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
Prime Vampira: Maila Nurmi Part 2
As we unravel the layers of Vampira's gothic charm, we celebrate her unique blend of dark humor and magnetic persona that captivated 1950s audiences. Picture her cruising Sunset Boulevard in full vampire regalia, her chilling scream echoing through the night—a scene that marked her groundbreaking show, Nightmare Attic. We reminisce about her vibrant friendships with Hollywood's misfits, including the infamous James Dean, and explore how their shared fascination with the macabre defined an unforgettable era in Hollywood's history.
But beyond the allure and glamour lies a story of personal and professional challenges. Discover how Maila's defiance against network constraints led to the controversial end of her show, and how her tumultuous friendship with James Dean unraveled amidst public pressures. From media sensationalism to personal betrayals, Maila's resilience shines through. Join us as we uncover the complexities of Maila's journey—a narrative filled with haunting setbacks, unexpected friendships, and a relentless spirit that continues to inspire.
Follow us on...
Substack- https://substack.com/@deadandkindafamous
Here, you can find our episodes, transcripts, relevant images and newsletters.
Instagram- @deadandkindoffamous
See us visit the graves of our subjects and pay our respects with lovingly selected offerings.
Apple Podcasts and Spotify- Please be a Bon Vivant and leave us a rating and review. It would mean the world!
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 and now reside permanently in the hollywood forever cemetery I'm marissa rivera, and I know nothing, but I do know. What do I know, rivera, and I know nothing, but I do know how to make a killer cinnamon roll from scratch.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's right, and I'm eating it right now. I'm going to eat it a little bit throughout this episode. I know people hate that, but I might just do it. I don't know, because we're hanging you know, and this is delicious um, and I'm Courtney Blomquist and I know way too much um about what we're talking about, but I also don't know how to.
Speaker 3:If we've piqued your curiosity, well subscribe on the sub stack at dead and kind of famous dot sub stack. All I know is we list each episode there, along with photos, newsletters. To beat your curiosity, please subscribe on Substack at deadandkindoffamoussubstackcom.
Speaker 2:We list each episode there, along with photos, newsletters, sources and more.
Speaker 3:You can also find us wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2:You've taught her enough you know enough. Spanish.
Speaker 3:She said otoño the other day too.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, she's got the N yet.
Speaker 3:She didn't really. She said like oh no, until next time but it was pretty close for her.
Speaker 1:I feel like you got a story to tell and you're not dead yet.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love it. Yes, welcome to Myla Nurmi, part two.
Speaker 3:This week we are entering into the dawning of the age of Vampyra, just after she was birthed from a pile of trash and fetish gear that Myla Nurmi had lying around her apartment, iconic. Yes, she had stolen the hearts of the executives of local Los Angeles television station KABC, and they were so delighted by her that they made sure she got paid. Very little, very, very little indeed.
Speaker 2:Okay, yes, surprise, surprise yes.
Speaker 3:Myla's contract was quite strange. Actually, it ensured myla's pay would be a massive 75 dollars per episode and the network wanted to own a percentage of her character.
Speaker 2:You know that's what bothers me more. What is? What is the conversion rate Like? What's $75?
Speaker 3:Yes, in 1950s money $75 was $885. So it's not as bad as it seems. Okay, okay, however, marissa, allow me to call upon your insight as a working actress in Los Angeles, can you elaborate on how this would compare to today's pay? It's actually, it's actually it's not that bad.
Speaker 2:You know it's higher than the commercial day rate. The commercial day rate is currently at $790. It's about $790. It's a little under um. That's the commercial day rate. Um the for a sag contract, uh, for tv it's a little over 1100 for the day um but then there's like residuals, obviously there's yeah yeah, there's residuals and and you know, for tv you get it's a different weekly rate than a daily rate.
Speaker 2:You know there's there's different like rate breakdowns, so I would say it's kind of in the middle of you know it's, it's on the lower end. I mean, to be honest, we're all paid shit, so okay, okay um you know, this is why the strikes happen.
Speaker 3:This is, this is, this is a big, a big reason why the strikes happened.
Speaker 2:This is a big reason why the strikes happened. You know the pay it's not enough and it hasn't. It hasn't risen with the times. Everyone's skimming. All the people at the top are making more. The people at the bottom are making less these network execs, man.
Speaker 3:they were doing it back then and they're doing it now.
Speaker 2:And the whole. You know she invented this character. Yes, that's the thing, it's intellectual property. Intellectual property. No one from the network invented this. Why that pisses me off. Did she give them a percentage of the rights?
Speaker 3:to this character. As for the percentage of her character that the network owned, Myla herself chose that number. She allowed KABC to own a whopping 49% of her character as a thank you. What?
Speaker 2:Oh honey, no yes.
Speaker 3:And she, I mean she explains Tala us Vampyra, Okay.
Speaker 2:In her own words it was my idea to give them 49%. I wanted to give them as much as I possibly could without losing control, because I appreciated the fact that they had taken me out of obscurity.
Speaker 3:No, I know the fact that they had taken me out of obscurity. No, I know it's so. Like it's, it's like. Oh, I appreciated the fact that the club let me join.
Speaker 2:Like that's how it feels, or or like I appreciate you for hiring me at this nine to five job, so let me give you 49 of my paycheck back to you, like that's insane, it is insane, it's insane.
Speaker 3:I think she's just like this, is she just? I think she almost wanted her care. She was just like so in love with the idea of putting her character out there that she's like, oh great, they're gonna give it a chance. And then she jumped all over.
Speaker 2:She's young and hungry and she's like I do this for free, I mean, but actors do stuff for free all the time. I mean it's true.
Speaker 3:So truly like short sighted. It's yeah, because you're like, oh, I want the, I want it for my reel, yeah.
Speaker 2:Copy credit meal. Yeah yeah, mm. Hmm, we don't know what that means. It's a classic like this is either a non-union project or a very low budget, like sag waiver. Like I waive the. You know the right to get paid, but you will get.
Speaker 3:You'll get to eat something you'll get to eat something. Yeah, you can take that chipotle all the way to the bank yep, and your name will be added to the end of this short and maybe at one day it will be on your IMDB, who knows?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if the producer gets to it at any point, because they're not getting paid either, you know. So Right, but this was on a network, this is on network television. It was on network, a local network, it was a local network television. So it is local.
Speaker 3:But yeah, yeah, but still so. The other strange thing about Myla's contract was that her actual name doesn't appear anywhere on it. What it's hard to say if this was just a draft or a copy of the real thing, but there is a version of Myla's contract that documentarian Ray Green examined for his film Vampyra and Me. That shows that Myla's name is never listed on the actual contract. It simply mentions her as Vampyra.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, I mean I guess my contracts have my stage name so that's true, kind of makes sense, that's true, yeah, except that this is like I'm trying to think of a good comparison.
Speaker 3:It would almost be like, actually, I feel like this is a good comparison. I feel, like it would almost be like a drag queen having their drag name on the contract instead of their name as a person. And if they didn't have, if it wasn't their full stage name, that like they're making all you know?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I'm not sure, I don't know, I bet the tax man figured it out.
Speaker 3:I bet yeah. As Sandra Niemi says in Glamour Ghoul, the contract was little more than a handshake and Myla had no agents or representation working with her to help her inform these decisions.
Speaker 2:Well, they would have taken even more of a cut, but they would have. Someone would have been like honey, no, yeah, not 49 percent. No, no, no, no, that's a bad idea yeah.
Speaker 3:But despite the sloppiness of her contract, the station was very excited about her and they rushed to promote her in a combination of creative and schlocky ways. My personal favorite Hold on creative and schlocky ways. My personal favorite hold on what does schlocky mean?
Speaker 2:like tell the, let the children know and by the children by the children, I mean me, what the fuck does, and I, I'm very well read what does schlocky mean?
Speaker 3:it's like I think that's like some some yiddish nonsense.
Speaker 3:That means like just hacky okay, okay, just like thrown together and and kind of like uh, kitschy, almost okay, okay, yeah, yeah, just just a little tacky and tacky, I would say okay, yeah, um, and half-assed maybe. Okay, yeah, half-assed. My personal favorite is when they drove her around in a convertible on sunset boulevard while myla sat in the back seat in full vampire drag. She donned a black parasol and every time the car stopped at a stop sign she let out her famous blood-curdling vampire scream.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine it was such a horror to be stuck at a red light? Yes, okay.
Speaker 3:Which, by the way, let's hear that scream. Let's hear that blood-curdling scream. This is the intro to Nightmare Attic, which is what the original title of her show was.
Speaker 2:She's walking through the mist so much mist that fog machine is working overtime, Probably getting paid more than she is. Here she comes.
Speaker 4:Screaming relaxes me so why?
Speaker 3:What did she say? Screaming relaxes me, so Screaming relaxes me. So Screaming relaxes me so Since this was always the opening to her show, the scream was a pretty good advertising tool. And of the scream Myla says.
Speaker 4:She suddenly screams a blood curdling scream, and then says screaming relaxes me, so as if she's having just had an orgasm. I mean, that was my thought and that was what I was trying to imply in a ladylike manner.
