Dead and Kind of Famous
The podcast where two friends (one who's a nobody and one who's kinda famous) dive into the life stories of dead folks who enjoyed a touch or two of fame in their time and now reside permanently in Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Dead and Kind of Famous
Pre-Vampira: Maila Nurmi Part 1
Get ready to unravel the journey of a remarkable woman who bucked the expectations of her time at every turn. Maila Nurmi (better known as Vampira) was really and truly the original mistress of the night.
As we take a look at her early years, we can see that dichotomy was always present for her. Her father was a teetotaler, while her mother was an alcoholic. She loved beauty, but she also gravitated towards darkness. Maila's path was anything but conventional, and through her trials and triumphs, we highlight a narrative packed with resilience, creativity, and a touch of eccentricity. This story also features NOTABLE run-ins with Orson Welles and Marlon Brando.
Tune in to discover how one woman's bold spirit changed the landscape of horror hosting forever.
Links from this episode:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23914415/maila-nurmi
https://www.amazon.com/Vampira-Me-Maila-Nurmi-aka/dp/B01GF6970Q
https://www.amazon.com/Glamour-Ghoul-Passions-Vampira-Maila/dp/1627311009
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Hello and welcome to Dead and Kind of Famous, where we dig into the life stories of dead folks who enjoyed a touch or two of fame in their time.
Speaker 3:And now reside permanently in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Speaker 2:I'm Marissa Rivera and I know nothing, but I do know how to use my air fryer Finally Good.
Speaker 3:We've had it for over a year and I have finally mastered it you've been bragging about how it works for everything that whole time, so I didn't realize that you didn't know how to use it. Be proud of me.
Speaker 2:I am proud, thank you I'm very proud.
Speaker 3:Um, I am courtney blomquist and I know way too much. You know about what we're going to talk about, but I don't know how to change a tire.
Speaker 2:I do you do I do. I do know how to change a tire. I've changed a tire too In that thunderstorm in Florida was the last time I changed a tire Dang.
Speaker 3:I feel like that makes you infinitely cooler than me, and I'm just going to I'm not going to catch up anytime soon because I had a blowout on the freeway and Jesse came to my rescue because, luckily, I was close enough to home that he could walk for like a half an hour, though, and yeah and came and did. This was a while ago, but yeah, and here, yeah, what? Yeah and came and did.
Speaker 2:This was a while ago but yeah here. Yeah, what the fuck, why didn't you call me?
Speaker 3:This was like it was not when we lived here. This is what.
Speaker 2:I'm learning. We don't communicate. This is when.
Speaker 3:I lived in my old apartment. It was like the freeway exit by that. Oh, okay, Okay okay, yeah. We live together now, folks at home, yeah, yeah, yeah, we live on the same property, on the same property in different houses.
Speaker 3:Yes, so um yep, the best of both worlds and our address is nope, nevermind, okay. So today's episode is another multi-part episode because the subject is it's so good Ooh Her, it's a she again. Her life story feels so truly Hollywood to me in that it is steeped in struggle and strangeness, but also had dazzling moments and an even more dazzling cast of characters. Dazzling, you say Dazzling, I mean there's a lot of tragedy and some, you know, it's got levels Okay of tragedy, and some, you know it's got levels Okay, some highs and some super big lows, but it's a dynamic story. For that reason, kind of like the sound in this episode, if I keep pulling my face away from the microphone, anyway, but we are talking about actress Myla Nurmi, better known as Vampyra. Have you heard of Vampyra before, Marissa?
Speaker 1:Yes, you have.
Speaker 3:Yes, okay. What do you know about her?
Speaker 2:Wait, is this? This is Mistress of the. No, she's alive.
Speaker 3:No, she's alive. That will come into play in this story. This is the original Mistress of the Night, if you will.
Speaker 2:I didn't know there was.
Speaker 3:A lot of people don't, and I Okay, so you know how. On you watched the finale of RuPaul's.
Speaker 1:Drag Race recently.
Speaker 3:Yes, when she got the Lifetime of Achievement Award, of giving us life achievement award or whatever it was Giving us, life Giving us life, lifetime achievement award. So I was like, because I'd already been researching this, I was kind of like, oh, because they said that, some things like that, she was the undisputed queen of Halloween and the original, like you know, horror movie host and it was all stolen or borrowed. Well, we'll get to it. I'm not going to say that necessarily.
Speaker 2:We're jumping ahead, we're jumping ahead, we're jumping ahead, okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, but I feel like when you say she was the first, I mean we're talking about the first today, okay.
Speaker 2:That's what. I'll say what a cool name. Yes, first of all.
Speaker 3:Yes, so I'm going to show you her headstone right now.
Speaker 2:So tell me what you see, oh, okay, okay. So it's a pretty. It's like simple, yet not. It's small-ish. It looks kind of small. It's on the ground, it's not. What's the difference between like a tombstone and a one?
Speaker 3:that's like on the I think this is still like a headstone is the ones that's upright Right.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it's on the ground. It says Malia Nermy, 1922 to 2008, hollywood legend. And then there's a picture etched in with a woman in a slinky dress with like a really cool train and what looks like to be like a spider's web curtain behind her and a really like tall candelabra standing next to her and underneath it says Vampyra.
Speaker 3:Ooh yeah, you're right. It is simple and it is small, but it's a good tombstone.
Speaker 2:That's a great tombstone. It is.
Speaker 3:So okay. So tell me, tell me. I feel like I already told you some things, but you tell me obituary, Okay. I forgot to withhold.
Speaker 2:Sorry. Malia Nermi, mistress of the Dark, the original vampire, was born in 1922 in Jersey. 1922 in Jersey, in Jersey. And always a dark, sinister child, she made up stories about death and the afterlife and had a fascination with otherworldly stories and characters and would make up and play about death and ghosts and spooky-ooky stuff. And so she started her journey in New York, and when she found that actually film would be much better for her, she packed her bags and moved across the country to Los Angeles, sunny, sunny Los Angeles, though she never enjoyed the sun, she only went out at night, obviously.
Speaker 2:So she only worked at night, which really, really inhibited her job opportunities, which is perhaps why she is not remembered as the one and only Vampyra Lots of day for night shoots.
Speaker 3:Yeah, alright, so tell me so, um, all right, so you in some ways okay, like, yeah, she had some dark interests when she was younger. Also, she did go back and forth between los angeles and new york, as and this is that's what today is going to be about a lot but it started the other direction um she was born in sunny la no, but she started her. You know her adult career path in la adult.
Speaker 2:Adult like triple x adult no, but sometimes adjacent.
Speaker 3:Okay, so for the time yeah, so anyway, yeah. So anyway, all right, let's get into the real story of Milo Nurmi. First of all, her grave says that she was a Hollywood legend, and she was. She was actually a trailblazer in the world of dark humor and the sexy goth aesthetic.
Speaker 2:Love that. So if you yourself. She's like a 1920s, like flapper goth.
Speaker 3:No, because she, I mean we're talking like 40s, because this is like she was like as an adult. Right as an adult. She was a.
Speaker 2:She wasn't like a flapper goth child.
Speaker 1:A flapper goth baby.
Speaker 3:Like I mean, yeah, like the Addams Family baby with the tiny mustache, actually, that's like so relevant, but anyway, okay. So yes, she was a trailblazer in the world of dark humor and the sexy goth aesthetic. So if you yourself are a sexy goth and you're listening, bow down, bow down bitches.
Speaker 3:This episode is basically about your grandmother, so show some respect, that's right Now. Myla Nurmi was a television pioneer, the first TV horror host, as I mentioned. Ooh, she was daring and got away with making somewhat obvious sexual innuendo in the demure 1950s Nice, and she blended sex and death into a special sauce. And she's most widely known for being in what's been deemed as the worst movie of all time. I mean truly, it's been told. It's been described and decided as the worst movie of all time, called plan nine from outer space, by famed b movie director ed wood oh, my gosh made even more famous, did you?
Speaker 2:watch that the movie course I need, we need to watch it. It's so good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, good bad, no, it's just good. Wait, the movie yeah, oh, yes, yes, yes, I thought you were talking about, like Ed Wood, the movie. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Little tiny saucers flying around that are like just fake little.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean miniatures and then, like you can obviously see the string yes, yes, and then, like the, the host, like his monologue in the beginning, is just like like in the future, beware of the things that you will encounter in the future like it's just really badly written, like half of it could have been cut out easily it's just, I mean it's yeah, and then there's a lot of stuff where it's like we'll get into this movie.
Speaker 3:It's a lot. But anyway, the main source I used was a book called Glamour Ghoul the Passions and Pain of the Real Vampyra, and this book was actually written by Mila's niece, sandra Niemi. As her last living relative, sandra had access to Milo's things and found lots of journals and writing which were used a lot throughout the book. So it's a goldmine of a source yeah, the source.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say so. Also, big nod to the documentary Vampyra and Me by Ray Green. As always, links to these sources will be in our show notes, and this will be the first in a trilogy of episodes called I'm going to call them all pre-Vampyra, which is this one, prime Vampyra and post Vampyra.
Speaker 2:All right, welcome to pre-Vampyra. This is pre-Vampyra Strap in. Yes.
Speaker 3:Myla didn't become Vampyra until she was in her 30s. So, as you'll see from this episode, there was a lot leading up to that that cannot be ignored. So digging in. Myla Elizabeth Niemi was born on December 11th 1922 in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Speaker 2:Gloucester.
Speaker 3:Gloucester, god damn it. Every time there's this word it was in like the Barons episode too, but for England and I always say it wrong yeah. Gloucester, gloucester, gloucester, gloucester, gloucester, gloucester, gloucester, gloucester.
Speaker 2:Gloucester Mass. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3:To parents Ani and Sophie Niemi.
