[6] Her place of birth was at one time disputed: According to biographer W. Scott Poole in Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror (2014), she was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

[citation needed] On Broadway, she gained much attention after appearing in the horror-themed midnight show Spook Scandals, in which she screamed, fainted, lay in a coffin, and seductively lurked about a mock cemetery.

She also worked as a showgirl for the Earl Carroll Theatre and as a high-kicking chorus line dancer at the Florentine Gardens along with stripper Lili St. Cyr.

In 1949, Man Ray brought a pair of "bat glasses" made by the artist Edward Melcarth for the art collector Peggy Guggenheim from Venice, Italy to Los Angeles for a photo shoot with Nurmi.

Nurmi's characterization was influenced by the Dragon Lady from the comic strip Terry and the Pirates and the evil queen from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Her horror-related comedy antics included ghoulish puns, such as encouraging viewers to write for epitaphs instead of autographs, and talking to her pet spider Rollo.

In another, KABC had her cruise around Hollywood in the back of a chauffeur-driven 1932 Packard touring car with the top down, where she sat, as Vampira, holding a black parasol.

[25] When her KABC series was cancelled in 1955,[22] Nurmi retained rights to the Vampira character and took the show to a competing Los Angeles television station, KHJ-TV.

[citation needed] Examination of Nurmi's diaries in 2014 by filmmaker and journalist R. H. Greene verified longtime rumors that in 1956 she was the model for Maleficent, the evil witch in the Disney conception of the classic fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty."

Independent stations in major cities all over the U.S. began showing these films, adding their own ghoulish host or hostess (including Vampira II and other lookalikes) to attract more viewers.

[citation needed] Nominated for a Los Angeles area Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Female Personality in 1954, she returned to films with Too Much, Too Soon in 1958, followed by The Big Operator and The Beat Generation.

The classic clip from Plan 9 from Outer Space featuring Vampira walking out of the woods with her hands pointing straight out was used to start the original opening sequence of WPIX Channel 11 New York's Chiller Theatre in the 1960s.

"[28] Unable to continue using the name Vampira, the show was abruptly renamed Elvira's Movie Macabre with Peterson playing the titular host.

The court eventually ruled in favor of Peterson, holding that "likeness means actual representation of another person's appearance, and not simply close resemblance."

Nurmi claimed that the entire Elvira persona, which included comedic dialogue and intentionally bad graveyard puns, infringed on her creation's "distinctive dark dress, horror movie props, and...special personality.

[30] In 1986, she appeared alongside Tomata du Plenty of The Screamers in Rene Daalder's punk rock musical Population: 1, which was released on DVD in October 2008.

[citation needed] Unlike Elvira, Nurmi authorized very few merchandising contracts for her Vampira character, though the name and likeness have been used unofficially by various companies since the 1950s.

[34] In the early 1950s, Nurmi was close friends with James Dean, and they spent time together at Googie's coffee shop on the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

"[35] As Hedda Hopper related in a 1962 memoir that included a chapter on Dean: "We discussed the thin-cheeked actress who calls herself Vampira on television (and cashed in, after Jimmy died, on the publicity she got from knowing him and claimed she could talk to him 'through the veil').

"[37] The English punk rock band the Damned wrote a song about Nurmi's relationship with Dean, called "Plan 9, Channel 7", which can be found on the 1979 album Machine Gun Etiquette.

In 1949, Nurmi married her first husband, Dean Riesner, a former child actor in silent films and later the screenwriter of Dirty Harry, Charley Varrick, Play Misty for Me, and numerous other movies and TV episodes.