Speaker 2:Isn't that incredible. That's so great, great also. She looks incredible. How old is she in this clip? Do we know?
Speaker 3:I think she's in her late 70s. Oh my god she looks amazing. Yeah, she's got bone structure for sure for days. So for further promotion, an introductory brochure was made to attract sponsors. It pictures vampyra on the cover and says she's dying to meet you. Then inside I love it. Then inside it went on to say she's a magnificent, exotic, if somewhat macabre slice of womanhood.
Speaker 2:She's a girl who looks thrilling in a form-fitting shroud, a devil doll who has Hollywood's werewolves panting at her door. You know what that I'm in? I know, right, I'm so in.
Speaker 3:It's pretty good.
Speaker 2:That's some clever writing. It's some pretty good writing. I'm into it.
Speaker 3:Yes, myla also gave interviews completely in character For a while. Neither she or the station revealed her real name at all. It added to the mystery and intrigue. When interviewed by the Los Angeles Mirror, the reporter asked her how do you feel about children, do you like them? And her response was oh, yes delicious. She's so funny, she's hilarious.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 3:She's like so funny. In late spring 1954 at midnight Myla's show Nightmare Attic premiered and Myla pulled viewers in with her arched eyebrows, high slit and fishnet clad legs. But it was the creepy wit of the show that really captivated audiences. The humor was dark and twisted and Vampyra did not hold back, even though this was 1954 and this was local public television. This is a bit of her monologue from that first episode.
Speaker 2:Oh God. Okay, I've got a wonderful offer to make to you tonight. It's a new hospitalization plan called the Yellow Cross. It's for people who unsuccessfully try to commit suicide. Okay, the plan pays all the bills till you're well enough to try again. If you're interested in such a plan, I'll be glad to get in touch with you. Of course, I hope you never have to use it. It's disheartening to hear of an unsuccessful suicide, and remember our slogan If at first you don't succeed, die, die, then die again.
Speaker 3:That's like really pretty edgy for now. Oh my God, yes, right it's like that's.
Speaker 2:I mean God, yes, right, it's like that's.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's dark, it's a suicide joke right off the top. Yes, in the first episode, like that's kind of I mean ballsy. It is really ballsy, it's super ballsy. I love it.
Speaker 2:She'd introduce a film, then go on with more. I went to a delightful funeral yesterday. We buried a friend of mine Alive. It takes a heap of dying to make a house a tomb. This is Vampyra. Until next week. Wishing you bad dreams, darlings. I love her. What a sign off, I know.
Speaker 3:Wishing you bad dreams, darlings, so good. There seems to be only one poor quality episode of Vampyra's show available for viewing, because it was a live show and wasn't generally recorded. Oh, so that's why I'm having you read those things instead of playing them. These are a couple moments where you can get a sense of her gothic charms.
Speaker 2:Wait. So how was it on a station, a local station, if it wasn't recorded?
Speaker 3:It was live streamed. Oh, it was live. It was live streamed, it was live broadcast.
Speaker 2:Live broadcasted and what was there? Was it yeah?
Speaker 3:She went in and she actually recorded the show at like 11 pm on a Saturday night. Wow, yeah, so it was like late night local television live. That's rad.
Speaker 2:I know Honestly, she probably didn't work that many hours too. She worked, I mean well, she did all these promotional things and all this stuff like in character. I wonder if that was like included in her contract or if she got paid extra on those days.
Speaker 3:I think it was included in her contract. We'll see, we'll get into it.
Speaker 2:You know me, I'm like where's the coin?
Speaker 3:Where is she getting paid? I need to know. I must know.
Speaker 2:These are a couple moments where you can get a sense of her gothic charms.
Speaker 4:Let me see. What I need is a vampire cocktail to settle my nerves. It'll not only settle them, it will petrify them. Mmm, a vampire cocktail. You like it, it hates you. I've had several lovers asking whether olives or cherries should be used in making my cocktail. Well, actually, neither is necessary, since they'd only disintegrate upon being put into the cocktail. However, if you want to use some garnish, you can drop in an eyeball If you happen to have an extra one around the house.
Speaker 2:If you drop in an eyeball, if you have an extra one lying around the house, yes, and then oh my god, this is I love her.
Speaker 3:She's so iconic I know this is what I'm saying like also, her eyebrows are crazy.
Speaker 4:They are crazy like she's incredible you know, I've often been asked why I don't light my attic with electricity. Isn't that ridiculous?
Speaker 3:everybody knows electricity is for chairs everybody knows, electricity is for chairs, so good so good yeah, myla adored the writer of the show, paul Robinson, and so did I?
Speaker 2:I adore Paul.
Speaker 3:It's so good, it's so witty. She especially loved him because he allowed her to contribute to the scripts, so there really is like her input in here as well, very collaborative.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's the best stuff, it's true, and whether she actually received writing credit is another story, but still she was allowed to have influence With her sexified, morbid lampooning of 1950s America. Vampyra was scratching an itch that needed scratching and people ate it up. Yes, the show was such a hit in Los Angeles that it was bumped up an hour to accommodate all of the viewers.
Speaker 2:That's so cool. I know that's like after the kids have gone to sleep and you're having your alone time, totally.
Speaker 3:And it's like I mean, I don't know, I just find it fascinating that so many people were pulled into this and I think there's a bunch of reasons why, but it's just like it's because it seems so, so edgy. Yeah it really does. This is so goth.
Speaker 2:I know Punk like counterculture. Yes, she is like a counterculture queen.
Speaker 3:Yes, and a photographer from Life magazine was even called upon to photograph Myla. There were many goth leaning cheesecake photo shoots of Vampyra Dunn, and Myla's modeling background primed her to make an impact in those photos. Except this time, she didn't need to smile at all and even though Nightmare Attic was a local television show, the photos made it, so that Vampyra made an impact worldwide. Just the photos.
Speaker 2:Yes, of course. Well, it's Life magazine. Yeah, it's an international magazine.
Speaker 3:So these are like I'm just going to show you a bunch of okay, because they're going to be like the first things that show up. These are her glamour shot. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:She's like she's very beautiful. Okay, she's very beautiful. These are black and white photos. Like the contrast. The contrast is really really stark. The the back. Wait what? What is? What is she reading in this one? What does this say?
Speaker 3:Oh, magnum, it says magnum, embalming, self-taught, it's true. Like it's so funny.
Speaker 2:Let me see the one where she's standing next to this standing candelabra. Oh, yes, oh my. God, and it's. She's almost as skinny as that candelabra. That's crazy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, her waist is shockingly small. It is shockingly small.
Speaker 2:It's, and the papaya you know magic, I guess, really worked. I wonder if she used some padding on her hips to even, um, make the, the proportions even more. I don't know stark, this is incredible. Yeah, it's, and so the photos.
Speaker 3:They are really beautiful and I think they're beautiful, they're artistic, they're super, super gothy and with a crying jack-o'-lantern. Oh my god, carving a crying jack-o'-lantern perfect, like I want to.
Speaker 2:I want, I want to redo this.
Speaker 3:I want to with a skeleton like weird dummy head around her shoulder. I don't know what this. Yeah, again with a sad jack-o'-lantern you guys need to google.
Speaker 2:We'll include these, yeah yeah yeah, in the show notes and like make sure you're subscribed to sub stack. Yes, so you can see all of these because they are hot and cool yeah she's cool and timeless yeah this one. Oh yeah, that's like the scream. Oh my gosh. Okay, there's a photo of her. Okay, in the foreground there's a hand holding um a camera that says l or k-a-b-c k-a-b-c tv and in the middle, there's there she is doing her scream with the mist. Oh, it looks so cool, yeah, cool, yeah.
Speaker 3:They look. I mean, they're like really. Yeah, like you said, it's Life Magazine. They're beautiful photographs, they're beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, I'm obsessed. I know she is.
Speaker 3:Girl. She's incredible. So Vampyra fan clubs cropped up in Europe, Asia and Australia, Wow.
Speaker 2:For a local.
Speaker 3:Los Angeles TV, it's just really wild. And Australia Wow, for a local Los Angeles TV. It's just really wild. She was written about in Newsweek TV Guide and major newspapers in America's biggest cities and because it was Vampyra herself that people loved, the name of the show was changed to the Vampyra Show, as it should. Yes, mila soon appeared on the Rod. Uh. Mila soon appeared on the Red Skelton show with other horror stars of the day like Bela Lugosi, peter Lorre.
Speaker 2:Red Skelton, not skeleton. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:Red Skelton. Red Skelton. He had a talk show at the time and like a kind of like sketch sort of show Okay, variety a little bit, but more like a late night with some sketch okay, so I entered.
Speaker 2:So bella legosi was on there, peter laurie and lon chaney jr right.
Speaker 3:Who was the um wolfman from universal?