Speaker 2:She had one older. First of all, cool names, yeah.
Speaker 3:All around. They're Finnish. The family Actually Ani is the male version of um uh iris's middle name, which is anali, so it's like very uh yeah means luck and happiness. And finish, um, she had one older brother, bobby, who was just sorry, bobby, you don't get it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't get a cool name.
Speaker 3:I feel like they're trying to americanize bobby. They're like everybody's really finished. Um, let's just make you the one who can achieve some.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're the boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, give me the.
Speaker 3:American name. We'll give you the American name. American name. Do well, son, pat on the back. American dream, go get it. Yeah, bootstraps, all that. So he was just 17 months her senior. So, like Irish twins-ish, her parents were both 100% Finnish, but her father was actually a Finnish immigrant, while her mother had been born in America. Okay, oddly enough, at that time, even if you were married in America, if a woman married a man who was not a citizen, she would lose her American citizenship and obtain that of her husband's homeland. What?
Speaker 2:the fuck. I know and I'm sure it didn't work the other way.
Speaker 3:No, of course not.
Speaker 2:Oh, my fucking God.
Speaker 3:So, even though Sophie had never been to Finland herself, she became a Finnish citizen in America. Oh my God, which is absurd, absurd. When Milo was four, her father took a job as the editor of I can't pronounce this, but Pohantati, a Finnish language newspaper.
Speaker 2:Let's spell it, let's spell it. P-o-h-j-a-n space T-A-H-T-I.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:It's a Finnish language newspaper in Fitchburg Massachusetts, so Finnish language newspaper in Fitchburg Massachusetts. From that point on, he began a 40 year career in journalism, always from a distinctly Finnish perspective, and moved around the country or even back to Finland at one point as work opportunities for his unique niche popped up. Cool, yeah. Sometimes he took his family and sometimes he waited as long as he possibly could before inviting them to join him okay and this neglect led his wife, sophie, to drink heavily.
Speaker 2:She is left alone with two children yeah.
Speaker 3:Small children yeah, could you not drink really?
Speaker 3:right, um, this was pretty, and what else was there to do as a non-american citizen, especially in some of the some of the cities they were living in, like it's just like, yeah, it's like cold and like cold and dark, cold and dark, and and sometimes his jobs paid well and sometimes they didn't, and you know what are you going to do? So this was pretty inconvenient for Ani, as America was in the throes of prohibition and he had become an outspoken teetotaler oh my god. In fact, he had become sought after to give public speeches about the evils of alcohol.
Speaker 3:And his wife was an alcoholic and his wife was a full-blown alcoholic. Wow, if this wasn't enough of a wedge, he had also changed his last name back to the non Americanized version of it, which was surge surgeon yummy we're gonna spell it again yeah s y r j a with the two little dots on top of it or something what it's called.
Speaker 2:I think so should we google that?
Speaker 3:no okay. But you can Google it at home. You can Google it at home.
Speaker 2:Where was this word?
Speaker 3:S-Y-R-J-A with an umlaut.
Speaker 2:We think we think N-I-E-M-I. Yes, okay.
Speaker 3:So Sophie's alcoholism was a constant issue in their marriage and he sent her away to dry up on more than one occasion. Send her away, yeah, like to her brothers usually.
Speaker 1:Uh you deal with her?
Speaker 3:yeah, he was like also kind of religious. So he was like, yeah, you'll, you're not gonna drink around her, you'll be good influence, you know like get her out of my hair. So um, milo's childhood was spent in various cities like duluth, minnesota, ashdabula, oh, and finally Astoria, oregon, where she often took in stray animals and learned to sew the clothes she couldn't afford to buy.
Speaker 2:A creative queen.
Speaker 3:She what Always.
Speaker 2:Creative and scrappy right from the start.
Speaker 3:Right, and that's a through line. For sure, she idolized the evil queen from Snow White.
Speaker 2:And her dress on the tombstone kind of looks like that.
Speaker 3:Yes, I feel like she was.
Speaker 2:Sans the collar.
Speaker 3:Yes, she was like that's who I'm going to be when I grow up. Yeah, and she also idolized a comic book character known as the Dragon Lady, who appeared in the comic strip Terry and the Pirates. Both of these characters were strong, beautiful and undeniably evil.
Speaker 2:Hilarious.
Speaker 3:Okay, hilarious. Imagine like a four-year-old just being so obsessed. I feel like this will be my daughter, because she's going to be growing up hearing about dead people and walking around the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Speaker 2:Yeah, literally we have a date later to go with Iris. Yep, it's just a girl's trip to Hollywood Forever.
Speaker 3:Yep, that's how this podcast was conceived, with her in a stroller at Hollywood Forever yes, just enjoying the dead people with me. So as an awkward kid and teen, she dreamed of being so bold and divisive. She had started to study drama in school and her artistic flair was beginning to surface. She tried to go to college at Pacific University, thinking it would foster her creativity. It did not, and she ended up cutting classes in protest when asked to dissect a frog.
Speaker 2:I also hated that part of school.
Speaker 3:Yes, me too, it was high school for me, but yes, hated it. It was disgusting, it smelled so bad. Yes, me too. It was high school for me, but, yes, hated it. It was disgusting and the smell, it smelled so bad. Oh my God, it was in my hair for the rest of the day.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, you smelled and mine was marine biology, so it was dead animal plus formaldehyde plus the sea.
Speaker 3:Gross. Yeah, we had bowling after my class too, so it was like which. I mean, it was like this segment of gym where we went to the bowling alley on a bus. I don't understand why they did this. Anyway, that's so cool. I wish you would have bowling. It sounds cool, but it was like at the time when people could smoke in bowling alleys and it smelled like lemon pledge. So I went from formaldehyde hair to lemon pledge and cigarette hair and there was like no point in me taking a shower. You know, yeah, it was disgusting. I just smelled like the state of Indiana. Anyway, this is like not the first time I've ragged on Indiana, but I grew up there. It's fine, I'm allowed.
Speaker 2:She suffered through it, I suffered through it.
Speaker 3:Let her speak her truth. Let me speak my truth, okay. So ultimately she dropped out of college and headed home to Astoria, oregon, where she worked at a fish cannery and saved up for a move to Los Angeles, which sucks. I mean it was disgusting and like just hard work and gross.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And she smelled like fish. I mean talk about bad smells.
Speaker 2:Yeah, talk about bad, couldn't escape it. Disgusting. Not in college, not in life, nope, okay.
Speaker 3:So after work one day, myla heard a voice on the radio. Now, I'm sorry, I'm just going to preface this because you're about to dive into your voice. This one is a back and forth between her and her mother. Okay, this one is a back and forth between her and her mother. Okay, so after work, one day, myla heard the voice of Orson Welles on the radio for the very first time.
Speaker 2:Mama, mama, that man on the radio, that radio announcer, is no ordinary radio announcer. Who is he? He's a genius.
Speaker 3:Of course he's a genius. That's Orson Welles. He's a famous genius. Everybody knows that.
Speaker 2:Well, someday I'm going to meet him and we'll be friends.
Speaker 3:He is not your friend. You are Myla Elizabeth Niemi and you work in a fish cannery in Astoria, oregon, and don't you forget it, don't you talk like that. People will say you're crazy. Wow, I mean, she's just really intense. I feel like that's like such an intense response, but also she's just like get your head out of the clouds. I think she'd been used to dragging her head Right.
Speaker 2:So she's like you. You, you dropped out of college. You move back home. Yeah, smell. Yeah, work at a fish cannery, goddammit.
Speaker 3:Maybe Sophie wasn't wrong and maybe people would have talked and maybe she sounded crazy. But in the end both Myla and Sophie were wrong because Orson Welles would become more than a friend to her, a lot more, but not before. Myla bounced across the country a couple of times like a pinball.
Speaker 2:Ooh way to sprinkle in some sexy foreshadowing.
Speaker 3:Thank you. After Myla had saved up enough money and gotten a little temporary monthly financial help from her father, she got on a bus and headed to Los Angeles. At age 18, she was ready to flee the stink of fish and embrace the smell of freedom.
Speaker 2:The smell of freedom, the smell of smog.
Speaker 3:Yeah right, well, she'd learn. This was 1941. And speaking of Orson Welles, that was the year that Citizen Kane came out, which is known as the greatest film of all time. Such a polar opposites here. Myla was living with her straight-laced aunt and uncle in the city, the same ones who fostered her mother when she needed to dry up right over the years, um, and that put her father at ease but made myla claustrophobic. It kind of put a wrench in the whole freedom thing she was going for. So she odd jobbed it and, having been inspired by orson welles, tried to find her way into radio. But she unfortunately encountered several scumbags who either assaulted her, like the agent she met with who got a gouged eye from her for his lewdness.
Speaker 2:Good, good.
Speaker 3:Or tried to photograph her half naked, like the man behind an ad looking for a good radio voice, because of course, you need a naked photo to be a good radio voice Jesus. So Myla was so frustrated that she wrote in her diary no more show business for me.
Speaker 2:Everyone concerned is filthy in more ways than one.
Speaker 3:She was already over Los Angeles For now. She saved up money for her next move, selling subscriptions to Look magazine. And then, without telling her parents, she hopped on a bus and bounced over to New York with another young woman who wanted out named Gail. Well, actually, she dropped a letter in a mailbox on her way to the bus to let her parents know of her LA departure Just as last minute as possible. She and Gail were up to no good before even making it to New York.
Speaker 3:That's right Hopping off that bus to make a few extra bucks for a couple of days in a circus in the Midwest.
Speaker 2:Oh my God.
Speaker 3:I know.
Speaker 2:They literally joined the circus.
