Speaker 4: she retained rights to the Vampire character. Meanwhile, Mala started
Speaker 4: hanging out among the Hollywood elite.
Speaker 1: Schwabs was the celebrity hangout drugstore. Everybody went to Schwabs.
Speaker 1: That's where they got their medicine, their pills and their
Speaker 1: narcotics and everything else that they needed to function and
Speaker 1: is oftentimes standing lonely, and so Mila hung out there too.
Speaker 1: But then a new coffee shop was built next door.
Speaker 1: In fact, they shared a common wall Schwabs and Googies.
Speaker 1: Googie's was a coffee shop. You walked in and to
Speaker 1: the left there was a horseshoe type counter, probably with
Speaker 1: a Fike case in the middle. So the people like
Speaker 1: Mila started hanging out in Googies. It was the place
Speaker 1: to be in Hollywood if you were just starting out
Speaker 1: in the movies. If you hope to be an actor
Speaker 1: or an actress, if you were a rebel, if you
Speaker 1: were a free spirit, if you were young, you went
Speaker 1: to Googie's. The old school stayed at Schwabz, and Mila
Speaker 1: often said that there almost was a battle between the
Speaker 1: Schwabieros and the googie Items, and every once in a
Speaker 1: while they'd back and forth. Maryland and Rowe would come
Speaker 1: from Schwabz and come over and hang out at Googie's
Speaker 1: once in a while, and so would Shaja Kabor, and
Speaker 1: a few of the others would drop in to say hi.
Speaker 1: But mostly it was the young rebel type people.
Speaker 4: One of those rebels was perhaps the most famous rebel
Speaker 4: of all time, James Dean.
Speaker 1: You're tearing me abar what you say? One thing, he
Speaker 1: said another and everybody changes back again. She didn't know
Speaker 1: who he was. So Mala's sitting there with another guy,
Speaker 1: and a motorcycle drives up, and that was James Dean,
Speaker 1: and into goog Ese he comes, and she said, she
Speaker 1: jumped up out of her boot and banged her crazy bones.
Speaker 1: And the guy with Jack and her said he thought
Speaker 1: Mala had a stroke because she was just mess prized,
Speaker 1: just staring with a peculiar look on her face that
Speaker 1: didn't change, and he said, what what myla and Malasen?
Speaker 1: Is that guy right there, right there, right there that
Speaker 1: came in the door, who is that? I must meet him?
Speaker 1: And the guy turned around and looked. He said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's James Deen. I was just in a movie with him.
Speaker 1: I want to meet him. I've got to meet him
Speaker 1: right now. They were introduced over by the cigarette machine. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that very same day he asked her to go on
Speaker 1: his motorcycle up to his apartment. They became thick and
Speaker 1: fast friends after that very platonic relationship because I think
Speaker 1: from the get go this is nothing, Mila wrote. Jimmy
Speaker 1: became the son she had to give up for adoption,
Speaker 1: and Mila became Jimmy's surrogate mother. She was always giving
Speaker 1: him advice because she was eight years older than he
Speaker 1: was a lot of years, but she was more mature
Speaker 1: and wise, and she was always giving it, don't do that,
Speaker 1: don't do that, do it this way, do it, you know,
Speaker 1: and usually he just ignored her, but he listened and
Speaker 1: they were good friends. And then here's the bizarre part.
Speaker 1: Jimmy was an unknown when they met. He had just
Speaker 1: completed East of Eden, which was his very first movie.
Speaker 1: He only ate three. In East of Eden, his character
Speaker 1: name was Cal spelled with the C, and Mila had
Speaker 1: given her adopted son a name so she could talk
Speaker 1: to him even though he wasn't there, and she named
Speaker 1: him Cal with the key. So I wonder what Mala
Speaker 1: thought when she went, Oh, he's Cal Prass and I
Speaker 1: have a col. So this is the Great Universe telling
Speaker 1: me you're not alone. Your surrogate son is here. That's
Speaker 1: my thoughts.