Speaker 2:oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3:Horror film yes okay, and he was the one who was like, really good at doing his own makeup and stuff I don't know if you guys knew this, but one of my many jobs previous to how would, how would, how would they know this? They wouldn't I used to be a universal studios tour guide as well, so that was another one, so I do know a little bit about the um, the horror the monsters the universal yeah studios monsters and where and where all of them were filmed on the lot.
Speaker 3:should you take a tour I'm sure your guide will point them out to you. To use this gig as an example of how her strange and shitty contract with KABC played out, Milo was paid the after a rate at the time of $500, 49% of which went to KABC in checks made out to vampira care of hunt stromberg, the executive who had discovered her well, how do we?
Speaker 2:it is okay well it is pretty common for checks to go out to agents first uh-huh, um, then that gets put in a talent trust account and then they keep their percentage Back. Then it might have been different. Now it's 10% agency fee and then they send the checkout. So that's common. Now, 49% ain't common, right? I cannot get over that. That's a lot. And the AFTRA, okay, okay, so sag it. Now the, the unions merged, so it's sag after now.
Speaker 3:After was always a lower rate than sag okay okay, see, this is this is what you're bringing to this show.
Speaker 2:You bring the reason yeah, you know, and watch someone in the comments. Be like actually yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, there was one year, right, right. Back in these 10 years and after paid more and they might have.
Speaker 2:But you know, in my day, in this day, in this day and age, when I started in Los Angeles, there was two separate unions. After paid less, Okay, okay their rates paid less.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, their rates were less, their rates were less. It was on the Red Skelton show that Mila became familiar with one of Skelton's writers, a young Johnny Carson Stop, for whom she developed a lifelong dislike, stop, because of the way he treated the aging actor Bella Lugosi. Oh, it was an ageist, yeah Well.
Speaker 2:Bella Lugosi. Oh, it was an ageist, yeah, well.
Speaker 3:Lugosi was very ill at the time and missed several cues as a result, and Carson often made jokes at his expense. Oh, that's awful. Yeah. And I mean I bet he was like kind of new and was trying to like impress someone. You know, I don't know. People make jokes that are in poor taste when they're the most insecure, to be honest, or maybe you know, in the darkest of times.
Speaker 2:I often lean on comedy as well.
Speaker 3:Right, it might not have been his best instinct, yeah, or?
Speaker 2:we don't know if Bella didn't mind. We don't know.
Speaker 3:We don't know. We don't know, but Myla loved Bella Lugosi.
Speaker 2:She writes when, at the end of the show, you took my arm to guide me to the footlights for curtain call, I was suddenly 10 feet tall and wore a 50-foot aura of royalty. I was all the queens of history rolled into one. Oh, she loved him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he held such a special place in her heart.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:She had a lot of respect for him. The Red Skelton show was the one time that Milo would actually get to perform with Bela Lugosi, but it wouldn't be the last time they appeared on screen together. More on that later. Ooh, okay, yes, but with all the TV appearances and promotions around town, vampyra had the key to Los Angeles for a time and everybody wanted a piece of her.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, I want a piece of her. I mean like I bet she could just get in wherever she wanted. Yeah, and go wherever she wanted, get a table wherever she wanted. Yeah, do and go wherever she wanted, get a table wherever she wanted.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I think she was. She was a hot little number in Los Angeles for a minute there.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 3:She waved from parade floats, cut ribbons at openings and made game show appearances regularly.
Speaker 2:Columnist Walter Winchell said at the time the only person more popular than Vampyra is Eisenhower.
Speaker 3:And Eisenhower was the sitting president. Wow, but Myla's husband Dink.
Speaker 2:I forgot his name was Dink Dink Dink, Damn it.
Speaker 3:Dink, damn it Dink. Myla's husband Dink found the attention she received as Vampyra to be embarrassing.
Speaker 2:Oh, I bet it was embarrassing you insecure little prick. Yep, you little Dink.
Speaker 3:He thought her getup was over the top and refused to be seen with her in public when she was in costume.
Speaker 2:It was that was it's the point. It's the point. It's drag, it's a character. It's a drag character, you dink.
Speaker 3:I like that. His name is an insult.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:He considered her a liability to his own writing career, which was actually going well at the time. Finally, yeah, good yeah.
Speaker 2:You're welcome now that you stop drinking now that, now that your wife helped you stop drinking, yeah and you're riding on her coattails. Yeah, and you have some successes, and now it's like oh, I'm better seen with her.
Speaker 3:I'm embarrassed by whatever. So, as was her custom, she found her own people to consort with outside of her home. That that's right.
Speaker 2:Find, always find your tribe people yes.
Speaker 3:And if it's not, your husband, get a divorce, and you know. And if you can't get a divorce yet, like, leave your house for a while, go on a walk, find some ne'er do well, always eager to befriend Hollywood misfits like herself, myla spotted Jimmy Dean a mile away.
Speaker 2:Ah, James Dean just keeps on surfacing in these shows. Goodness gracious, he really does.
Speaker 3:James Dean. He keeps coming up. She saw him at the C&B scene premiere of the Audrey Hepburn film Sabrina. Yeah, he was her rumpled little misfit in a tux.
Speaker 2:Here comes this guy in a tux with a Howard Hughes whore on his arm. She had a With a Howard Hughes whore on his arm. She had a loopy smile on her face, clearly enjoying the attention. But he is mad. It was obviously a studio date. He is angry to have been there and he certainly doesn't want to be with her. And I knew I had to meet this guy yep, but she didn't have the chance.
Speaker 3:That night, at the same premiere, she spotted another man who would become a soul friendship, but not because he was brooding or well-dressed. It was because he looked like his clothes didn't fit and he had no idea how to dress himself. This was the actor jack simmons. Milo befriended jack first and began hanging out with him on her nighttime sits at gookies. And it was at gookies where she finally met james dean. What a spot. Yep, she was sitting in a booth with jack when he arrived on a motorcycle with tony lee scott, a jazz singer who had lost her leg in a motorcycle accident.
Speaker 3:So I guess just Getting right back on that horse? Yeah, getting back on that bike.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:Against probably her better judgment, and the first thing Myla said to him was when is she? When he gestured at Tony, Myla said Not your girlfriend, your mother.
Speaker 2:To which he said man, is it that obvious?
Speaker 3:She cut out, and it does seem that Myla had a bit of a mother connection to Dean. She was certainly not old enough to be his mother, but she was older than him and noticed the mother-shaped hole in him right away.
Speaker 2:At the time, I thought Jimmy's mother had abandoned him. It was later I found out that she died of cancer at only 29 and left him alone in the world with a father who was distant.
Speaker 3:Within an hour of meeting Milo was on Jimmy's motorcycle with him. I guess Tony found another ride. They discovered all the commonalities they shared. For instance, they'd both been named after writers. James' middle name was Byron after Lord Byron and Myla was named after Finnish writer Myla Talvio. And Myla came to know about James Dean's death fixation In his apartment. He read her a Ray Bradbury poem about a boy whose mother died and then hung himself in the garage. While he read, myla noticed a noose hanging from his own ceiling.
Speaker 2:When she asked about it, he said that's how I'm gonna die With a broken neck.
Speaker 3:Soon after this Myla would I know he's just like a death fetishist really yeah. Of course you would want to be his friend.
Speaker 2:I know she's like ooh, he's just a like a death fetishist really yeah, of course you would want to be his friend, I know she's like you're dark and spooky ooky, and only talk about death all the time and you have a noose in your apartment that is wild, I know that's so.
Speaker 3:I mean talk about red flags.
Speaker 3:Marissa was a walking red flag for halloween and that should have been one of them you have a noose hanging from your ceiling no, that's like it's just it's on another level, that's on a whole nother level that I mean that's like you, let's call someone yeah soon after this milo would give a nod to jimmy on the vampire show by sipping a cocktail through a noose news oh my, I know god, but that's kind of brilliant, I know I know it's like it's dark and it's spooky and it's like I would be shocked if someone did it now.
Speaker 2:It's just wild that this is 1954, and in her, in anything things that you've read, it doesn't say that she was depressed or anything that she was. Yeah.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:She is just a dark, spooky, ooky goth girl and I love it.
Speaker 3:I mean, she has like, not at this point.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay At this point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Okay, Of their relationship.
Speaker 2:Myla said we were psychic twins, jimmy and I. Both of us were misunderstood in a world of strange beings. When, at age 31, I met Jimmy, he was the first entity of my own species that I had ever encountered. When, at 23, jimmy met me, he thought he'd at last met someone from his own planet. We became glued to one another. Our psyches melded. Wow, yeah, you know, sometimes you just really find your soul people and it is that, and you feel it, and you feel it.
Speaker 2:And it's like she's not mentioning anything sexual no, no, no no I mean the fact that she felt motherly towards it, but she was only 30 I know, I know she's like you, rumbled little boy oh man in your 20s.
Speaker 3:I mean I in some way. Sometimes I feel like when people in their 20s do really stupid things, I'm like, oh you, poor, poor child, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I'll feel a little there is, yeah, between your thirties and twenties. Yeah, there's a lifetime, shall we say. So I do, I, I, I do feel that way sometimes. And I to be patronizing or anything, right, yeah, I just, I just know what's coming.