Speaker 3:They literally joined the circus only for two days, but that's like something I would have done, like where I'm like I did it. I did it for an hour. I can say I did it. They've met a carny on the bus who enticed them to do it and they worked as the quote outside girls to lure men into the stripper tent and adopted the names Luscious Lola and Delectable Dora to do so.
Speaker 2:That's going to be our nickname. I love that. I call Delectable Dora.
Speaker 3:OK, I feel it. Well, yeah, marissa, well, not anymore, not anymore. I just chopped off my hair, marissa. Well, not anymore, not anymore.
Speaker 2:I just chopped off my hair.
Speaker 3:You chopped off your hair, but she definitely used to look like Dora the Explorer. Yeah, I had a Dora the Explorer haircut. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:I mean, I made it look good Like if Dora fucked.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:If that child fucked I.
Speaker 1:I hope nobody at.
Speaker 2:Disney listens to this because I hope to get put on that show at one.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So maybe cut this out.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:No, it stays.
Speaker 3:You have such high hopes for this show that Disney is listening. So most of the circus folk were off-putting, but Gail and Myla liked the mermaid girl, who was actually just a cute woman in a rubber mermaid tail.
Speaker 2:She gave them good advice Never go to the outhouse alone, always leave your suitcase open, don't ever screw around with any of the men and, above all else, always carry your money in your brassiere.
Speaker 3:Words to live by. Mermaid Girl also mentioned that wearing her rubber mermaid tail made dieting unnecessary, and Myla would file this tidbit away for later use.
Speaker 2:Okay just wear rubber and sweat it all out, I guess.
Speaker 3:Yep. The girls got back on the bus and made it to New York, but they were scraping by in that city and couldn't hang on to a job between the two of them Of this time, Myla writes.
Speaker 2:As money got tighter, gail and I decided that the most sensible approach to life was to stay in bed all day and conserve calories.
Speaker 3:Gail- was the first to go.
Speaker 2:Been there.
Speaker 3:Depression. Yep, pretty much. Gail was the first to go home with her tail between her legs, and then Myla followed suit by asking her father for money again to move back to Los Angeles. He gave her the money, but only under the condition that she live in a Finnish boarding house for unwed women working as domestics, called a Picatillo. A Picatillo Again, we'll spell.
Speaker 3:P-I-I-K-A-T-A-L-Oo yeah, it's funny that there's so much Finnish culture like in the country at this time. Do you know what I mean? That like all these places exist, because I feel like they don't know.
Speaker 2:Finnish specifically, yeah, not even just like well, I mean specific Finnish boarding house.
Speaker 3:I guess it would have to be. It's like I want to say well, actually Finland isn't even part of Scandinavia, but all those countries, even all the Scandinavian countries, have different languages.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know. So it's like it would have to be whatever language Interesting Nordic countries, I guess, is what you categorize it, as it was a respectable boarding house. There was a curfew and Myla hated it. Of course she referred to it as a dungeon, but at least she had another shot at LA. This time she found work at a department store on Hollywood and Vine modeling hats Hollywood and Vine Wow. Yep.
Speaker 2:Just the epicenter of it all.
Speaker 3:Yep. She also found a roommate and as soon as she was making her own money she fled from the boarding house as fast as her feet could carry her. With Hollywood being steeped in supporting the war effort at the time, the girls took to sidling up to men in uniform and linking arms with them in order to get into exclusive venues. On one particular night where they had done this fate would introduce Myla to her idol and more than a friend, orson Welles.
Speaker 2:My eyes, having at last accustomed to the dim lighting, I heard this glorious voice. I whirled around and there, seated near the back, was my one true god, orson Welles. Well, I paid no mind to manners or protocol, and instead rushed over and descended upon him like a crazed peahen and sputtered idiotically why your orson welles was something equally asinine. His response, his exact words, were why? Yes, indeed, I am. And who might you be? My winsome lass? Winsome lass my winsome.
Speaker 3:I don't know. I feel I picture him like, just like it's sounding like an old man all the time yeah, yeah, I can't. I can't do her voice, doing his voice no, no you get what you get people okay no, no, no, but I'm just like it's it's yeah winsome lass yep because he sounds, he says old man things yeah, even then yeah he sure does. Myla showered him with compliments like a crazed fan, then got embarrassed, downed her cocktail in one gulp and walked away. But then Orson came to find her.
Speaker 2:Ooh no sooner had I set down my glass when I heard that voice again. This time it was attached to its owner on the right in my peripheral vision. Excuse me, miss, but my friend seemed to have abandoned me. Would you care to join me? It was he, orson Welles, had he witnessed me swill my Manhattan like a seasoned skid row bum. Regardless, the master was requesting I join him for conversation.
Speaker 2:My feet did not come in contact with the earth as I moved to his corner booth. Once ensconced with Mr Wells, I complimented him in a more controlled way. I told him how I dreamed of a career in radio which began a discussion on the subject. All the while I sat entranced, simply mesmerized by the sound of his golden voice and at the same time being all a tingle at the nearness of him. He said he was currently planning an outdoor extravaganza, a spectacular show to entertain American men and women in uniform and mission would be free to all servicemen and was to be some sort of carnival or magic show, magic being his true passion, he said. Of course, at the mere mention of carnival, I immediately revealed to him my brief experience in the Strut and Smile sideshow, which heretofore had been something I swore never to divulge to a living soul.
Speaker 3:Orson said he'd wanted her to perform in the show and then walked her outside to call her a cab.
Speaker 2:And then the both of us were standing at the curb and Mr Wells put his arm across my shoulders, turns me toward him and kissed me, not just some little cheek peck, but on the lips and on Hollywood Boulevard, for all the world to see. I thought I was either dreaming or perhaps dead and in heaven.
Speaker 3:Orson then followed her into the cab, saying how else would I ever find you? Then escorted Myla to her door. Though Myla had never expected to see Orson again, he sent a bouquet of flowers to the front desk of her building, with a note saying that a car would pick her up for dinner. Oh my I know, suave, very suave. After their dinner, orson asked if she wanted to come back to his place to see his etchings in regards to the show he was producing, which is like what a line.
Speaker 2:What a line, what a line.
Speaker 3:So such a line. When Myla got to his place, it was a modest bungalow in West Hollywood, not the mansion she'd imagined.
Speaker 2:I was a virgin, pure as a driven snow. But this man in front of me was Orson Welles, the genius, this god in the flesh. I swooned, I nearly collapsed, I was breathless, I was in love. The first time Orson saw me scantily clad in a boudoir, he said magnificent carcass, magnificent carcass.
Speaker 3:Again, what a lie. I mean what a lie. I hate that line. If someone said that to me I'd be like what?
Speaker 2:What but for the Mistress of the Dark. That's fair, yep.
Speaker 3:He had her pegged, he knew what to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah he knew, sex was nothing like I'd imagined. I found it was more painful than pleasurable. But here I was being groped and penetrated by a man who nearly suffocated me in the course of his lovemaking. For a moment I panicked when I realized I couldn't escape his weight upon me. In retrospect, orson was not a gentle love and was possessed of an urgency to complete the act. But then I thought I was in love and sex was simply a way to prove my never-ending devotion. Oh sweet, sweet summer child.
Speaker 3:Yes, sweet 18-year-old.
Speaker 2:Oh God, how old was Orson Welles at this point? That's a good question question I need to know that hold on right now I think he was.
Speaker 3:I mean, this was like after well, when citizen kane came out um hold on how old he was. So in 1940 he was 25. So then he would have been like 27 at this time. Okay, okay, it's not like he was like 45 or anything right I'm.
Speaker 2:I was just in with that description. I was just imagining just a really overweight middle age, because it's like that's kind of how how I always picture him me too yeah, so anyway.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he, he was the younger, he was his younger, suave self. Okay, kind of in his like payday, actually, right In his prime, in his prime, yes. So this happened the same way a few times. This is really great lovemaking, but soon the flowers stopped coming and Myla, young and in love, panicked. She went back to the bungalow in west hollywood and knocked on the door. She was met by a man in a bathrobe who was not orson. He played dumb and acted like he had no idea what she was talking about. He doesn't live here. What do you mean? Though myla didn't recognize him at the time, it was a popular actor named Joseph Cotton, and over the course of a few days, myla realized that Orson and Joseph shared the bungalow for the purpose of betting paramours.
Speaker 2:Wow, imagine having just enough disposable income to have like to buy. Well, I guess you are sharing the cost.
Speaker 3:I mean, I feel like cost of a hookup house. Did you watch the Apartment with Me, another old movie? That's like the plot of that movie, but it's like all the businessmen take advantage of the underling businessman's apartment because he's a bachelor.
Speaker 2:I've read the script. Yes.
Speaker 3:So it was like a popular thing, if you were going to have an affair, you had to have a place to go.
Speaker 2:At the time it was like a common problem and everyone just like, had their days, had their nights, their assigned nights. Yes, yes To the apartment, yes, yes, yes, or the bungalow.
Speaker 3:So this is like for them. Yeah, they would just have their assigned nights, I'm sure. So. As if this wasn't insulting enough, Orson had also rescinded his offer to have Myla perform in his show, saying it would be maddeningly distracting for me to work so near to you, my love. Yeah, it was just after this realization that Myla discovered she was pregnant and sent a note to Orson saying that it was a matter of life and death. He never responded. Myla writes.
Speaker 2:I was just a girl, a nameless, faceless girl that he'd fucked. Nothing more, nothing less. At 20, my life was over.
Speaker 3:It was in listening to the radio, nauseated by her pregnancy, that Myla learned Orson was marrying Rita Hayworth. Yes, and so it was back to New York for Myla again, not because she was thinking about her career at the moment, but because her parents were actually living there. Her father's finished journalism career had landed him in the city. Myla told her parents she was pregnant and they banded together to help her. Neither of them, to her surprise, asked questions or judged her, which is big of them.