Speaker 4: Mala and James Dean developed a passionate friendship lasted for years,
Speaker 4: but it was also a friendship that would end in
Speaker 4: disaster for both of them. On September thirtieth, nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 4: James Dean died in a tragic car accident, and it
Speaker 4: blew apart Mila's world.
Speaker 1: I don't think Mila ever loved anyone in this world
Speaker 1: as much as she loved James Dean. She never got
Speaker 1: over his death ever. She loved him like a mother would.
Speaker 1: She couldn't believe that twenty four years in his life
Speaker 1: was snuffed out. She had to leave town because there
Speaker 1: were too many memories of Jimmy here. She was going
Speaker 1: to go to New York. Marlon heard she was going
Speaker 1: to go to New York, and he offered to give
Speaker 1: her some money to get to New York, and she
Speaker 1: wouldn't take it. She had a couple hundred bucks, and
Speaker 1: so off she went to New York and about herself
Speaker 1: an apartment. And as soon as she got back to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, here was Whisper magazine on the newsstand. And
Speaker 1: Whisper Magazine was the lesser cousin of Confidential magazine. It
Speaker 1: was the gossip magazine of all the stars. And on
Speaker 1: the cover was a picture of Vampire and Jamesteen, and
Speaker 1: the headlines screamed something about that Vampire had caused the
Speaker 1: death of James Den because she put a curse on him,
Speaker 1: and Mala contemplated suicide. That was it. That was the
Speaker 1: straw that broke the camel's back, the person that she
Speaker 1: loved more than anything in the world, she was accused
Speaker 1: of killing him.
Speaker 4: With her show canceled and her best friend killed, Mala
Speaker 4: fell out of work in Hollywood. However, in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 4: she got an offer from director Ed Wood to play
Speaker 4: a part in one of his movies.
Speaker 6: Can Your Heartstand The Shocking Facts about Grave Robbers from
Speaker 6: Out a Space.
Speaker 1: She didn't leave a lot of information behind about Edward movie,
Speaker 1: but I know that she had met Edwood at a
Speaker 1: birthday party for Bela Lagosi's son. He had said something
Speaker 1: to her, well, you're going to have to be in
Speaker 1: one of my movies sometimes, and Mila said to herself,
Speaker 1: not a check, are you kidding me? She thought he
Speaker 1: was pathetic. One way to kill your career is star
Speaker 1: with ned Wood movie. So then he sent one of
Speaker 1: his people over to Mala's apartment to ask her to
Speaker 1: be in his movie. Mila had lost her job as
Speaker 1: a vampire due to creative differences. Let's say Jimmy was
Speaker 1: dead and she said, na I don't think so, and
Speaker 1: he says two hundred dollars, And boy did that look
Speaker 1: good for my law because she was almost like a
Speaker 1: cat food, like she said, and she had all these
Speaker 1: cats to be so well, maybe just leave the script here,
Speaker 1: but I don't know.
Speaker 4: At first, Mila decided to leave Edwarod hanging and instead
Speaker 4: took a few other gigs.
Speaker 1: A few months later, Liberaci came calling.
Speaker 7: The Las Vegas Hilton takes great pleasure in presenting the
Speaker 7: Liberacci Show and starring.
Speaker 1: Liberaci because Bella Lagosi was supposed to be co starring
Speaker 1: with Liberacci in Las Vegas, but Bella became very very
Speaker 1: ill and couldn't d opt out, so he suggested my law.
Speaker 1: So Liberacci took him out upon it, and he asked
Speaker 1: Mila to be his co star in Las Vegas for
Speaker 1: two weeks, and she jumped at the chance because Liberacci
Speaker 1: was the highest paid celebrity at the time. That's where
Speaker 1: she went, and that's where she met Elvis. Mila would
Speaker 1: keep running into these people. I'll tell you. Elvis was
Speaker 1: starring at exactly the same type across the street at
Speaker 1: the Old Frontier, and Mila was across the street at
Speaker 1: the Riviera. So they formed a romance.