Speaker 3:Right, well, and you also just know what it's like to be an idiot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like at 23.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, dummy Big, dummy your frontal lobe's not even done.
Speaker 2:for me it's not even done.
Speaker 3:I feel like my my frontal lobe just finished cooking and I'm like close to 40, and I'm like close to 40, but it's fine. At another point she said For me.
Speaker 2:Jimmy seemed a mirror of my psyche, and Googies was the womb in which we lived as Siamese twins the endless stream of coffee our placenta and then it gets, so it's like it gets a little weird. You know, I feel like that takes a little turn it. First of all, googies. What a spot. I mean we talked about this last time, yeah, but like even even more it she felt motherly. I mean it seems like she, she felt like they had like a, a sibling sort of.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I, yeah, I think so At least something familial, yeah, and I think that also any kind of soul connection to her was going to feel really good right now, because her marriage was in such a stupid place. So it's like when you feel like that oh, I think I found my people. It's like always more exciting when you just really need it you know, yeah, and I do think that that's the place she was at.
Speaker 3:Jack Simmons was the third misfit in their trio. Gossip columnists called I can't say columnists, you just said it, I know. Gossip columnists called the grouping Vampyra and Her Spooks. Oh, I love that I know, and the Night Watch oh.
Speaker 2:I love that. What that's so much better than like Swifties?
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, this was a strange brief moment in time in which Vampyra was actually much more famous than James Dean. In fact, at the time he was a rumpled mess with dirty clothes and disheveled hair that made waitresses look at him in disgust. Oh, wow, yeah, unshowered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he did not bathe, what that sounds like yeah, it's like he was not fit for public consumption.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he was like just rolling out of bed, like in the same clothes, I don't know.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm picturing. He went to sleep in yeah, yeah, for like three days in a row. Very 23 year old.
Speaker 3:Oh for sure, yeah, you're like, I can go to class in my pajamas or whatever. Kabc did not like the Nightwatch business because Vampyra was known to be a married woman, even though she actually wasn't. That's right, yeah, and it looked scandalous in the press to have her seen about town regularly with two young men. They quelled rumors by explaining that Myla's husband was a screenwriter who needed to write at night without distraction, so she had to give him space during those times.
Speaker 2:Oh, you have to give the working man space.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she's just being a good wife. Yeah, she's just being a good wifey. Yes, she's really taking a hit, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's giving him the space that he needs to be creative, that's right Of James and Jack Myla said we're a menage a trois without the sex.
Speaker 3:I just love her Everything she says oh, I love it Outside of Googies. The three could be seen cruising about town in Jack Simmons' old converted Cadillac hearse. And now we know what Jack Simmons brings to the equation. Yes, james Dean brings the news, jack Simmons brings the hearse. Wow.
Speaker 2:Yep, wow and.
Speaker 3:Vampyra brings her fabulous goth self.
Speaker 2:Her body-ody-ody.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right, they were all a little death-obsessed. Jimmy hung his signature noose from the headliner of the car and they went on late-night romps through graveyards that they referred to as tombstone tours.
Speaker 2:You would have totally been part of this. Oh my God, you would have been part of the Night Watch in a second Courtney.
Speaker 3:It would have been so fun, can you imagine I mean with those like that would have been incredible. They would have loved this podcast. They would have loved this podcast. I hope that you are doing a shimmy in your grave, Myla Nurmi.
Speaker 2:RIP the Night Watch. You would have loved this podcast.
Speaker 3:Yes, they smoked joints among the graves and moved flowers from one grave to another.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I would have loved to be in this.
Speaker 3:It's like Halloween every night. I love it. They would find tombstones with familiar names and make up gruesome stories to explain the deceased's fate, as Myla put it.
Speaker 2:Wait, is this us?
Speaker 3:I know it kind of is Because I was like we're making up stories to explain. We didn't make up stories to explain their. Well, actually we did. We did the whole obituary, so we did explain their fate. This is us, damn it. I thought I was being original. This is why we love her so much. This is why because she's yeah, she's a kindred spirit wow, wow, okay, okay.
Speaker 2:As Myla put it, we all suffered greatly from delayed adolescence. I feel that so hard.
Speaker 3:Oh, I feel that hard.
Speaker 2:I feel that so hard. I feel, like I grew up in a very conservative household and so like I don't feel like I really let loose until college really, but like really really until my early 20s, when I was like dumb and young and immature yeah, in my 20s.
Speaker 3:Oh, for sure.
Speaker 2:And finding my tribe of people and like my band of weirdos.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:My night watch.
Speaker 3:Yes, we all have to find our night watch. It's true, our spooks, our spooks. They took their dark fascinations to new heights when they decided to go from cemeteries to mortuaries in order to see an actual dead body. Stop.
Speaker 2:No, okay, okay, I would not do that.
Speaker 3:Okay, this is where the similarities end right here.
Speaker 2:It's true.
Speaker 3:They combed over obits and used aliases to sign in on the visitor's registry at the mortuary. James used Montgomery Brando. You know a little obvious. Myla used Countess Cuntish.
Speaker 2:And Jack used Pee Wee. Ain't nobody checking in those sign-in sheets?
Speaker 3:That's what we're learning. That's what we're learning today.
Speaker 2:Nobody checks the sign-in sheets.
Speaker 3:Nobody checks the sign-in sheets. Nobody checks the sign-in sheets. The first time they encountered a dead body was the last, because Jimmy took it too far. Oh, jimmy, of course you did. Yep, because he's cocky. He tried to pry the man's mouth open, which? Had been wired shut and took a ring from his finger without the other two noticing, I know. Myla was furious with him for overstepping a boundary, and they never went sniffing around dead bodies again, okay.
Speaker 2:So she had standards yeah, she had standards and boundaries yes, and he didn't, yeah.
Speaker 3:However, there was a point that Jimmy stood in as a cameo for a dead body in one of Myla's sketches for her show. That's awesome. Yes, she was a spooky librarian. Oh so sexy. Yes, and Jimmy was a young man who had fallen asleep and was snoring loudly, despite Vampyra's quiet sign. So Myla conks him over the head with a dictionary and leaves him mortally wounded from that on the floor, and that was the one time james dean appeared on the vampire show.
Speaker 2:Wow as a dead body dead body.
Speaker 3:I mean, I guess he was alive at the beginning, but but then he was dead body.
Speaker 2:No lines, no lines that's amazing I know that's a really really cool easter egg. Yeah, egg, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3:Myla also served as the go-between for James Dean and his idol Marlon Brando.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was gonna say because he signed in as a as. What was it? Montgomery Brando? So, I was gonna ask if he was a little obsessed with someone. Gosh, I guess all these people you know you are, you can be a little obsessed about.
Speaker 3:Well, I think people just like well, people are still obsessed with both, actually, marlon Brando and James Dean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So that makes sense. Brando totally rejected Dean oh and felt threatened by his fast rising star, so they were jealous of each other. Whenever he did relay a message to James via Myla, he would always preface it with tell your little friend that to put him in his place.
Speaker 2:Tell your little friend, little friend, tell your little friend that it's like so mobster kind of yeah, tell your little friend, tell your little friends, tell your little friends.
Speaker 3:The Vampyra show had first hit Los Angeles living rooms in the spring and by Halloween. Well, vampyra, pretty much was Halloween. Vampyra costumes were popping up everywhere. Even Zsa Zsa Gabor's maid had called to get tips on how to execute the look properly for her employer wow.
Speaker 2:And for those of you who don't know, zhazha gabor was like the kardashian of her time.
Speaker 3:Oh, totally so yeah, just it's a hoity-toity like social life, had to have the whatever it was of the moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Um is's a hoity toity like had to have the, had to have the, whatever it was of the moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um. Is that a good description of her, would you say? I think so. Yeah, was she more than just a socialite? Am I, am I?
Speaker 3:let's look it up, am I?
Speaker 2:remembering that incorrectly. I don't want to American.
Speaker 3:American socialite and actress but.
Speaker 2:I guess Kim Kardashian technically is an. American socialite and actress.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that was pretty accurate what you just said. Myla also hosted live horror movie screenings at the Orpheum Theater over Halloween weekend.
Speaker 2:Oh, so fun, I know.
Speaker 3:That would have been. That would have been the hot ticket.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hot ticket.
Speaker 3:Oh, I would love to do that, I know. After which she had to race over to KABC for the taping of her live weekly episode at 11 pm. She's a busy lady, she's busy. She was hustling around town. She went to the Bal Karib again just one year after being discovered there. This time she went with Hunt Strongberg Jr, the TV exec, who discovered her and liked to take full credit for the creation of Vampyra. Of course he did this. Of course pissed Myla off, but she did a victory lap with him anyway. Mila off, but she did a victory lap with him anyway.
Speaker 2:That december kabc premiered another host for romantic movies called voluptua okay played by victoria.
Speaker 3:Paul voluptua, a buxom blonde, was brought in to host a slate of romance films.