Speaker 2:That was nice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they took her in at her father's place in New York and he even gave up his own bed for her to sleep in. So you know, he's kind of a mixed bag so far in the story, her father, but like that's he seems to have shown up at the right moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Knowing that she could barely take care of herself at the time, Myla planned to give the baby up for adoption.
Speaker 2:On March 11th 1944, I spewed forth a son. It was an excruciatingly painful experience and one that I vowed to never repeat. I thrashed and cried out in agony, alone and afraid, save for the doctor and a cruel nurse who kept tightening my restraints each time I made a sound. She kept telling me to be quiet and that it didn't hurt that bad. Later I learned she had never given birth herself. The child was born wailing and they laid him on my stomach while they cut the cord, while he was still wet from the trauma of being thrust so unceremoniously into this world, I was allowed a brief moment to see my son into this world. I was allowed a brief moment to see my son. He was bald and looked ever so much like a plump and peeled potato the most beautiful little potato in the world. In that moment, my mother's heart yearned to snatch him up and run away, but then he was gone and run away. But then he was gone. So sad.
Speaker 3:That's sad. Her son was adopted by a rich couple from New Jersey In the book Sandra Niemi oh.
Speaker 2:Jersey. There we go, there's Jersey. There it is.
Speaker 3:There it is In the book. Sandra Niemi says what would he think if he knew his father was Orson Welles, the author, actor and producer of arguably the greatest movie of all time, and that his mother, myla Nurmi, starred as Vampyra in the worst movie of all time? That's quite a birthright, wow, and indeed it is.
Speaker 3:Indeed, I wonder if he's just like a middle-of-the-road mediocre man. Maybe we'll find out later. I don't know of the road mediocre man. Maybe we'll find out later. Um, after recovering from the traumatic birth, myla's father helped her move to the lower east side in new york where rent was cheap, renewing her focus to break into the entertainment industry, myla strategized a way to be close to the rich and famous with her day job so that she'd be noticed.
Speaker 3:Pretty smart Yep. She convinced a luxury hotel to hire her as a bellhop, even though she was a woman. She told management that most of the boys were gone to war and thought to herself that if she could give birth she could manage to lift a few suitcases. Amen to that, yep. Though she mostly worked near the residential elevator, there was one day a week that she was promoted to doorman, and this gave her the greatest visibility. There were actually write-ups about her in the New York World-Telegram and the Sun, calling her New York's first bellhop B-E-L-L-E bellhop and featuring her picture Cute. She also worked as a cigarette girl before tiring of working as a servant in wealthy circles.
Speaker 2:We all tire of that eventually.
Speaker 3:Yeah, old it does get old um, she wanted to get back in touch with her creativity and work for the common man. So she went the opposite direction and started working for the hobo news, or, as she called it, the paper of the great unwashed. Okay, the hobos, in this instance, were remnants from the Great Depression.
Speaker 3:It was a place where a pot of stew, the place she worked the magazine. It was a place where the pot of stew was always available for the hungry. And Myla related to the hobos because her own life was relatively transient, and had been since she was a child. But she started in her father's footsteps writing a column for the Hobo News that had the hobos in stitches, and don't we all want to have the hobos in?
Speaker 2:stitches. Listen, everyone loves to be entertained.
Speaker 3:It's true, it's true. So she helped sell the paper for tips in bars as well, and she created characters to do so, such as Darling Dietrich and Countess Cuckoo.
Speaker 2:I would wait at the end of the bar with my stack of newspapers till someone put on a selection from the jukebox. Once music was playing, I danced and passed out all the papers and announced this is your hobo news. This is your hobo news.
Speaker 3:A few legitimate columnists took notice of her in this way, namely Irving Hoffman, who became a great friend, and he was an influential older gentleman that she could trust Not a creep. Very nice, yes, exactly, and he would be really helpful to her. It was he who ended up telling Myla about open auditions for an upcoming Mae West show, and she was chosen to play the handmaiden to Mae West's character.
Speaker 2:Wow, bravo, yes, booked and blessed.
Speaker 3:Yes, on Broadway.
Speaker 2:Booked and blessed on Broadway. That's not an easy feat. No, that's not an easy feat.
Speaker 3:No. So this may have been more of a slight than a compliment that she was hired for this show, because Mae West was known to choose women who wouldn't upstage her in the looks department for her shows. But an opportunity is an opportunity, that's right. And that's how she landed her first Broadway show called Catherine Was Great, and it was directed by a well-heeled director, mike Todd. In Catherine Was Great, myla was delighted to be showcased for a moment. That required a big dramatic scream. But unfortunately for Myla, mae West had the moment cut. As I said, she was known to not want others pulling attention from her in looks or theatrical ability Dang. So when the show opened the reviews weren't great, but at least Myla was working. She was billed at this time as Mila Niemi, altering her first name and not her last, the opposite of what she would do later in her career. And it would be later in her career as well that she'd have plenty more chances for dramatic screaming.
Speaker 2:So that's to come Okay.
Speaker 3:It was during this time that one of Myla's most important friends would enter her life, who she met in a strange and unexpected manner. One of her castmates in Catherine Was Great started complaining to her about a young actor making his Broadway debut down the way in Remember Mama and told love sick story after love sick story, revealing him to be a cad. Myla couldn't take it anymore. Her ears were sick of it and she decided to take matters into her own hands. She got his address, went to his apartment and told him off, and that young actor was Marlon Brando.
Speaker 2:He invited her inside where quote I had given more than just a piece of my mind to that young actor.
Speaker 3:They're kind of yeah he, he swooned her, he swooned her.
Speaker 2:He sure did.
Speaker 3:Their kind of friendship with benefits of sorts endured for decades in one form or another, so this is not the last that we'll be hearing of him. Sheesh, but her tenure in Catherine was great would not have the same kind of longevity. Myla got on Mae's bad side and was fired. Myla claimed that the reason for this firing was because she'd upstaged West and she resented Mae West for the rest of her life. For that reason, this woman holds a grudge.
Speaker 2:Listen. I mean, if someone gets me fired from a show, yeah, I'd fucking. Yeah, They'd be dead to me too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's fair. I mean Would you yeah, yeah, Sure, yeah, I mean sure. What are you? Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, I mean right, it's not like you'd have great things to say about them, at the very least. But as they say, one opportunity leads to another, and shortly after being booted from, catherine Was Great Myla was cast in Mike Todd's other production called Spook Scandals, which was essentially a glorified series of skits set in a cemetery.
Speaker 2:Oh, here she comes.
Speaker 3:She's finding her niche.
Speaker 2:She's finding it Okay.
Speaker 3:And Myla played a dancing skeleton. She made an impression as a bumping, grinding, screaming skeleton and she wore a skeleton bodysuit and was also able to use her exaggerated scream that Mae West had vetoed from the show yeah, exaggerated scream that Mae West had vetoed.
Speaker 2:From the show yeah, all I can think about in describing that is this song, that's all I can think about. And then she's just like. I'm just grabbing her Dramatically screaming and she made's just like, and then she's just grabbing her Dramatically screaming.
Speaker 3:And she made such an impression. She really did. It's like hard to imagine how this made such an impression, but it did. So the turnout for the show was so bad.
Speaker 3:opening night that it immediately closed after just one performance. But her good friend and influential columnist was in the crowd that night, irving Hoffman, oh, supportive friend. And irving hoffman made a point of panning the show in his column, while still managing to shower his young friend with adoration by saying mylon yemi is hollywood's answer to every dream. And this compliment would take myla far, far back to to Los Angeles, that is, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's right Again Time numbers, that's exhausting, I know, and Hoffman's column was influential enough that it was regularly scoured by movie head honchos. Oh, and his review of Myla alone led her to be inundated with movie offers out of nowhere.
Speaker 2:Wow, I know Just offers, straight offers of nowhere, wow, I know. Just offers. Straight offers, straight offers, jeez.
Speaker 3:So this included an offer from the famous director Howard Hawks. Hawks was the director of films like the Big Sleep, bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, which were all huge movies in the 30s and 40s, his Girl Friday.
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, like all the big like fast-talking, right, fast talking, yeah, important news. And I was like this is my own minute. That was like, yeah, he was also the director who had discovered Lauren Bacall and made her a star Upon reading Hoffman's column. He had sent men in New York to send photos of Myla and then, immediately, just from seeing her photo, extended a contract to her, without ever meeting her, which she accepted.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, yeah, she'd be crazy not to Right.
Speaker 3:To the chagrin of her parents, myla headed back to LA and on the long train ride west she devised a plan to rebrand herself, writing this in her journal I am excited to be at the end of this trip and again in Hollywood.
Speaker 2:I am here because my performance as a sexy skeleton made an impression upon the famous director, howard Hawks. Ironic because my family closet is full of the unsexy variety and if I can help it, none will ever see the light of day. So goodbye to you, mr Wells. Coward, you are nothing like your public perceives you to be. You are the unabashed saint of deceit. I'd hate you if I didn't still love you, my forever closeted skeleton. But don't be afraid, you're not alone in there. No one will ever know that my family moved from one town to another like a band of ragged gypsies, or that my father was a fanatical temperance man who lectured thousands against the evils of alcohol while my mother stayed home to swell bootlegged wine. Now is my beginning.
Speaker 2:Mayla Naomi from Gloucester, massachusetts, is dead and resurrected as Mela Nurmi, niece of Paavo Nurmi, the flying fin of Olympic fame. She will say she was born in a log cabin in the far reaches of northern Finland, in an area known as Petsamo. She was two and a brother three when they arrived in America with their parents, and they all lived happily ever after. Such a lovely story. Wouldn't you agree To be continued in the event of stardom? I love that she wrote that in her journal. To be continued in the event of stardom. I love that she wrote that in her journal. To be continued in the event of stardom. Yep.
