The Vampira Show
| The Vampira Show | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Hap Weyman |
| Presented by | Vampira |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 50 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Hunt Stromberg, Jr. |
| Camera setup | RCA TK-30A |
| Running time | 90 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | KABC-TV (ABC affiliate) (Los Angeles, California) |
| Picture format | Black-and-white |
| Audio format | Monaural |
| Original release | April 30, 1954 – April 2, 1955 |
The Vampira Show was an American variety show hosted by Vampira. The series aired on the Los Angeles ABC television affiliate KABC-TV from April 30, 1954, through April 2, 1955. The series was produced and created by Hunt Stromberg, Jr., and featured the Vampira character created by Maila Nurmi.
Though the show was unseen outside of the Los Angeles area, The Vampira Show has become a cult classic, spawning fan clubs the world over.
The costume of Nurmi's Vampira character was inspired by the spooky The New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams, later adapted for the TV series The Addams Family in 1964. As Nurmi told Boxoffice in a 1994 interview, she had dressed as Addams' at-the-time nameless ghoul-woman to attend Lester Horton's annual Hollywood costume ball the Bal Caribe in 1953. Nurmi's ghoul woman beat out over 2,000 attendees to win the evening's prize for best costume where she drew the attention of Hunt Stromberg, Jr., a Hollywood producer. When Stromberg approached Nurmi about doing the character for television, Nurmi then re-imagined the character and costume as a buxom and glamorous single vampire instead of the mother of a family, and she named her creation Vampira. Nurmi told Boxoffice that her intention was to invent a unique creation of her own that was "campier and sexier" than the mute and flat-chested Addams character, in part to avoid plagiarizing Addams' intellectual property. Vampira was known to appear in broad daylight in full costume. Her husband Dean Riesner refused to appear in public with his wife in her Vampira costume.
Vampira's personality was based on elements of several silent film actresses including Theda Bara and Gloria Swanson. The Vampira character was influenced by the Evil Queen from Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and from the Dragon Lady character in the Terry and the Pirates comic strip. The new costume was inspired by the artwork of John Willie featured in the fetish magazine Bizarre.
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