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She claimed to be blacklisted on television for various reasons.  This continued through the 60's for other reasons...  One of them, Morticia from THE ADDAMS FAMILY tv show suddenly sure did look a lot more like Vampira than she looked like herself in the Chas Addams strip.  Morticia now acted like Vampira too.

In the 80's Maila WAS supposed to make a return to television.  With Maila hired on as executive producer, she worked closely with a production company in recreating the set and format of her original show, but felt uncomfortable about recreating the character Vampira herself physically.  ...After all, some thirty years had passed and she (and everyone else involved) knew she was a bit long in the fang to play a sexy young vamp.  Part of the deal that was struck was that she could personally handpick her own Doppelganger and train her to perfectly be the new Vampira. 

Finding a replacement took longer than expected and the producers became impatient.  They reneged on their contracted agreement with Maila by hiring another actress themselves and freezing Maila out.  Then they rushed into production.  Maila found out about it and on the day they were shooting the first episode, sent them a cease and desist order.  They broke for an extended lunch break to do some brainstorming about what to do with the situation, but when they returned from the extended break all they did was to change the name of the lead character from "Vampira" to "Elvira" and resumed filming.

Maila, who pretty much lived at the poverty level, obtained a pro-bono lawyer and a court date was set.  The night before court, her lawyer mysteriously removed himself from the case (Maila thinks he was paid off to) and she was left hanging without a lawyer, someone to speak on her behalf to get a continuance, or even a way to get to court. As what happens in this situation, the court had no choice but to rule against Maila when she was unable to make it to court.

There are a bunch of things here I'll weigh in on but I'll use simple quotes (") in green rather than try an find a way to break it up person by person...

"Voluptua aka Gloria Pall"

Maila kept in touch with her and introduced us at one point.  The two were neighbors on the same block for quite a while.

"The which came first Morticia/Vampira question"

Chas. Addams comic certainly came first, but the character was nameless.  In 1953 Maila dressed up like her for a masquerade ball and was seen there by producer Hunt Stromburg.  This costume was faithful to the comic... Completely unglamorous, barefoot, no glamour makeup or fishnets, drab lifeless hanging hair, breasts bound flat, loose fitting dress etc. 

She won the contest.  Stromburg later approached her about doing the same thing on TV.  Maila asked him who would be playing the other Addams characters.  He replied something to the effect of "We ain't paying anyone for the rights to these characters or going to do the whole family, we're just going to swipe the woman.".  Maila refused to do that, but said she would come up with her own character that was a "Glamorous Vampire Woman" (a variation of a look she had already been doing on and off since the 1940's as a model in photo shoots) opposed to the undifferentiated generic morose creep/ghoul that the Addams comic character was.  He agreed to those terms, but only marginally at first until he could see the finished character. 

 

ABOVE: Bat Glasses in 1951.  Pre-dating Vampira.

 

 

THE THREE ABOVE: Some early photographic modeling session versions of the character.




ABOVE: Before filming of the show was to start...  Still refining and perfecting the character and making changes.  Note the broom, from before an experamental witch influence was dropped and shorter lighter colored finger nails.
 

She went off and perfected the glamorous, long finger-nailed, sexy bombshell Vampira character, which though she had a severed origin in Chas. Addams was a creation all her own.  In 1954 Vampira is the one that then caught the public eye in LIFE magazine and was portrayed in dress-up homage around Halloween time by everyone from ZsaZsa Gabor to Gisele MacKenzie on the YOUR HIT PARADE TV program as late as 1956.  So yes, she was fairly entrenched in the public consciousness.  While it would have been easy to take full credit, Maila herself always insisted on giving a nod to the Addams comic strip part of the origin, even having it written into press releases. ...Along with mention of The Dragon Lady from the TERRY AND THE PIRATES comic, which was another influence.