Speaker 3:And so, looking through her obituaries, remnants of this fictionalized story that she just created still persist as truth. Not all of it, but the whole her being born in Petsamo, Finland, and emigrating to America is all. I was all in there and she was that none of that happened I don't think she's ever been to finland. I don't think she had ever been so but her father was from there.
Speaker 2:But yeah, wrote her story yes, um.
Speaker 3:So a new woman by her own invention, myla nurmi, was now back in la. The third time's the charm right. Her future seemed bright. Without even meeting Myla Hawks had already prepared a vehicle for his new star and planned to have her play the female lead in a vampire-led saga called Dreadful Hollow, the story of an evil Eastern European countess who preyed upon young visitors to her Victorian mansion. That sounds like the role of a lifetime.
Speaker 2:That sounds like exactly up her alley. Eastern european countess who preyed upon young visitors to her victorian mansion. That sounds like the role of a lifetime. That sounds like exactly up her alley yeah, like that sounds. I mean honestly, yeah, it's good, it's great casting. Yep, I hope it works out. I mean we'll see, but so it sounds great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know I mean like you got a car.
Speaker 2:Wait what In LA had already prepared a vehicle.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, no, no, no, no oh.
Speaker 2:The vehicle is the movie. Got it, got it, got it, got it got it, oh man, and she got a sweet car out of the deal. Wow, oh yeah, no, just a movie.
Speaker 3:Just a movie, which is enough Sure yeah, just a movie.
Speaker 2:Just a movie which is enough, sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So when Milo walked into his office for the first time, the meeting went quite well. But after having her makeup redone in a way, Milo wasn't thrilled with and then receiving the disgruntled comment from Hawks that she quote, needed to have her teeth fixed, her confidence took a hit and she felt rejected.
Speaker 2:Honestly such a Hollywood thing, the teeth thing. I mean everyone has veneers. I know it's crazy, Everyone has the same chiclets teeth. It is so weird.
Speaker 3:It is really weird. It's uncanny valley over here.
Speaker 2:It really is, yeah. So I feel like we've complained about this before. We have, and by we?
Speaker 3:I mean me. Well, yeah, no, we've discussed, we've discussed, but I think, like she talks about it a little bit more in the book, uh, where, like she had never been to a dentist, like her family was, um, I mean, I don't know, I guess it's just like something they did they weren't accustomed to, like I don't know if that was like a finished thing or something, I'm not sure, but like so she was, she never went. I think there was like a little bit of a yeah, like she just didn't, she just got used to like not smiling with her teeth, right. Anyway, her confidence took a hit and she felt rejected, a feeling she did not ever take.
Speaker 2:Well, who does Nope A feeling she did not?
Speaker 3:ever take. Well, who does Nope? However, he also said let's send her around and see what happens. So the reality is that he wasn't giving up on her. He just thought that there was more work to be done than he'd originally anticipated. But Myla heard humiliating rejection and that's all she heard.
Speaker 2:So, shockingly, she stormed into Hawk's office, refused the seat he offered her and said you have someone make me up to look like an unwashed harlot and turn me out into the streets. I am not a commodity to be traded or sold to the highest bidder.
Speaker 3:Then she removed her film contract from her purse, tossed it on his desk and said Kindly find a place for this in one of your numerous wastebaskets. And that right there is the moment, that explains why Myla Nurmi did not end up having much of a film career at all.
Speaker 2:Jesus she just shot herself in the fucking foot In the teeth, maybe yeah.
Speaker 3:As Sandra Niemey explains in Glamour Ghoul, she had yet to develop a strong sense of self and still believed that anyone who would judge her using anything but the blinding glow of adoration was out to get her. She's still young, she's really young, so like it sucks though. So much because it's just like that ability to like swallow the bullshit was not there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, which means you end up having to swallow more bullshit later yeah. So Damn. Though she had set fire to most of the bridges that life had offered her in the entertainment industry, myla still had a resume with Broadway credits and was able to find work in los angeles as a chorus girl at the florentine gardens on hollywood boulevard. And does that still exist? I don't think so. Let's look, yeah, um wait, it's a historic venue in the heart of hollywood still there still there.
Speaker 2:Looks like a strip mall.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm Must have been more impressive at the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Anyway. So she got a job as a chorus girl at the Florentine Gardens on Hollywood Boulevard, and in doing this she managed to stand out from the other beautiful women dancing beside her.
Speaker 2:In Mila's words, I had to devise a way to stand out from the pack, all these beautiful women. How was I to leave my mark, distinguish myself from the others? So when I danced, I would frequently single out someone in the audience and engaged in a spiritual fuck with said stranger.
Speaker 3:It was during this dance.
Speaker 2:That's a good tip, hot tip. Yeah, yeah, it was during this. That's a good tip, hot tip.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Hot tip.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just engage in a spiritual fuck with a stranger.
Speaker 2:It's just a spiritual fuck.
Speaker 1:Just a spiritual fuck yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, let him feel special.
Speaker 3:That works from a low job to a high job in a stage environment. It was during this stint in her life that Orson Welles ended up finding his way to her dressing room door. As it turns out, Irving Hoffman had heard about the disastrous end of Mila's contract with Hawks and had taken to reaching out to other celebrity pals of his in Hollywood to advocate for her. I mean, like, what a good guy that's so nice.
Speaker 3:That's so nice, that is so nice Because it's like especially being an older person helping her. You'd think he'd be like what were you thinking?
Speaker 3:You know, but yeah. So this included Wells on his list of friends, especially because Hoffman thought Myla might have a future in radio. But when Wells found her, he was only interested in fulfilling his own needs, not offering myla career opportunities. So even though he was married to rita hayworth and they had an infant daughter, myla stepped in as his on and off again mistress, and she decided not to tell him about the baby she'd given up for adoption, about. I think she just didn't. She says like in the book, she didn't really see the point, like I mean yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like done. So, it's done. It's not like and she was, she was letting him back into her life. I mean like Right, it's just kind of like look you know from the outside and maybe like cut him out of your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe he's a piece of shit.
Speaker 3:Maybe don't talk to me, but again she was young and dumb.
Speaker 1:Quote unquote in love.
Speaker 3:I would say it's an Achilles heel of hers. That becomes a through line too, that she's just like with men she lets them get in the way, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a problem for a lot of people.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's a common problem. It's a problem for a lot of people. Yes, it's common problem. Um so, after a year of this arrangement of her being, this on and off again mistress.
Speaker 3:Myla ended up accompanying wells to new york, where they had a vicious argument that ended their relationship. It is unknown what the argument was about maybe it was about the baby, I don't, maybe but what we do know is that Myla ended up on her parents' doorstep in New York Betraying her trust. Sophie had told her husband that the father of Myla's child had been Orson Wells.
Speaker 2:Who's Sophie?
Speaker 3:Her mother. Okay, so when? I'm sorry. So when she said she'd come to New York on a visit with an orson, ani put two and two together. He thought of his daughter as a wild horse and wanted to just set her free and wash his hands of her. But her mother still believed that she could be coddled into domesticity and maybe find a decent, nice husband. So Sophie decided to accompany her daughter back to Los Angeles so she could do the coddling she spoke of, and Ani agreed to pay their bills for another six months, and that's it.
Speaker 2:Six months and that's it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's all you get.
Speaker 3:Myla continued working as a chorus girl, this time at a club called Earl Carol's, and Sophie pampered her and doted on her, doing her laundry in the kitchen sink and keeping it neat and pressed, and at the end of the six months that Ani had agreed to, he made contact in the form of divorce papers he was done he was done. Oh, with the logic of the drunk that she was, sophie blamed Orson Welles for her divorce from her husband and. And an Orson Welles-shaped chip sat firmly on her shoulder.
Speaker 2:Gosh, the whole family just fucking hates, hates this man, hates this man.
Speaker 3:Well, Myla would hate him if she wasn't so in love with him so in love. Yeah, not that Ani was off the hook either. Myla and Sophie both hated him after that, and they never saw him again.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so this was a rift. After the divorce, sophie went to work as a chambermaid in the Knickerbocker Hotel. She wasn't getting money from her husband anymore. She had to go to work, and it was there that Orson, the bane of her existence, decided to book a room.
Speaker 2:God damn it, Orson Welles.
Speaker 3:He keeps showing up? She sure does. She knocked on his door as the maid and when she heard his voice say I didn't order room service, she burst in and said I'm Mayla's mother, the goddamn grandmother of your son. Which is incredible. Wells, of course, ordered her to leave, but she came back with a valid threat, saying that gossip columnist Hedda Hopper would absolutely devour a scandal like the one he'd gotten himself wrapped up in. Wells acquiesced and offered her $200. Sophie snatched it from him and said Genius, my ass.
Speaker 2:You're nothing but a common shitheel.
Speaker 3:I love her. I don't care if she's a drunk, I love her. She's so good, she's my favorite. This, by the way, is an altercation that Milo was never aware of, but it is one that Sophie had shared with her niece, the author of this book. Oh shit, I know. So she just did that, took the 200 bucks and, like, probably bought herself more alcohol.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what she did. She forgot it happened. Yeah, until like a fever dream later in her life. Until Sophie was making this book and she was like actually, yeah. I remember. I remember snatching 200 bucks from Orson Welles after laying into him.
Speaker 3:Oh, so good. So Mila moved on to another performance job at Ken Murray's burlesque variety show at the El Capitan Theater.
Speaker 2:Still in existence today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, some of these we should do a little tour. This is where she would meet her next serious relationship, dean Dink Reisner imagine your name being Dean, but preferring the nickname of.
