Feel free to add your “ahead of their time” examples in the comments:
Halloween seems like the perfect time to look back at the life of actress Maila Nurmi, better known as Vampira.
She actually trademarked her famous proto-goth look, and famously sued “Elvira” actress Cassandra Peterson in 1989 for stealing her image.
Nurmi lost the lawsuit. It probably didn’t help that she’d admitted all along that she’d borrowed much of her style from Charles Addam’s “Morticia.”
But Maila Nurmi was certainly a true original in one way:
She was the first TV horror host, male or female, and the only one whose image is still recognized today around the globe.
This is especially astonishing because only two minutes of The Vampira Show are still known to exist on primitive Kinescopes.