Speaker 2:Oh, so just like the opposite, the complete opposite side of the coin here, exactly. You know what.
Speaker 3:Smart, yeah, except it's interesting because the network was promoting both hosts together as the Chill and Charm Girls, and Myla hated all of this. In the midst of the Chill and Charm campaign, myla protested by ditching a scheduled public appearance. She felt the studio was at war with her and wanted to own her character, along with the Vampyra name, and syndicate the show nationwide with different Vampyra's hosting.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, that's why you don't give them 49%.
Speaker 3:I know, I know you don't give them 49. I know, I know, but it was through the station that she received all of her public appearance gigs and money and they basically threatened to refuse all of the requests, which added up to 6 000 in just the next month, then 6 000 back then right it would have been a lot, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:well, let's, let's see, let's just I want to know what the conversion is what the conversion is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, $6,000 in 1950. What 50. This would have been 55.
Speaker 2:How much? $70,000. No way, yes, $6,000 in 1955 is worth over 75, over 70 000, 70 589 dollars and 78 cents. Oh my god, okay. Another one says it's 68 000. Still, it's it, still. It's a lot in a month $70,000 in a month.
Speaker 3:That's shocking. I feel like now I'm like am I wrong? I'm going to look at this Hold on $6,000 worth of paid Vampyra bookings, and that's just for January.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah Damn. So that's right.
Speaker 2:No, that made me question it oh my god, but wait, did they take basically half of that?
Speaker 3:yeah so okay, and then still that's a lot of money to make in one month. I know if she so okay. So they, they were like we're gonna, we're gonna refuse all the requests if you keep acting up and whatever right making a scene out of this. So for a time she towed the line, but, voluptuous, didn't last long. Anyway, they put her in a nine 30 time slot on Wednesdays and her I'm breathless because I've been waiting for you line, mixed with her sexual appearance, ticked off more than a few housewives.
Speaker 3:Interesting she also would end up on a bed in a men's dress shirt and nothing else by the end of the show. So it was pretty suggestive, without any death mixed in to make it palatable.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So she got the chop after just seven weeks, and this is this is voluptuous, so I cannot wait to see her okay, like this is some of the shots from the. These are gonna be yeah, like that's her, she's like getting ready and this is like that's not a flattering photo, her promotional shots.
Speaker 3:I mean she kind of looks just like cheesecakey but she is like laying on a bed, I think. I mean, like in this one she's wearing kind of like an evening gown and laying on a bed. I'm trying to find one of the ones where they show her in a.
Speaker 3:This is her in the men's shirt, though so like that idea was like really, really suggestive and they were like no, not having it and it was an earlier time slot, yeah, so I think that they just oh, oh, that just did not look as cool as vampire she didn't at all wait is this her changing behind a screen?
Speaker 2:yes yes, you can kind of see her nipples here I think it's a shadow but you're yeah, it's.
Speaker 3:It's just too suggestive for 1950s and I think, vampire truly it's like she was just creepy enough and like her sense of humor was witty enough that people weren't only focusing on her being sexual, even though that was definitely there.
Speaker 2:So I mean she said it herself like that.
Speaker 3:The scream was orgasmic yeah, but like I can't believe, I think that that's incredible, by the way, that that went over the public's head oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 3:She was clever enough to to make an orgasm joke in 1954.
Speaker 2:Also, you know what Sex by itself is fucking boring. It is boring, it's true. Sexiness for just and that's just like oh, I'm here, I'm just breathless for you, I'm waiting for you. Yeah, but it's, I mean, this is why people don't watch porn in full, that's why we skip around.
Speaker 3:That's why we skip around Exactly. Yeah, it's a means to an end. It is and it was at this point in time that Myla's marriage got chopped up as well. In January 1955, an announcement of Myla Nurmi's divorce from Dean Reisner, also known as Dink, was issued in Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. In the announcement, Myla issued a quote.
Speaker 2:My husband and I have been married for six years and we are not compatible. He has social inhibition and I'm a social extrovert. Well, that's for damn sure. When it came time to move out of their shared apartment in Laurel Canyon, Myla locked herself in the bedroom and clung to their bed, saying this is a bed of sanctity where youthful naivete once flourished and blossomed into love, and I will not abandon it to be violated by anonymous and sundry whores.
Speaker 3:And that right there is my favorite quote from this whole thing. Oh my, God. It's so good, anonymous and sundry whores oh.
Speaker 2:Oh Well, for my divorce, the first thing I wanted to get rid of was my bed. Not the mattress, though, because it's a Tempur-Pedic mattress. See, you didn't get rid of your mattress either. Well, I'm not about to throw five grand down the drain, courtney, but you didn't care about the anonymous and sundry whores. No, yeah, I kept the bed because I have back problems. Well, but I did get rid of, like the, you know, the headboard.
Speaker 3:The frame, the frame and the headboard.
Speaker 2:Like I eat like and the sheets and all that.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Like you, gave it a makeover. Oh, yes, yes, yes yes, I made it my own, yes, but this her, oh yes, yes, yes, yes, I made it my own, yes, but this is this is interesting, that she had kind of like this jealous streak. Oh yeah, I mean, she was like not into her they never spent time with each other.
Speaker 3:She felt rejected by him, though I think that's true.
Speaker 2:So that's remember she was trying to do all of her like dominatrix or like she was trying to get him to that's hard yeah and like she put, she put it all, she put the work in and for what Invisible?
Speaker 3:And then she's like doing and she's so visible to the rest of the city at this time too, right, and?
Speaker 2:wanted, yes, wanted literally everywhere else but her marriage. Oh girl, yeah, get that divorce.
Speaker 3:Get that divorce, get that fake divorce because you weren't actually married. That's right, smart, smart um. Needless to say, she took the bed with her to her new apartment in the aftermath of her breakup. A broken-hearted myla could often be seen at her beloved googies after taping her show, in her normal clothes and blonde cropped hair, but still in her full face of ghoulish vampire makeup as she wolfed down a burger ain't that the way?
Speaker 2:yep ain't that the way? I don't know, I do that shit like I. You gotta meet your needs. Yeah, after a long day of set, I will look fucking crazy, like my hair and makeup will be all completely done up, but I will be in sweatpants and flippy floppies housing a Taco Bell. You know, what I mean. Yep, I get this. I get this. I am her, she is me.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:In her journal journal she wrote for six years the gypsy slept while the brain was honed. Then here I was a bachelorette again. I used to watch hollywood's love lorn come into schwab's to pick up their bags of pills. Mayo Method Bogart's ex came in wearing her full-length mink. Even sunglasses wouldn't hide her suffering. That was right after her husband left her for Lauren Bacall. Then there was Robert Montgomery's ex-wife, elizabeth. She too was hoping for a better life through pharmaceuticals. They were always women. The men drank themselves to death, the women used pills.
Speaker 3:I love her writing. I have to say I know this is a journal, but it's good, I know. She's so poetic. She's poetic and dark and you can tell that she influenced the scripts, like just from the journal alone, yeah. Myla had already ditched the dress to impress ideology of her 20s in favor of scruffy bohemianness, even though she was actually in the midst of her highest level of fame. That's very on brand, I feel like the less you try, the more famous you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or, like you know, are they homeless, or are they?
Speaker 3:famous is she's like keanu reeves america's sweetheart?
Speaker 2:yeah, if yeah, yeah, that's. I mean you want to be comfortable. I mean she was. I mean she was snatched in that outfit. So if I had to work and look like that, I too would be wearing loosey-goosey, flowy-hoey dresses in my bachelorette era.
Speaker 1:That's right. Let it all hang out. Let it hang out.
Speaker 3:But the refusal to even remove her vampire makeup was a new level of disregard for her appearance. In. March of 1955, Myla attended the seventh annual Emmy Awards.
Speaker 2:Wait, I want to go back, yeah, okay, to her journal entry. It's for six years the gypsy slept while the brain was honed. I think that she's saying that for six years, while she was married. Yes, the gypsy slept while the brain was honed. So, like she lost, I think that part of herself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Like the gypsy being the the one who the free spirit, the free spirit and the the one who can kind of like wander and explore and all of that I think so. And then the brain.
Speaker 2:I think she was able to focus on I connect so much with that because, like, I was married for like nine years.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, we were together for 10 years, but I was married for I was also married for six years before we separated okay so I was also married for six years and I will say, yeah, like that, that free spirit, gypsy part of me slept and but like my, the brain was honed. But the, the, the career, the ambition, the, the like, you know that part of me was in overdrive right, you were focused on. You were focused on your career, on yeah, on basically like mental yeah, pursuits, yeah, mental pursuits, and like that loose that loosey goosey flowy hoey part of me slapped, it's slept.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she writes. Well, see, look at you. You got us thinking, myla, you got us relating and thinking. In March of 1955, myla attended the seventh annual Emmy Awards at the same venue, the Moulin Rouge, as the costume ball that changed her life had been held. For once, she wasn't expected to dress like her character. She had been nominated for the most outstanding television personality of 1954. A regular RuPaul, I know. She wore an ice blue gown and dyed her hair to match.