Speaker 3:Dink that guy was a real dink. So Dink that guy was a real dink, so it works for this guy. It applies to him, I feel, as an insult. I mean he had been dink, had been a child actor in his youth known as Dinky Dean, jesus Christ, I know Even performing with Charlie Chaplin at one point in time on the film the Pilgrim. In any case, the moniker Dink stuck with him into his adulthood and great.
Speaker 2:I guess, I want to say poor guy, but I want to see if he deserves it. So let's continue.
Speaker 3:Yeah, at the time Mila met Dink. He had just finished making a film that he directed and wrote called Bird and Coup. It is about a town of parakeets I shit you not Who've been invaded by an evil crow called the Black Menace, and the film was performed entirely by trained birds on the smallest set in history, and this film actually won an honorary Oscar, which is like I don't understand how that is even possible, like, and of course I looked this movie up. I feel like we'll have to like do an offshoot kind of like patreon thing about this or something like, because I did look it up and it's absurd, but it's just like a full tangent.
Speaker 2:So Is it like a full length movie? Yes, it's not like a short film, I mean, it's like a full feature length movie.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because I didn't watch the whole thing. I watched enough of it to understand. Like it has a part in the beginning where it has like the bird trainers, like being like and this is like See, this is whatever Introducing you to this actor, and like look at him, crawl on my hand and like you know what I mean, like a little behind the scenes moment, and then they, it's just like a voiceover, with these birds walking around this like tiny set. Oh my God, it just it's not. There's not really a plot. Like I'm not impressed. I'm impressed by the birds.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Cr. I'm impressed by the birds. Right crows are so smart, yes, but if he wrote this script, I am not impressed that the writing is the least yes, the least impressive part of this entire thing.
Speaker 2:So anyway, at the time I got made and got an honorary oscar. I can't, I mean right, what the fuck are we doing? It was that just goes to show you make the thing no, this was a different time.
Speaker 3:They're like this is revolutionary. Look at these birds. Oh my god, what a genius for even thinking of this.
Speaker 1:Stupid, stupid stupid idea, but no one else had thought that, thought of it, that's true, and he got an honorary oscar so do you have an honorary?
Speaker 2:no, I don't and I never made I never attempted to make a bird film.
Speaker 3:I never did that. No, everyone's wondering what to do with the parakeets that have been let loose in Los Angeles from like what did you say? Like a pet store or something? Oh no, those are parrots. Parrots, sorry, parrots.
Speaker 2:So yes, the green parrots in. Pasadena.
Speaker 3:Well, maybe someone should make a film with them.
Speaker 1:Put those bitches to work. It works for Dinky.
Speaker 3:Dean, get another Oscar. Yeah, anyway, jesus, at this point Milo is 26. Oh God, she's only 26. Yeah, so she fell super hard for Dink, which is a hilarious sentence, yeah. She's like oh my God, the bird film. No-transcript. Maybe not like being an alcoholic, but A self-saboteur. A self-saboteur, yes, but either way. Myla dove in head first. She worked as a hat check girl at that point to support them both, so Dink could focus on writing.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I know just completely sacrificed herself Jesus.
Speaker 3:They moved in together and called themselves Mr and Mrs, but they never actually married. That's one smart thing she did probably, yeah, but she still talks about him like that he was her husband. She always said he was her husband.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 3:So smitten as Myla was. It's undeniable that there was a lot of drinking and fighting early on in this relationship. But it had its sweet parts too, and fighting early on in this relationship. But it had its sweet parts too. They were both animal lovers and rescued animals throughout the neighborhood, just as Myla had done in her childhood, and in fact the neighbors called her Sister St Francis, Savior of Animals.
Speaker 2:That's sweet.
Speaker 3:It is cute.
Speaker 2:That is very sweet.
Speaker 3:So Dink had an ex-girlfriend who was a bikini model Forging ahead, named Barbara Freaking, which is oh.
Speaker 2:An even better name than Dink yeah.
Speaker 3:Barbara Freaking. I wish that Dink could marry Barbara Freaking and take her last name. So his name would be Dink Freaking, freaking, anyway. So his name would be Dink Freaking. Dink Freaking, anyway, because it's really just, it's F-R-E-A-K-I-N-G, it's exactly how I'm saying it. Yeah, so when they were watching a movie, him and Milo were watching a movie in the theater and a local swimsuit ad came on. There was Barbara, and Milo heard Dink drool out her pet name, freako. Her pet name was freako like let's spell it f-r-e-a-k-o.
Speaker 3:Freak with an o, yep, um, I'm sorry it's freak, oh, it's freak. With an O on the end. Yeah, freak, oh no. And that's where her, that's where Mila's ambition to be a pinup girl came from, Entirely out of jealousy.
Speaker 2:Jealousy and competition.
Speaker 3:Yes, all the drinking and late night eating of the honeymoon phase of their relationship would have to stop, as Myla said.
Speaker 2:The imaginary battle lines were drawn. I would become the model she could never be. Dink would see that he had the best. I would become his.
Speaker 3:Madonna. So Myla went on a fad diet of sorts, with one unique addition to help her achieve an exaggerated hourglass. She learned that the main ingredient in steak tenderizer was papaya powder and thought that if it could work on meat, it might also work on living flesh.
Speaker 2:Oh my, actually, this is sound. I could see this, I could see this, I could see this. It's not that crazy. I mean it is crazy, but I mean, I mean, I mean it's crazy to do it. Right, but it's the science. The science is there.
Speaker 3:Well, this is why, like, I find it OK. So when people eat like I, first of all I don't eat like I'm a pescatarian. Right now, I don't eat, and haven't eaten lunch meat in a long time, and I always tell people it's like if you eat meat or not, your choice, of course, but like lunch, meat has nitrates in it, which is like a meat preservative, which is like a meat preservative and you're putting it in your body to like, which, like it's like you're made of meat too.
Speaker 3:You know, so you're just putting like something that would preserve your own stomach into your stomach, which is absolutely disgusting. Sorry, tangent, but like just yes, the science makes sense in many different directions.
Speaker 2:The papaya science is there.
Speaker 3:Yes, so anyway. So she mixed the papaya powder with cold cream and slathered it around her waistline and secured rubber inner tubes around her middle. She had remembered what the mermaid girl had said about her rubber fin from her brief carnival stint. So that's how she went about it, and she slept like that, all greased and wrapped in rubber. All of this effort led to her losing 30 pounds and several inches off of her waist.
Speaker 2:Dang yeah, dang yeah. Should we call this the dink diet? Yeah, the dink diet.
Speaker 3:The dink freaking diet, the freaking dink diet, the freaking dink diet 30 pounds yeah. That's a lot, I know. Years before, she had approached a pin-up photographer in the hopes of modeling, but he'd said that she carried too much weight and didn't have enough shape. Now, however, she did so. She was even a bikini model in a film called beauty on the beach which was norma jean's first film as well. So of the film Myla said.
Speaker 2:It was not made for general release but for the mail-order trade. You know the home masturbation market. You could say it was made for private release. That's funny, myla, that's funny Myla, that's funny I feel like the voice I chose for her is way too upper crust, but it's too late. Now you can.
Speaker 3:Let's no, I feel like Okay, so let's just like you come into this not knowing anything.
Speaker 2:I don't know a. Thing.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:I just like general time. Sure, you're in the talkies. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think I think she's. I mean like she had, like her vampire voice is. I've seen her do an interview as a 70 year old and it's like and then her vampire voice is like different, but like I. So I feel like, yeah, she's the actual one.
Speaker 2:She becomes vampire. It's going to be another voice, bitches. Voice is like different, but like, so I feel like, yeah, she's theatrical. Once she becomes Vampyra, it's gonna be another voice, bitches you just wait yeah, like she's not. She's still finding much like me at this point in the story.
Speaker 3:She's still finding her voice. Yes, no, but I do. Yeah, she's. She is not like much. Christopher Jones didn't have a southern accent, mila Nermy didn't have a Southern accent, but that's OK. Like she's performative and she was reinventing herself all the time and you should just use that.
Speaker 2:Reinvent yourself as much as you want, I'm just going to do a different voice for her every time.
Speaker 3:Do it. She wanted to reinvent herself all the time. She would erase whatever people knew about her and start over.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it, I love it.
Speaker 3:Mila went on to win a major contest called Rave Discovery and ended up on the cover of Glamorous Models in 1950.
Speaker 2:A cover girl, that's right.
Speaker 3:She then did another cover for Night and Day, america's picture magazine of entertainment, and a seven-page spread in a 1953 issue of Art Photography. She also did calendar work, but never nude calendar work.
Speaker 2:Never nude. Yes, she's a pinup girl Never nude.
Speaker 3:Never nude Like Tobias.
Speaker 2:Dinky.
Speaker 3:Yep. So she managed to turn her desire to turn on her husband into a little modeling career. But after Dink, quit drinking drinking with mayla's help, of course good job, dinky boy he started writing a lot more and ignoring her a lot more as well.
Speaker 3:he like chose his work over her pretty much at this point. So myla formed another plan to capture his attention. She ordered a bunch of fetish gear from a fetish magazine Corsets, whips, chains and the like for herself and then got a pair of prison PJs for Dink to spice things up in the bedroom. Hilarious, Myla, I love the way your brain works.
Speaker 2:I am into it. Get it girl.
Speaker 3:Sexy and in control. The feeling of donning dominatrix garb made Myla feel like the person she was always meant to be, A hybrid of her idols the dragon lady and the evil queen, that's right, yes, in control and sexy Right.
Speaker 3:But still, dink wasn't home very often anymore and Myla assumed he'd gotten himself a side piece. Whether that was true or not, his career had taken off and he was definitely busy with work. So she wandered over to Schwab's pharmacy most nights and sat On such a walk she ran into Marlon Brando and they began a friendship of sorts that Myla insisted remained platonic. So it was like they had their first meeting. There was a pause and then they just they didn't exchange numbers at that time.