Speaker 4: But when she got home, Mala found waiting at her
Speaker 4: doorstep the script for Edward's new movie, then called Grave
Speaker 4: Robbers from outer Space.
Speaker 6: Reading is my friend. We are all interested in the future,
Speaker 6: for that is where you and I are going to
Speaker 6: spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friend,
Speaker 6: future events such as these will affect.
Speaker 1: You in the future. Mila never touched it. It just
Speaker 1: sat there, and then finally Edward's friend came back and said,
Speaker 1: we're going to start filming here in November. You know,
Speaker 1: are you on? And she says, well, I've looked at
Speaker 1: the script now, and the script is so inane. I
Speaker 1: can't say any of it. I can't bring myself to
Speaker 1: say a word. It's so stupid. And this guy apparently said, well,
Speaker 1: we don't care. We only want your name anyway, and
Speaker 1: so that's why she didn't speak the word during the
Speaker 1: entire movie.
Speaker 4: Vampire's role in the eventually titled Plan nine from Outer
Speaker 4: Space was entirely silent, but her presence was a huge
Speaker 4: part of the film.
Speaker 8: I was initially offered some lines, but the fact is
Speaker 8: that the character, although I was built as vampire, the
Speaker 8: character wasn't Vampire as I had conceived her. Empire as
Speaker 8: I had conceived her was giddy, outrageous, and this was
Speaker 8: a different kind of a She was in a trance,
Speaker 8: and I just thought it would better if she was
Speaker 8: in a trance, and I asked her please do it mutely.
Speaker 4: Still, Mila was embarrassed to have done it.
Speaker 1: She didn't think anyone would see it. She was hoping
Speaker 1: that nobody would see it or a recognize her or
Speaker 1: think about it. And I don't think she saw the
Speaker 1: movie in its entirety until like nineteen eighty four, but
Speaker 1: she was shocked surprised that it had become a cult favorite.
Speaker 1: And it was also voted the worst movie of all time.
Speaker 1: And I used to like to think about Citizen Kane
Speaker 1: orson Well's the best movie of all time, Planned nine
Speaker 1: the worst movie of all time, and they had a baby.
Speaker 4: For better or worse. Plan nine is considered one of
Speaker 4: Vampire's most famous and iconic roles. When the movie had
Speaker 4: a cult resurgence in the nineteen eighties, Vampira also had
Speaker 4: a new boost in popularity. Then Tim Burton made a
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety four biopic called ed Wood, where actor Lisa
Speaker 4: Marie portrayed Vampire in the film, pardon me, miss Vampire.
Speaker 1: Yes you don't know me, but I'm Edwood.
Speaker 7: I'm a film producer and I'm currently in production on
Speaker 7: a science fiction piece with Bella Legosi and Swedish wrestler
Speaker 7: Tord Johnson.
Speaker 4: I don't understand. Do you want my autograph?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: I think my film is perfect for you.
Speaker 2: You want me to show it on my TV program? Well,
Speaker 2: I have nothing to do with that. You should call
Speaker 2: the station Managret Channel seven.
Speaker 7: No no, no, no, no no. I don't want you
Speaker 7: to show the movie. I want you to be in it.
Speaker 4: Look I'm with some friends and we're about to eat.
Speaker 7: Please it would just take one second. Come on over
Speaker 7: a meet the backers. There is a really nice dentist
Speaker 7: from Oxnark.
Speaker 2: Look, buddy, I've got real offers from real studios. I
Speaker 2: don't need to blow some dentists for a part.
Speaker 4: Forget it.
Speaker 1: She went out to lunch with Lisa Marie and she
Speaker 1: liked her because she was fellow Sagittarian. They both had,
Speaker 1: you know, November December birthdays. The one thing she didn't
Speaker 1: like that Lisa Marie did is she says, when I
Speaker 1: posed as Vampira, I crooked my elbows and put my
Speaker 1: hands on my abdomen so you could see my tiny waists.