Speaker 2:Oh, so cool.
Speaker 3:She's like Katy Perry perry oh my god, she's like such a legend. For this time I I kind of can't I wonder, I wonder was this televised? Um, I don't think so I think that this category wasn't? I don't think so.
Speaker 2:This so cool, are there any?
Speaker 3:pictures of this Vampyra at the Emmy Awards. Oh, so you can't see. It's not in color.
Speaker 2:It's not in color, but she looks so cool.
Speaker 3:She does look cool. She has like a little fur on and her nails look metallic.
Speaker 2:And she's wearing a crown. She looks so cool. She looks like an ice queen.
Speaker 3:She does, and if you can picture it in color, it's like with the blue hair yeah. Maybe that's why you could get away with stuff like that, actually, even if it wasn't like frowned upon or if you wanted to make a shock of the night.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Amongst your peers, but the footage was going to be in black and white. I kind of love it. Her friend Jack Simmons was her date, wearing a rented tux. For just one night they were the Hollywood elite, but after his performance in East of Eden it was really James Dean who was becoming one of Hollywood's elite, and now it was Myla who was a blight on his image.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I know, I hate this.
Speaker 3:There was an alleged romance between them and whisperings of their shared interest in the occult, and Warner Brothers was not into it, so Jimmy had started to distance himself. He even gave an interview to columnist Hedda Hopper in which he allegedly said I don't date witches and I dig cartoons even less.
Speaker 2:Vampyra was merely a subject about which I wanted to learn, and after engaging the girl in conversation, I found out that she knew absolutely nothing and is only obsessed with her Vampyra makeup.
Speaker 3:Knife in the heart, ew In the back. In the back, you're right. Yeah, obviously with pressure from the studio, jimmy had allowed his career and ambition to trump his friendship and Myla, who had considered him her best friend, was devastated.
Speaker 2:It almost sounded like you said breast friend, okay, okay. And Myla, who had considered him her best friend, was devastated a bosom buddy yes here come my son, my son suckle on my, yeah, suckle up, but perhaps we're more sisterly and brotherly, yeah, um, yeah, it might have. This sucks because also, she just you know, she just had her divorce and yeah, you know men are disappointing they are, men are, just they are, they are. Maybe cut that out I'm very no, it's all right. It's not a good time for me more women.
Speaker 3:It's okay, you can say it. Say it, we all feel this. You know what?
Speaker 2:yes, like what the fuck? I mean? I understand, in a way, outgrowing friendships. That happens, sure. Especially I'm not friends with the same people that I was friends with in my early 20s. No, yeah, it changes. But to turn on her and say such nasty things in a public article.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just it's. It's has like a total disregard for her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean it's one thing to be like. Listen, the studio says I have to do this.
Speaker 3:I don't mean it yeah, you kind of have to. I think you just have to be like forward if you're about stuff.
Speaker 2:I mean, would you, how would okay, how, courtney bombquist, yes, how would you feel if, for some reason, our friendship was deemed a problem and I was famous enough to wear like some fucking studio wackadoo, was like you have to distance yourself from Courtney Blomquist? How would you feel, even if I did you the courtesy of of warning you? Like, listen, I have to, I just don't.
Speaker 3:Well, would part of that be that you have to like, kick me out of my house?
Speaker 2:Property. No, no, no. I would just have to like publicly humiliate you. I would just have to publicly humiliate you. I would just have to publicly humiliate you.
Speaker 3:No, that would be awful.
Speaker 2:Like even even if I warned you up front that it was gonna happen, yeah, would you still want to be friends with me?
Speaker 3:no, I think I what I would understand, if it is, if there was something that made you have to distance yourself from me, just to distance yourself because it didn't look good for you, or whatever like from a pr standpoint or whatever that I would understand if it was simply like I just have to not be like in photographs with standpoint or whatever. That I would understand if it was simply like I just have to not be like in photographs with you or something that even would hurt a little bit.
Speaker 3:But I would understand and I think that if it was like you have to say bad stuff about me, it's just hard to even imagine a context where that's like right, you know where I have to go on record and do shit on you.
Speaker 2:That's the thing.
Speaker 3:I don't think he had to go on record. I think like he didn't have to do that. He could have just been like I don't know her that well.
Speaker 2:That's all like rumors yeah, could have just said that unsubstantiated rumors yeah, exactly unsubstantiated claim I wonder if they actually did ever have a romance, does it say in her she, she has said that they don't. He doesn't deserve it. Doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve it. No, he doesn't.
Speaker 3:At the same time, myla was feeling cornered in her career. Her close ties to the station were keeping her from expanding her opportunities. When she got an offer to be on the popular talk show, the George Goebel Show, she knew she had to say yes. Stars like Jimmy Stewart and Kirk Douglas had made appearances on the show and it felt like an opportunity for visibility that you just don't pass up. It was the highest rated show on TV. That's big. But the show filmed at 10 pm on Saturday night and Mila would never make it back to her own show in time to film at 11. So KABC forbade her from doing the George Goebel show, but she did it anyway.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm so proud of you, girl. Documentarian Ray Green is heard narrating over the clip of this. It was used in his 2012 film Vampyra and Me and it does represent the largest viewership that Vampyra ever had. Her show was only on local TV and George Goebbels was nationwide with an audience of millions. So this is the clip and it, like I said, the narration is on it and it's just because they actually like, dug this up. Mm, hmm dug this up, mm-hmm.
Speaker 4:Young man. Who are you? What is this? Vote to come in, mr Gobo, we can have a nice little Ow. Don't step on the cat's tail. I don't see any cat. We don't have a cat, just his tail. Do you mind if I smoke? No, not at all.
Speaker 3:And the bench she's on just starts smoking.
Speaker 2:And she's just doing all these poses.
Speaker 4:Yes, there are layers here uncommon for the time.
Speaker 2:Vampyra is the actress in the sketch, not the role.
Speaker 4:Just a moment, let me introduce myself. I'm Mrs Jones, just plain, mrs Jonesones just plain jones, who lives next door on any street in america this makes vampire real in a sense, at least in the syntax of the show.
Speaker 1:Say Mrs Jones, did anybody ever tell you that you look like a?
Speaker 4:Vampire.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no oh, that's such a cool way to introduce your character. Like, what a really really funny sketch yeah, like it was. It's funny, it holds up, it holds up and she, her, her physical acting and comedic timing is brilliant. Yeah, and that can't be taught. That can't be taught. Oh, it's so good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's very good and I'll include a link to this. But Myla didn't make it back in time to film and the network was livid. They owned only a minority share of her character, but still 49 percent, so they couldn't simply recast her. So, selig j seligman, the station owner, I know, stop it, selig j seligman selig jace, I don't know how you say that.
Speaker 2:That's like john j johnman yeah, johnman, not johnson.
Speaker 3:john j john, I like that. That's like the name of. Like a men in black, you know what I mean. Like an alien, an alien pretending to be a human.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly that's what. That's what this network exec sounds like, and you know what Nothing has changed.
Speaker 3:Nothing has changed. So Selig J Seligman called and essentially demanded that she sign over more. They wanted the rights to her character and the rights to syndicate the show.
Speaker 2:In Myla's words, the man who owned the station called me on Tuesday morning. He was obnoxious and making unreasonable demands and tried to manipulate me into signing my life away for nothing. I told him he didn't know it, but there was a God and he's listening to you and watching you. And then I hung up. Then I learned that I offended one big ugly ego who was super powerful, and he decided to fix me.
Speaker 3:So Seligman put an end to the Vampyra show just a week after her appearance on the George Gogol show, which is Bastard move. Yeah, she was contractually not allowed to appear as Vampyra for six months, which was long enough for her hot iron to grow cold, and it was at this point that Myla broke down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's pretty devastating divorce.
Speaker 3:best friend stabs you in the back and then you have this little high of being on this show. It's a pretty big high actually yeah, yeah huge high yeah, and then you can't again.
Speaker 2:if you cannot capitalize on momentum, you're dead in the water in here, especially, like you know, nowadays we have social media and you can kind of do your own thing Right. You have a little bit more power with that and people. You're more reachable right With this. If you're off a show, if your platform is taken away from you, that's yeah, no one can see you.
Speaker 3:Oh, so myla broke down yes, after being let go from the station, myla's mother, sophie, was called upon to help. Myla was in terrible shape and had smashed all the mirrors in her apartment and cut off all her hair.
Speaker 2:Unsure what to do. She had a little bit of a mentee bee Yep A mentee bee, it's true.
Speaker 3:Unsure of what to do, sophie dumped water on her head to try to snap her out of it. I mean snap out of it. Yeah, just picturing Sharon Moonstruck and Sophie Niemi is played by none other than Cher. Uh, myla called Marlon Brando for help, but he was in a place where he was convinced that Albert Einstein was communicating with him from beyond the grave. So Milo didn't find him to be a reliable shoulder to cry on. He thought Einstein had said to him you young people, you must move quickly.