Speaker 3:They just ran into each other in the street again, which is like also kind of crazy. Yeah, um, at this point, brando had just filmed streetcar named desire, so his star was about to explode. Dink's absence allowed myla a lot of free time for outings with brando, and it was only a matter of time before they hooked up in the back seat of his car like teenagers. So at this point let's just keep count. She slept with orson wells and marlon marlon brando.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean 26, 27, yeah yeah, and also like they're both huge names and she's a nobody right I mean Right.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's easy to sleep with men. I'm going to say it.
Speaker 3:I'm going to say it it's easy to sleep with men, but like when, like the hugest star, like just to be a nobody and randomly, without trying, meet two of the hugest stars of that time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and fucking them. Well, I again. These are fucking horny dudes.
Speaker 1:And they saw an easy mark. She was also very, she was very attractive. Yeah, she was hot, she was hot.
Speaker 2:So yeah, Again, it's easy. It's easy to fuck a guy when you're a hot lady. It's easy to fuck a straight guy.
Speaker 3:It's true, it's true, it's true.
Speaker 2:And you're a hot lady. I don't know, this might be controversial.
Speaker 3:No, but you know what it's like when you have nothing else going on. You have to have something to feel good about. And if I had nothing else going on and I like fucked two of the most major stars I'd like.
Speaker 1:I'd be like yeah.
Speaker 3:I fucked them? Yeah, I would. I would be like, yeah, I got something special. Yeah, maybe she did, she had magic pussy.
Speaker 2:Maybe she did.
Speaker 3:Who knows? You don't need it, though it's true.
Speaker 2:You really don't.
Speaker 3:So yeah, she ended up in the backseat of his car with him. Of course was bound to happen. Milo thought Dink was messing around, so she messed around too, but still, they were friends first and foremost. And though their friendship had its pauses, they stayed in each other's lives pretty much forever.
Speaker 2:That's pretty cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, now Myla talks a lot about the hangout culture of Hollywood at that time, and it was really another era that's unrecognizable to us today, because it was time where actors of note were known to regularly frequent diners and soda counters as if they were their office and networking spot.
Speaker 1:The mainstay the.
Speaker 3:Starbucks yeah. But like it was, like it was like where you were like the Soho house, yeah, kind of like the Soho house, but it would just be like anybody could walk into these places Right, there was nobody, which is like it's just another time.
Speaker 2:That reminds me of like like British West End culture.
Speaker 3:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of like, just like these famous British actors just doing a play and then coming down to the pub. It is very theater and hanging out.
Speaker 3:It is very theater. I mean like yeah. Because that's like New York culture and Chicago and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like, you go to just a normal place. You don't go somewhere exclusive.
Speaker 2:Yeah. If you're like, in the theater at least so I feel like, yeah, it was a little bit that's true.
Speaker 3:That's a good parallel.
Speaker 2:It was a more theater culture kind of thing, the hollywood at the time also. People are just walking around. I know, right, no one walks here.
Speaker 3:I know to just run into a major star on the street is like, that's what I'm saying, like I, but I guess again another time. So, um, the mainstay for a long time in this dinner.
Speaker 2:Although I have run into quite a like. I ran into Tom Hanks Like I was going into a grocery store. He was coming out of a grocery store. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's huge. I also ran into. Oh my gosh, what's her name? She plays Maybe on oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Aaliyah Shawkat. Aaliyah Shawkat. I ran into Aaliyah Shawkat. I was in the worst fucking traffic in West Hollywood and I was turning one way and she was turning the other and we were kind of just like stuck on opposite corners and we were both just like fuck this, I hate fucking traffic. We would both look at each other and I was like, oh my God. And she was like and this is all mimed, of course, because I'm in my car and she's in hers but I was like, oh, it's you. And she's like yeah, it's me.
Speaker 2:And I was like you're fucking great, Just like you gave her two thumbs up and a millennial heart. Oh, you're great. And then she's like oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:She gave me a millennial heart.
Speaker 2:And then the traffic moved and we were both just like, oh, finally, ok, bye.
Speaker 3:That's great. I mean, when I first moved here I kept seeing Randy Jackson everywhere.
Speaker 2:It's a no for me, dog.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly, and I felt like it was.
Speaker 3:Like he just says he says dog exactly as much as he does on the show. It's not a put on, it's like I would just hear snippets of this conversation. And dog every other one, that's so funny.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that was my big first celebrity sighting you know what, in both instances both Tom Hanks and Aaliyah Shawkat both had just like regular cars, like I think Tom Hanks had like a Toyota Prius and Aaliyah had like an old sedan.
Speaker 3:I mean honestly, though, why do you want a nice car anymore if you're gonna park it on the street because, truly, someone's gonna fucking rob you, like?
Speaker 2:I'm just saying like someone will run into, even if your car isn't that nice, it's just new.
Speaker 3:Someone could try to rob you. So, like I, yeah, like don't you know, yeah, you don't drive a lamborghini down the street and park it. Like just don't be an idiot, honestly, like it's the car's already a waste of money, come on, come on. So okay, um, all right. So the mainstay for a long time in this hangout culture was schwab's pharmacy, which I've already mentioned where does that still exist?
Speaker 2:no, okay, I don't think, so hold on there's an old like soda shop pharmacy in Pasadena.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm picturing, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think that that's like you're picturing the right kind of thing. No, it doesn't exist anymore, but so, anyway, that was where respected mainstream actors like Shelley Winters, who we've talked about before.
Speaker 2:Shelley Winters.
Speaker 3:Lloyd Bridges and Humphrey Bogart could be found debriefing between jobs. But when a new joint opened up next to Schwab's called Googies, all the Hollywood offbeats and nonconformers moved in and set up shop. This cohort included Myla, Dennis Hopper and James Dean. Myla hadn't met Dean at this point in the story, but she would.
Speaker 2:So more on that in part two.
Speaker 3:Yes, for Myla it was where she felt most at home and where she found her people. So, with her relationship with Dink on the Rocks, she found herself in a booth at Googie's more often than not, and as she sat in that booth she started thinking about her next move. She was approaching 30 and aging out of the pin-up chorus girl hustle that had served as her career thus far. It wasn't what she dreamed of anyway, and it was time to move on with television. Having just entered the living rooms of america, mayla saw an opportunity to make her mark.
Speaker 3:Mayla had been inspired by the comic strip charles adams was making for the New Yorker called Homebodies. That's like what the Adams family is based on. It was called Homebodies and it's the family that would later solidify into the Adams family. It featured a weird family doing everyday things beneath a layer of dark humor. For example, one Charles Adams comic strip features the family preparing to pour hot oil on a group of Christmas carolers. It was very edgy stuff for the times and it was exactly up Myla's alley In her wildest dreams. Myla wanted to bring this concept to television, and that was not something that had happened yet, though of course it would later. One of Myla's friends, rudy Gern rick gurn rike. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right, but we'll spell it g-e-r-n-r-e-i-c-h it's g-e-r-n-r-e-i-c-h.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, did I say that you did? You're right, my I the n erased itself when.
Speaker 1:I read it.
Speaker 3:Anyway. So he was becoming a success as a fashion designer, and let her know about the Ball Karib, which was a costume ball that truly allowed those who wanted to be noticed to be seen with important eyes.
Speaker 2:Oh. So Myla decided to go as a version of the matriarch of the Homebodies comics, so it was just like a costume, like an upscale costume party slash.
Speaker 3:It's kind of see and be seen, Right yeah, Event. So she went as the matriarch of the Homebodies comics who wasn't yet Morticia and since her dad of a boyfriend, Dink, refused to go because he quote wasn't interested in a bunch of queens prancing around in full drag.
Speaker 2:Not an ally, yeah.
Speaker 3:This is where we are like yes, dink, you deserve your stupid name.
Speaker 2:Your stupid, stupid dinky, dinky name. Yeah, I hate you we all do so.
Speaker 3:Myla ended up taking a local coffee shop employee as her date who had Scottish kilt attire to wear, so at least he had some form of a costume that was like her criteria. Do you have something?
Speaker 2:to wear All right great.
Speaker 3:Her date didn't matter, because Milo was the one who was going to steal the show anyway. That's right, milo meticulously crafted her costume, patterning it on newspaper and hand stitching it together. I don't know if you remember that, but earlier.
Speaker 2:That's right. She knows how to sew her own shit.
Speaker 3:Yes, the ball was at one of the clubs Mila once danced at, then called Earl Carroll's, now called the Moulin Rouge, and when she walked into that ball she looked like the farthest thing from the cutesy chorus girl. This building had last seen her as Nice. Now. She had black, stringy hair, a tattered edged gown with threads that hung at her elbows and bare feet, and then blue, oxygen depraved lips. Wow, myla carried herself as a silent, unbothered zombie all night, and she got the same kind of attention that Cinderella received when she showed up at the ball in her glass slippers. The crowd ate up her shtick. Still playing a mute, mila won first prize in the costume contest. The other winner was a man, dressed or not dressed as a naked cowboy.
Speaker 2:So the guy in New York yeah the guy in New York. Also not an original Not an original.
Speaker 3:Her prize was a portable radio, and when she silently accepted it, the crowd was chanting Charles Adams, Charles Adams. They got her reference and she'd made an impression.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 3:Do you want to see a picture of the original Charles Adams comic?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, Okay, I remember seeing these I remember these.
Speaker 3:So it's like you can't really see her shoes, or she is tall, but like she's not like super buxom, actually, like it's there's. She's more like skinny and willowy skinny and willowy and like kind of like emaciated looking, yeah, and definitely, the hair is flat, flat and stringy, yeah, flat and stringy, yeah, flat.