Speaker 1: That was very, very important to the character. And Lisa
Speaker 1: Marie would put her hands on her hips. That is
Speaker 1: not the way it's done. And I told her before
Speaker 1: she did it how to pose herself. Mala was very
Speaker 1: particular about her character and that's one thing she did
Speaker 1: not like. I didn't think it was that true to Vampira.
Speaker 1: I thought it showed Mala as Mala. She had long
Speaker 1: blonde hair. Mala had short blonde hair always and sort
Speaker 1: of a gloomy guss. Mila really was a funny person.
Speaker 1: She cracked jokes. She his very personable. In the movie,
Speaker 1: she was just sort of angry. That's how I looked
Speaker 1: at it, So I didn't think it was accurate.
Speaker 4: Mala didn't do much acting or make too many vampire
Speaker 4: appearances after Plan nine. She instead ran an antique store
Speaker 4: called Vampire's Attic, on top of a few other odd jobs.
Speaker 4: But when she got a second wind of fame from
Speaker 4: the ed Wood hype in the eighties and nineties, she
Speaker 4: reveled in the spotlight.
Speaker 1: I think it did have an effect on her. I
Speaker 1: think she loved it because then on top of being
Speaker 1: in demand, she was able to sell her artwork on
Speaker 1: eBay and support herself. That made her very excited, and
Speaker 1: so she did a lot of drawings and paintings, and
Speaker 1: I don't think she ever did any pros. She did
Speaker 1: some sketching that were very good. She did a pencil
Speaker 1: sketching of Arland Brando. She did Jimmy very well, and
Speaker 1: then paintings. I have one of her paintings. A fan
Speaker 1: of hers sent it to me and I'd treasure it.
Speaker 1: And she was able to sell photographs, and she went
Speaker 1: to conventions, horror conventions, and she was able to sell
Speaker 1: her photos for twenty dollars a piece autographs, so that
Speaker 1: put money in her coffers and she desperately needed it.
Speaker 8: Fifteen silent minutes, which has given me an entire new career.
Speaker 8: Thank you, mister Wood.
Speaker 1: You're listening.
Speaker 4: With such renewed interest in Vampira. KHJTV decided they wanted
Speaker 4: to resurrect the Vampire show, so in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 4: they asked Mila to return to TV, but it didn't
Speaker 4: quite go as planned.
Speaker 1: They had done a lot of talking to Mila. They
Speaker 1: wanted to revive the Vampire's show, and Mala finally said, okay,
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to appear on camera. I'm too old.
Speaker 1: And they finally talked her into making appearances as Vampire's mother,
Speaker 1: and she said, well, vampire doesn't have a mother. She
Speaker 1: just evolved. And eventually she says, okay, I'll appear on
Speaker 1: camera briefly once in a while and mostly in voice only.
Speaker 1: But you will hire a vampire of my choice, and
Speaker 1: they agreed to it, and they had a contest to
Speaker 1: select a vampire. Mila wasn't too keen on that because
Speaker 1: she wanted Lola Falana to be vampire, which wasn't going
Speaker 1: to happen because Lola Falana was a big deal in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas at the time. They requested if she had
Speaker 1: anything from the original show, and she said, yeah, she
Speaker 1: had some scripts and she had pictures of the set.
Speaker 1: She would bring those over to Cage Jay so that
Speaker 1: they could peruse them so they would know how to
Speaker 1: set up this new show and how to make the
Speaker 1: set look like her set original set that was such
Speaker 1: a success for poison bar or marble coffee table, rolled
Speaker 1: the spider, the death's head pouch, the color of the
Speaker 1: sofa red. And she didn't hear from them anymore, and
Speaker 1: she tried to contact them and tried to contact them nothing.