Speaker 2:Time is running out. Get out there and move. Change the world before it's too late.
Speaker 3:And I'm sure she was like hey, buddy, I'm the one going through the breakdown, Okay.
Speaker 3:Okay late and I'm sure she was like, hey, buddy, I'm the one going through the breakdown, okay, okay. Yeah, mila was still a frequenter of googies, but her trio had been reduced down to a duo just her and jack simmons. Jimmy had been hanging out with frank sinatra, judy garland and lauren bacall at the villa capri where he had once been undesirable riffraff. Now he was a star, but one night he did stop in and sweep Myla away on a motorcycle. They stole hot dogs, buns and marshmallows and roasted them on a hobo stove, which is wax cardboard, a flame and a can, while overlooking Hollywood. Myla brought up Hedda Hopper's article and Dean simply told her she's a harpy. Myla brought up Hedda Hopper's article and Dean simply told her she's a harpy.
Speaker 2:Myla, Don't believe everything you read. Gas lighting.
Speaker 3:Yep, he denied it. What a dick, mm-hmm. But he's like let me take you on this like secret date where no one will see us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the middle of the night, yep, using a hobo stove, yep.
Speaker 3:Yep, cheap date, cheap date. Both James Dean and Marlon Brando used to come to visit Myla by climbing through her unlocked window what the fuck? Just so they could get that iconic scream out of her. Oh, it's just you. Oh, it's just you, brando, it's just you, oh it's just you, brando, it's just you dean.
Speaker 2:You know how screaming relaxes me. This is like why did I just imagine clarissa explains it all, but except it's two a-list actors right climbing through her window?
Speaker 3:window. That makes it creepier, because then it's like a teenage girl. This is 30 something woman, but yeah, oh my oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:So um brando had started it and because he was jimmy's acting idol, he followed his example. Okay, jimmy came to visit one last time before his death, but myla wasn't there. She had a giant empty brass picture frame hanging on her wall and Jimmy had cut out an ear, both eyes and one nostril from one of the eight by 10 glossies of himself that he kept in his car, and he made a little collage of that, by the way, the eight by 10 glossies.
Speaker 2:that's his headshots. He basically had a bunch of printed out headshots of himself in his car.
Speaker 3:I guess so. Yeah, but he was like. I guess you're right. Yeah, I think he was like famous enough at this point, but it was kind of new, so like he probably just still have the headshots in his car.
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly same. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I used to keep a stack of headshots in my car for the longest time, before everything went fully digital. That's hilarious. So you just like made a collage of a bunch of his little parts little body parts and put it right before he died. That's kind of actually creepy.
Speaker 3:It is. He tacked them up with a piece of Mila's costume jewelry, a scabbard and dagger affixed with a chain. Art.
Speaker 2:Mm, hmm.
Speaker 3:He also focused her ceiling light to spotlight them. He also focused her ceiling light to spotlight them. It was strange and creepy, which was fitting for their friendship. So Myla decided to do something strange and creepy too. She used one of her old publicity postcards for Vampyra that pictured her lounging beside an open grave and wrote Wish you were here, Love Myla. Not knowing his new address, myla had the note delivered to Jimmy's new stomping grounds, the Villa Capri, so it was seen by much of the staff. So they weren't.
Speaker 2:If she didn't know where he lived, then they were not close.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I think he probably recently moved is what I would imagine because of the fame boost, and he also wasn't really close.
Speaker 2:He wasn't close with her at this time yeah, so still crawling through a goddamn window.
Speaker 3:I know, I know, um, so it was. But this like little postcard uh, was seen by much of the staff before it made its way to jimmy, if it ever made its way him. He had called Myla asking if she'd sent him a mean picture, and it was then that she found out it had been intercepted by the maitre d' of the Villa Capri. She told him it wasn't mean and that he'd have to see it for himself, but that was the last time they spoke. At 6 pm on September 30th 1955, the costume jewelry dagger came looseimmy's collage and swung like a pendulum from its chain, and right afterwards milo received the call that james dean had died. Milo was shattered by his death but felt too fragile to attend his funeral in indiana, but he was buried on october yeah, and you had to go to indiana, and we've talked about this.
Speaker 2:You know you go and you. My mental health is hanging by a threat and I need to go. You know where I need to go indiana.
Speaker 3:A funeral in indiana. Um so he was buried on october 8th 1955. It was the same day that myla was released from her kabc contract and retained her rights to the vampire character. Wow, so obviously that sours it, it's a big day it's a big day and then she would have been happy that day. But she can't be right. So sophie came to help her again as myla was moving directly from career grief into the grief of losing a close friend.
Speaker 3:She played the rosemary clooney song hey there repeatedly and began to feel that she could communicate with jimmy from beyond the grave oh no days after his death, she swore, the ear of the collage he'd left on the wall fluttered, with no breeze coming from the window to rustle it. So Myla asked the ear.
Speaker 2:What was Jimmy's favorite drumbeat? Was it too fast and one slow, or one slow and too fast?
Speaker 3:According to Myla, it wiggled two times slowly and then one more time. It wiggled two times slowly and then one more time, succumbing to her grief. Myla had taken to wearing all black along with a large crucifix, and she would recount stories of the wiggling ear like this to curious throngs at Googies. Some were intrigued enough to want to witness the ear for themselves, and Myla obliged. But while she convinced some that he was communicating via his own photographed ear, others mocked her for believing this, and it would be this story and the postcard she'd sent him before his death that would come back to haunt her. Oh no, but for now she was simply haunted by Hollywood and all of the memories of her dear friend that were contained within the smoggy city. So, as was her custom, she moved to New York for a fresh start, as we talked about last time she was back and forth, back and forth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now again. When Marlon Brando asked how she'd support herself, myla had said I suppose I could do television commercials, or maybe I'll be a blues singer. I can't sing worth a damn, but I sure as hell know how to be blue.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, with a heavy heart and career ambitions that were more half-baked than ever. Myla boarded a bus. Once again, she had just $210 to her name. What, mm-hmm? But she found herself a home in the third-story walk-up apartment of a 46th street brownstone. There was one practical angle to her new move she had befriended actor tony perkins, who would later become eternally famous for playing norman bates in psycho, and she felt that he'd be able to of course I know she befriended the, the guy that would be, I know, ohates, I know.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, it's truly like if you're creepy, you're Mila Nermy's friend, yeah, and she felt that he'd be able to help her with theater connections in the city now that he was once again performing on Broadway.
Speaker 2:Where are I? Don't see her making any female friends. Where are they?
Speaker 3:That's a really good point. That's a really good point.
Speaker 2:It's all these.
Speaker 3:Like in the beginning, there were there were like like last the last chapter, I feel like there were, but yeah, now it's all spooky men that the circus girl, the girl that she like went to the circus with, yeah moved it. Yeah, she had like some, like a, and the roommate where they were like starving themselves yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Was that more of a roommate, more of a friend or a roommate though?
Speaker 3:Sometimes you, I mean they moved to the city together, so I don't know if it all. It might have all been convenient.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, ok, so now she's friends with yeah, another actor.
Speaker 3:Another creepy actor, having once been told that her aura was lavender by a Hollywood street prophet named Peter the Hermit, that her aura was lavender by a Hollywood street prophet named. Peter the Hermit. It's in this book, it's all in this book. Oh my God, myla embraced this color as a hallmark of her next chapter and painted everything in the apartment, including the refrigerator and the stove, a serene shade of lavender. You know that's very.
Speaker 2:It's very calming.
Speaker 3:It's very calming.
Speaker 2:I'm about to paint my bathroom lavender.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's going to be lovely. What do you think?
Speaker 2:my aura is my color.
Speaker 3:Yellow.
Speaker 2:That's just because that's my favorite color, though.
Speaker 3:No, I think it's true.
Speaker 2:I think, you're sunshine oh, I think you're sunshine. Yours is green. Green is my favorite color, I know, but but it's also your aura, you know maybe that's why they're our favorites. Yeah, that might be it. That might be it.
Speaker 3:Yep, we know, we know you just always know your aura, so, but her time in this apartment would be anything but serene, oh, no, the lavender didn't work.
Speaker 2:It did not work.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry to say that Myla endured a terrifying break in by a young man named Ellis Barber. Knowing the crazed Vampyra fans that were out there, you'd think that Barber may have been one of them, but in actuality he had no idea who she was. He just had a history of burglarizing and attempted rape, and myla was his unfortunate victim. No, he had pushed his way into her the apartment when myla cracked the door open. Upon hearing his knock, she thought he was tony perkins. Barb had told Myla you won't live past morning While lying on top of her and holding a razor blade to her throat. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 3:It's like the nightmare we all have yes. And then, amazingly, he fell asleep that way.
Speaker 2:Do you think he was just so high on something and then I don't know, because he'd done this before, or like had he had been up for so long and was like in a manic sort of episode?
Speaker 3:obviously he's not an okay person. Something's wrong, I don't know, but like he'd done this kind of thing before he fell asleep on top of her.