Speaker 3:and stringy and so like it's a different take on Morticia. As luck would have it, a newly minted TV producer was at the ball that night. His name was Hunt Stromberg and he just stepped into his role as program director at KABC Television.
Speaker 3:He was trying to figure out an enticing way to present the slew of third-rate movies that the station had available to show and he felt that Myla's Charles Adams-esque ghoul would be the perfect host to present these subpar horror films to their audience. However, he didn't even know Myla's name, so he desperately started asking around and he asked her fashion designer friend, who told her about the ball in the first place?
Speaker 2:Rudy Gernreich, and he said Do I know her? Of course I do. She is Myla Nurmi, the first woman in Southern California to wear backless shoes. She's in the phone book under Mrs Dean Reisner.
Speaker 3:The first woman in Southern.
Speaker 1:California to wear backless.
Speaker 3:shoes Backless shoes. Backless shoes. I love this voice, and so Myla met with Hunt Stromberg at KABC. She had cropped blonde hair, wore all black and donned a cape For that meeting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she was like I know how to dress. Oh, I know how to dress.
Speaker 3:Oh, I love it. Stromberg explained his idea that Myla host a lineup of late night horror flicks as the Charles Adams character that she'd portrayed at the Balcareep. But Myla didn't want to infringe upon his creation Nice. So Stromberg suggested that she make her into a vampire instead of a zombie, vampire instead of a zombie. And he told her she needed to do it in four days. Everything in Myla's life up until this point had been leading her here, and she was ready to pounce on this opportunity.
Speaker 2:Hunt wanted a vampire. So then I thought what about a sexy vampire? Adams's flat-chested barefoot mute certainly wasn't that. I could be a sexy vampire, pondering death in all sorts of crazy and urbane ways.
Speaker 3:With a clear idea of her character, Myla got to work reconfiguring her costume from the ball crib. She started by flipping it around to make the low-cut back the front and the high-cut front the back. She sewed wire hangers into it for structure and split the skirt as high as she could get away with. Luckily, Myla had a fetish wardrobe which provided a solid foundation for her look. She pulled out her trusty waist cincher and tailored the dress to accommodate it, along with her breast and hip padding. Stock up on fetish gear. You never know when you'll need it.
Speaker 2:That's right if you, if you take one thing away from this podcast yeah, you stock up on your fetish gear that's right, it's not frivolous at all, not at all, not at all you might need it for a rainy day yes or a job, yeah, that requires full drag.
Speaker 3:Myla envisioned her vampire woman having long, three-inch fingernails, but that was not an available costume option back then. So she got crafty and cut pieces from a plastic food container, softened them by boiling them and then fit them over her own nails. Whoa boiling them and then fit them over her own nails, whoa. Then she wrapped them around pencils and secured them with rubber bands before cooling her bespoke press-ons on a tray of ice. So they would set.
Speaker 3:Oh a queen I know so crafty queen I want to see her in speaking of rupaul's drag race. I want to see her like in a costume challenge you know know what I mean. Yes, after hearing about this like she'd be so good. So they were so long, these nails, that they popped off regularly. So Myla ended up having to carry spares.
Speaker 2:She's prepared, she's prepared.
Speaker 3:I know that game. I have to have gone the press on route many times and have had to carry spares. I get it In Myla's words.
Speaker 2:her look was one part Greta Garbo, two parts each of the Dragon Lady, Evil Queen and Theta Barra, Three parts Norma Desmond and four parts Bizarre Magazine.
Speaker 3:And Bizarre Magazine was where she ordered all her fetish gear for context Now she needed a voice and a personality. She unveiled her character at KABC by whisking off her cape to reveal her sultry costume and svelte meat, tenderized waist that was sent to the gods. She pulled a long cigarette holder from her cleavage, offered them a cigarette and they ate it up.
Speaker 2:Wow, I'm eating it up. I'm just imagining it and I'm eating it up.
Speaker 3:Yes, Milo was officially hired and Vampyra was born, and this is where we're going to leave it.
Speaker 1:No, Until our next episode.
Speaker 3:I know, but there was a lot of pre-Vampyra. I mean, like, can you imagine leaving any of that out? No, you can't. You can't, it's just like that backstory is insane.
Speaker 2:It's insane and necessary.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So that was pre-Vampyra yeah.
Speaker 3:So next week will be Prime Vampyra, where you can, or next time. It's not going to be every week, so next time will be Prime Vampyra, where you can hear all about the splash that Myla made on 1950s television and more. So thoughts and impressions.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Ok, it's fascinating. Yes, also, I think it's. I don't know if it's like no one talked about this at the time, but like I think it's hilarious too that she's like I'm going to move to New York and LA and do New York and LA and New York and LA to be this actor, but like she didn't take any acting classes. No, you're right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:She like she was just like. I'll just put meat tenderizer on my waist and shack up with famous people.
Speaker 3:Well, what I don't even feel like shacking up with famous people was part of her strategy, really. I mean, she did want to be seen and noticed.
Speaker 2:I don't think she had a strategy.
Speaker 1:She didn't have a strategy, she didn't have a strategy.
Speaker 2:She was just floating about and had like a strong aesthetic which goes to show you, yes, that a strong point of view can get you really fucking far.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I feel like even before she. Well, you know, the thing is, she always had that point of view. So, but it's like the stuff that was always like innately in her, yeah, and so the stuff that led her to opportunities were always kind of dark like they, and that's what people saw in her yeah like so it's like she saw it in herself and other people saw it in her and it's like, yeah, it's such a bummer that the howard hawks thing didn't did that movie get made?
Speaker 3:the one that he wanted to make no I mean, I think that that was like something he was making just for her and scrapped it. But yeah, yikes, so I, but anyway, yeah, I feel like, yes, she didn't truly have a plan.
Speaker 3:Um and no plan no strategy, no training no, but I also feel like I don't know if she thought of herself as an actress. Actress, really. I feel like I think that it was like a time. Well, she wanted to be a radio performer. She wanted to be a radio performer. I think she really wanted to be like the auteur and artist and like I kind of feel like there weren't words for what she was trying to do at the time and I feel like she ended up being more categorized as like a and truly was like more of a performance artist. She like she really wasn't going to be the person who was transforming herself into like a bunch of different roles I mean, even though she kind of did that to an extent, like when she was like selling the newspapers and stuff and creating these characters and things. But I still feel like, yeah, maybe she would have fit into an improv world.
Speaker 2:I used to do that shit too. Yeah, I would just get so bored like waiting tables oh my god working at all these stupid places and I get so bored. And you waiting tables and working at all these stupid places and I get so bored and you just play games with yourself. Right and like create your own character and just like I'm going to be Scottish for the day. You told me that I could never. I never did Scottish. I can't do a Scottish accent. It always goes to English.
Speaker 1:Right right right, you told me that you did that. I can't do a Scottish accent. It always goes to English.
Speaker 3:Right right right, you told me that you did that I would go around doing accents all the time.
Speaker 2:That's so obnoxious I know it is, but I was fucking bored, I know.
Speaker 3:Well, that's the thing I mean. It's true she's trying to sell a paper. I'm going to come up with characters to do it and like whatever she was. I think it was the same kind of thing. But I feel like, yeah, I don't know, and maybe it's also just the time. I think like people didn't. I mean, people did go get training.
Speaker 2:She was around people who had training she was like around marlon brando and these other marlon brando was stella adler's baby and so in james dean.
Speaker 3:We didn't get to him yet, but she's very close to james dean and so, like I feel, I feel like this is all like those guys were like actor-studio actors, so I don't know. Like I feel like maybe with I don't know if it was like just not the way she saw herself. I mean, she must not have really thought like I'm an actor's actor, like it wasn't the same yeah.
Speaker 2:She wanted to, to like, make a mark with a very distinct thing. Instead of being I get, I feel bad because, like, obviously the family rift, but like I get her dad being like, what are you doing?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, yeah moving across the country back and forth, back and forth with like well and no clear like, not a plan not a vision like you're not going to school, you're not getting training, you're just like what, waiting to be discovered you know like right, yeah, yeah yeah, no, I mean like, and I do, I am, but I also get the side of it where it's like I've gotta like be free and make my own money and figure that out, and then getting completely distracted by that, which I think is actually what was going on.
Speaker 2:I gotta make, I gotta be free and make my own money. She, she kept asking her dad for money.
Speaker 3:Well, he got her money to get places. But then it was like you have to live the way I want you to live. So, like her whole thing. I mean she's young, do you know what I mean? So it's like she's like I don't want to live the way you want me to live, I'm going to go make my own money and get my own place. And that became like her whole focus every time, which not I mean like I don't relate to that part of the story at all I like didn't move around the country, being like Dad, can I have more money to do this? Like I never did that. But at the same time, like I do understand the side of it where you're like, oh, I'm gonna just try to pay for my own place, and then getting completely distracted by doing that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah absolutely so I think you know, to give her the benefit of that. That's part of it. But yeah, there's so many times where I'm like, especially the Howard Hawks thing, where I'm like oh girl why, that's so bad, but anyway, she'll find her way in some ways We'll get to it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, there's more. I'm looking forward to Prime, vampyra Prime.
Speaker 3:Vampyra yeah, we're going to hear more of her and there's some clips and there's some stuff, so there'll be more of that. But anyway, thank you so much for joining and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:Bye, Bye. If we've piqued your curiosity, please subscribe on Substack at deadandkindoffamoussubstackcom. We list each episode there, along with photos, newsletters, sources and more. You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts. Dead and Kind of Famous is written researched and produced by Courtney Blomquist.
Speaker 2:It is co-hosted by Marissa Rivera. We tag team on socials. Jesse Russell and Courtney Blomquist do our editing Until next time.
Speaker 1:You might not be famous, but you got a story to tell. Tell, and you're not dead yet.