Speaker 1: So she finally went to the studio and says, hey,
Speaker 1: but gifts, well, such and so's on vacation and such
Speaker 1: and so's sick and blah blah blah. And then she
Speaker 1: finally what she found out was if you come back here,
Speaker 1: we've selected a Vampiro and we'd like for you to
Speaker 1: meet her. Mala thought, now, wait a minute, you told
Speaker 1: me I was going to be able to pick the
Speaker 1: new vampire. But she thought, well, the least I can
Speaker 1: do is go and take a look at her. So
Speaker 1: she went to back to the station and Cassandra Peterson
Speaker 1: had not arrived yet, and she eventually showed up late,
Speaker 1: and she was wearing a red wig and some kind
Speaker 1: of a full black skirt, and Mala thought, oh brother,
Speaker 1: what is this. And one of the bosses of Katee
Speaker 1: Say said to her, this is the new Vampira, and
Speaker 1: we gave her the rights. It's between you two girls.
Speaker 1: You fight it out. And Mila lost her stuff right
Speaker 1: in and air. You did what you gave her, the rights,
Speaker 1: My rights, she said, some exploitive deleted Let's just say
Speaker 1: out the door she went, and that was the end
Speaker 1: of that. They started production the first day, calling it
Speaker 1: the Vampire Show, and Mila had a CS and de
Speaker 1: SIS letter sent to them, you stop right now or
Speaker 1: I'm going to sue your butt saw and they changed
Speaker 1: the name to Alvira, Mistress of the Dark. But she
Speaker 1: was a ripoff, Mila. Milah said, the only thing that
Speaker 1: was different between them was the big boobs and the
Speaker 1: top nod on her head. Other than that, they were
Speaker 1: the same.
Speaker 4: Elvirus first show called el Virus Movie macob ran from
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty one to nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: Hello Darling, Yes, sire is Lilo may that gell with
Speaker 1: a shape that drives me el viras Mistress of the Dark.
Speaker 4: It was a huge success, and the entire time Mila
Speaker 4: was attempting to sue Elvira khjatv for taking the rights
Speaker 4: to her character. She never won that lawsuit.
Speaker 1: It impacted her the rest of her life. She says,
Speaker 1: she's going to the bank with my money and she's
Speaker 1: buying fancy, million dollar homes. I don't even have electricity.
Speaker 1: I can't afford to feed my dog. And you can't
Speaker 1: blame her. You can't blame Mila for feeling that way.
Speaker 1: I would too. That was supposed to be her show.
Speaker 1: She was supposed to be making the money. There was
Speaker 1: no al Vira at the beginning. There was only Vampira.
Speaker 1: I'm bitter about it too.
Speaker 4: Still, Mala had acquired enough fame from the nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: four Edward biopic that she was doing pretty well. She
Speaker 4: started to appear in a number of documentaries about wood.
Speaker 5: And this man said that he yearned, he had planned
Speaker 5: to have a hope to have vampire in his production.
Speaker 5: I thought he was to grab a hold of my
Speaker 5: heels and pull me back down into the you know,
Speaker 5: Nicholson dimes Meyer from which I had clawed my way up, and.
Speaker 3: I was insensed.
Speaker 1: I thought I wouldn't work for that idiot. How dare
Speaker 1: he to aspire to me?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: And she was successfully selling her art and memorabilia to
Speaker 4: fans across the world.
Speaker 1: Things went very well until I think around the turn
Speaker 1: of the century she got evicted from her house. She
Speaker 1: lived in a converted garage. She eventually, in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five moved right off Sunset Boulevard and she was
Speaker 1: much happier there, and that's where she passed away, off
Speaker 1: Serrano of Sunset in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: Mila Ermie passed away of natural causes on January tenth,
Speaker 4: two eight, at the age of eighty five. This is
Speaker 4: when her niece Sandra collected her writings and started to
Speaker 4: catalog Mala's life. I asked Sandra what she admired most
Speaker 4: about her aunt.