When it came time for the Addams Family TV show in 1964, they needed a name for the morose ghoul character and called her "Morticia" which was an obvious nod back to Vampira.  Other nods, like the costume, make-up, sexy demeanor and even some Vampire-like traits also appeared around this time, which is where a lot of the confusion arises from those making comparisons between the two characters today.  The casting of Carolyn Jones was the clincher (and the "cincher") as I can't think of any other actress in Hollywood that had as tiny a waistline approaching Maila's 18inches than Jones, another corset addict.  (Just go back and watch the corset scene in HOUSE OF WAX and look at that tiny waist).

If you look at the three characters in succession (Addams comic... then Vampira... then TV's Morticia) there is a definite evolution there, each feeding the next.  Also to Maila's credit, the Vampira character continued to evolve over the years.  Here are some examples just from her time at KABC Channel 7...


ABOVE: Early version, closed "hobble skirt" with trails.  First promo photos.




ABOVE: The shorter opened "slit" skirt came later.




ABOVE: The red sashes, amulet, and bird hat came toward the end of her run at KABC Channel 7.  So did this addition to her set.



ABOVE: The sequined velvet dress Liberace had special made for her, with red sequins and beads that looked like spatterd blood.  The shoes changed several times too.  This was the look on her show when it moved to KHJ-TV.  (NOTE: Liberace loved buying custom clothes for the people he himself admired.  It was he who had the iconic Gold Lame' suit made for Elvis too)



ABOVE: The "scarf look" from later at KHJ-TV.  Note the couch was a
different one than she had used at KABC too.  The station was trying to tone down her look, possibly after complaints from wives and girlfriends of viewers.



ABOVE: One look from around the time she did the Liberace stage show in Las Vegas.




ABOVE: The "proto Vampira" shreds and holes look from PLAN 9, which she stated to me she personally didn't really even consider a true Vampira look.  Shorter wig too.


And even past these, the look continued to evolve, which I'll try and cover later.


 


"Did Maila Nurmi have the rights to the character?"

Yes, she controlled the rights and they belonged to her, as she did the character name.  Also being the writer of the show (though her husband, screenwriter Dean Reisner typed it up from her long-hand notes and would possibly do the final polish) she also had control of the creative strings and the way the show format developed.  ...One of the things that would have been brought into the legal proceedings when ideas and format for a certain show in the 1980's came into question, had they had their day in court.  Maila as Vampira was also making more $$$ in live personal appearances per week than she actually made from doing the various TV shows for different stations...  THE VAMPIRA SHOW, LATER VAMPIRA, VAMPIRA RETURNS, THE VAMPIRA SHOW REVIVAL....etc.

ABOVE: The guest of honor and Grand Marshall at the 1954 USC Homecoming Parade.
 

 

Not entirely, she just didn't have a regular WEEKLY SHOW.  She was still doing television appearances, went to Las Vegas to appear in Liberace's stage show (I don't think she ever appeared on his TV show as someone suggested), and was also well known enough to be out on the road as a spokesperson ghost host (both as Vampira and as Maila Nurmi) and Horror personality for various movies that were opening, well into the 1960's.


ABOVE: On the road for an Allied Artists movie premiere in 1957. THIS photo was taken in San Francisco, showing she was known far OUTSIDE of the distance her Los Angeles TV show transmissions reached.




ABOVE: Doing publicty on the road for BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE in 1958.



ABOVE: A rare color photo of Vampira in the early 1960's wearing her "Spider Web" dress.  From the beginning of the show in 1954 into the 1960's she also got even thinner, trimming her waist from 22 inches down to 18 inches.  She was in the Guinness Book of Worlds Records for decades as having "The smallest waist of any living human".





ABOVE: Working it at the TOMB OF LIGEIA premiere in 1964.



ABOVE: 1964 working the TOMB OF LIGEIA premiere.  Remember, this is the same year that THE ADDAMS FAMILY appeared on television, which may be why Maila isn't in a specific Vampira costume.  There is also a unconfirmed rumor that ABC, the network that showed The Addams Family (and owned her former local affiliate K-ABC) may have paid her off to NOT dress in a character that may be construed as similar to theirs during this period.


There are some other things I will see if Maila's niece Sandra (who is the family keeper of the flame as far as the estate goes) might want to take part in answering.  I'll give her a call tomorrow and find out.