Speaker 1: The fact that she never sold out. That has impressed
Speaker 1: people a lot. Here she had this character that she
Speaker 1: created and she was offered lots of money to sell
Speaker 1: her rights. KBC wanted to syndicate the show. Mala said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I would rather be poverty stricken than lose control of
Speaker 1: my character Vampira and her honesty. Mila was brutally honest
Speaker 1: and like I said, never sold out, never gave up.
Speaker 1: She lived for over sixty years, most of those years
Speaker 1: as a disabled woman and a single woman, and she
Speaker 1: served Hollywood, which is a cutthroat town. Let me tell you,
Speaker 1: I've learned that those things really impressed me about my love.
Speaker 4: Finally, Sandra set out to find her long lost cousin
Speaker 4: the child of vampire and Orson Wells, and eventually she did.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty one. He was identified a seventy six
Speaker 4: year old David Putter.
Speaker 1: Through DNA ancestry dot com and they matched my daughter
Speaker 1: and David as first cousin once removed or something. So
Speaker 1: he called her on the phone and I had been
Speaker 1: at the grocery store and I walked in and my
Speaker 1: daughter had this smug look on her face and she says,
Speaker 1: I know who mylassen is. I know his name, I
Speaker 1: know where he lives, and I have his phone number.
Speaker 1: I said, come on, get out of here. You know
Speaker 1: that's not even funny. She said, no, I'm serious. I
Speaker 1: know his name. And I looked at her and I said,
Speaker 1: give it to me now. So she did, and I
Speaker 1: was on the phone within one minute. I mean I
Speaker 1: was calling, that's how anxious I was. And I got
Speaker 1: him on the first call. He asked me, you know
Speaker 1: who my mother is? And I said, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Because I had not sold my book yet, it was
Speaker 1: not quite finished. I had another chapter and a half,
Speaker 1: maybe the finish, and then I was going to be done.
Speaker 1: And I said, you're talking to the only person in
Speaker 1: the world that can tell you everything you'd ever want
Speaker 1: to know about your mother. I'm writing a book about
Speaker 1: her life. Really, I said, yes, your mother is Mila Normie,
Speaker 1: aka Vampire. And he was silent, and he says, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I've waited seventy five years to know who
Speaker 1: my mother was and I find out she's a vampire.
Speaker 1: Just cracked up. I was so happy. I have not
Speaker 1: met him in person yet, but he's sending for my
Speaker 1: daughter and I to come visit him in Vermont from Oregon,
Speaker 1: and he apparently has his mother's eyes, and so I'm
Speaker 1: very anxious to meet David in person. He'll be the
Speaker 1: closest thing I'll ever have to a brother. David's adopted
Speaker 1: mother died when he was only three, so he's never
Speaker 1: known a mother. And I've sent him a vampire a
Speaker 1: statue which he proudly displays in his home. And he
Speaker 1: feels his mother around him. Now he knows who she is.
Speaker 1: He talks to her and calls her mom. It just
Speaker 1: touches my heart. He thinks that Mila's there around That
Speaker 1: makes my heart happy. Who can come.
Speaker 5: In here is to go home.
Speaker 1: I can have a.
Speaker 3: Nice little.
Speaker 1: Step on the cat's tale.
Speaker 3: I don't being a cat, but we don't have a
Speaker 3: cat a gy tale.
Speaker 2: This episode of Ephemeral was written and produced by Trevor Young,
Speaker 2: with producers Max and Alex Williams. Sandra Nimi is author
Speaker 2: of Glamour Cool, The Passions and Pain of the Real
Speaker 2: Vampire Myla Nurmi. Big thanks to Farrell House Publishing for
Speaker 2: coordinating the interview. And we want to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Are you a vampire fan? Who are your favorite characters
Speaker 2: from the horror Universe. Let us know on social media.
Speaker 2: We're at Ephemeral show and For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to your favorite shows.
Speaker 4: Happy Halloween,