Speaker 3:I know what the fuck Truly. So she wriggled out from beneath him and fled down the stairs. He came after her, attempting to choke her and ripping off her sweater, and in pulling away from him she tumbled down the stairs twice. She managed to run outside bruised and topless, screaming for the police, and once her attacker had been caught, myla learned from police that Ellis Barber was known to the police as the vamp, what I know. He ended up at Bellevue Hospital for mental evaluation after the attack, but that's all we really know about where he ended up. But the Ruthless Press was interested in Myla again, now that they could cover the scuffle between Vampyra and the Vamp.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God. No, I know.
Speaker 3:It's so tacky.
Speaker 2:That's so gross.
Speaker 3:Despite how traumatized she was, myla cooperated with the story and allowed the press to photograph her pointing to her bruises. They cared about selling a story and a catchy headline, but nobody seemed to care for Myla as a human being, and I do have a picture of that photograph in here. I hope she got paid for this. I don't think she did Look at.
Speaker 2:She's like kind of posing and pointing to her bruises look at, she's like kind of posing and pointing to her bruises. I do like that in one of her pointing she's pointing with her middle finger.
Speaker 3:Let me see. Oh my god, I did not catch that.
Speaker 2:You're right, she's pointing to one on her shoulder. Yeah, she's pointing to one on her shoulder and kind of looking glamorous about it, and then with her other hand she's pulling up the side of her dress and with her hand, but pointing with her middle finger- Maybe she was doing a little fuck you. Maybe she was. I mean, I feel like she. She was very purposeful.
Speaker 3:Yes, but I also wonder if this was a moment where it was like just that dark desperation. Yeah, I don't think she got paid to do this article. I bet she didn't. I don't know. I mean it might have been like oh, it's press, I don't know.
Speaker 2:You know me, I'm just so worried about women getting paid. I don't think she Girl.
Speaker 3:We're all worried about her getting paid because it didn't happen enough so she returned to hollywood, trusting that she could endure painful memories in exchange for the feeling of safety and being amongst friends. But immediately upon returning to the city, okay, so she's back to hollywood again.
Speaker 2:Yep, zip, zip. I mean I would. I would been out of that apartment so fast.
Speaker 3:Oh, for sure, of course I would no, of course no take me across the country.
Speaker 3:Yeah, get me away immediately. Upon returning to the city, a sleazy magazine called whisper issued a story that inflicted emotional bruises that were just as vicious as her physical ones. It was a five-page spread that was titled james dean's black madonna the most chilling, tragic love story in Hollywood. It asserted incorrectly that James and Myla had been lovers and that he dumped her when he'd become a star. Truthfully, he partially did dump her as a friend when he became a star, but that wasn't the story they were going with.
Speaker 2:Anyway, the article featured photos of Jimmy's cutout collage on Myla's wall and of the postcard she's sent to the villa capri.
Speaker 3:Uh, it's. How did they get a hold of it? I mean, I guess like a waiter or something gross, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then she showed the eared up people, that's right, yeah to do that.
Speaker 3:It said that myla was a witch and she'd cast a death spell upon james dean.
Speaker 2:What? Oh, just the history of people calling women witches and then burning them or their careers to the ground.
Speaker 3:Yeah and her careers already burned to the ground in a lot of ways, and then this is what happens. It's like the final nail in the coffin really yeah. And she began receiving death threats from James Dean's fans. And on top of all of these external stressors, she was flat broke. So she moved in with her mother, sophie, in a one-bedroom apartment.
Speaker 2:Dear God, I know it's dear, god, I know it's dear.
Speaker 3:A one bedroom apartment.
Speaker 2:Listen, I had to do that for four months.
Speaker 2:You did when, when you had your surgery, when, I had knee reconstruction my parents moved in with me for four months to take care of me, and I'm so grateful that I had someone to take. I needed that. But, my God, the three of us were sharing a one bedroom apartment I don't know if I've told this story already in this part and I was me, my mom, my dog and the machine the ice machine around my knee and the machine that would bend and straighten my leg for me six hours a day all shared the bed. My dad slept on the couch and I went a little crazy. I did go a little bit nuts.
Speaker 3:I remember this time that machine was huge.
Speaker 2:If you're interested, there is a picture of it and me on my. I documented my recovery pretty extensively so that I could look back and be able to see the progress, because I definitely didn't feel it a lot of the time. But there is a picture of me and I called it the torture machine but it was also torture Living with my parents in a one bedroom apartment. Yeah, when I tell you I am Vamp, am vampire and she is me yes, it's kindred, it's a connection it's a soul connection.
Speaker 3:It is sorry, I was just eating a bite of that delicious cinnamon roll. Um. So yes, luckily her mother was now sober. She doted on Myla, albeit resentfully. She tended to I mean, she tended to her cats, washed her clothing, did the dishes and made sure Myla remembered to bring a sweater with her when it was chilly.
Speaker 2:So she took care of her little depressed ass. Yeah she did. She was there for her when she needed her. She was, she was All right, mom, you find you get some points here. You got some points here.
Speaker 3:And she also gets some points for, like you know, uh, freaking out on um Orson Welles.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:That was, that was pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was pretty good, yeah, that was really good.
Speaker 3:And she often had to make excuses for her daughter when she double booked herself and was out on a date with one man while another one showed up at her door for the same purpose Me.
Speaker 2:If this isn't me, the amount of times I've double booked myself in so many different ways. Yep, because my ADHD ass didn't put shit in my iCal.
Speaker 3:I feel like you're good with your calendar. I'm getting better.
Speaker 2:Because of the amount of times I have double booked myself, Courtney, and been so embarrassed or accidentally unprofessional.
Speaker 3:Yeah, girl, I get it.
Speaker 2:Myla, I am you. Her mom made excuses for her. That is that. That is. That's a homie right there. That's more than a mom.
Speaker 3:That's a homie, it's true and so sophie had a thing or two to legitimately complain about, and she did complain, also my mother, she said, of her daughter.
Speaker 2:Myla keeps on godly hours. She hangs out with creeps. She doesn't help with the groceries. She spends all her money on taxis. Her behavior is shameful.
Speaker 3:Says the newly sober person. I feel like that's a newly sober attitude.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:God, you're such a your life's in the gutter, why can't you be like me and clean yourself up? Just when Myla had scraped the bottom of her barrel of funds, a job came along. That was the bottom of her career barrel. She had been offered a part in B-movie director Ed Wood's new picture, which at that point was titled Grave Robbers from Outer Space. I mean on brand. I mean on brand. On brand. On brand on brand on brand.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I wouldn't say no if I were the best thing about a B movie.
Speaker 3:I mean, you know me, I wouldn't say no, even if I wasn't yeah.
Speaker 2:Also, I mean, what is Grave robbers from? Oh, we're gonna.
Speaker 3:What is, what is okay, we're gonna talk about okay, um, they offered 200 in cash, or 2300 today for one day of work. That ain't bad, it's not bad, that ain't bad. And the film would feature her beloved Bella Lugosi.
Speaker 2:A chance to reunite with her bestie Bella, that's right.
Speaker 3:Because she was so broke, Mila was tempted, but because of Wood's schlocky reputation I used it again, she sure did. She sure did. She thought working with him might put the final nail in Vampyra's coffin. So she agreed to read the script, but held off on accepting. And just when it seemed that the well was truly dry, some promising opportunities arose like the walking dead that would keep Ed Wood in the wings for a little bit longer, and that is where we will pick up next time.
Speaker 2:Oh, my gosh girl. I hope this is, I hope this is just a slump girl. I'm rooting for you.
Speaker 3:I am rooting for you yep, well, I mean, she's also somebody who is, again only kind of famous, and now we know why, and you know well, there are, there are I mean back then too.
Speaker 2:There are. There are plenty of famous, famous people that I'm not familiar with, that's true their work. So very true, you know, so we don't know, so we don't know um I love her.
Speaker 3:I love her, I'm just eating her cinnamon roll just sorry guys move this microphone away from my mouth. Keep, keep going.
Speaker 2:I love her so much she's. I think she did the thing that a lot of young eager performers often do when you don't have, either if you have the wrong people quote unquote looking out for you if you, or you have no one looking out for you if you're non-union you don't have a union to protect you. And she just jumped at this opportunity and then kind of got locked into it and then, like all her eggs were in this basket.
Speaker 2:And then, as soon as she exercised any sort of anything with her career, any it got ripped out from under her by a stupid, stupid, stupid man, by Selig J Seligman, by John J Johnman, the bastard For real?
Speaker 3:No, it's, it's just, but we'll, we'll see. We'll see what uh, what comes to be of, uh, of Miss Myla Nurmi but I thought this was just gonna be a two part series.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited that there's a third part oh, there is a third part.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just her story. Give us a little hint it will it, will it, will it.
Speaker 2:Does it get better? I need some good news right now. I mean, it's a. Her story is so good. Can you give us a little?
Speaker 3:hint, will it, will it, will it, does it get better? I need some good news right now. I mean, it's a look. I think that, like we said, she's a counterculture queen and I think that, without giving away anything, what I admire about her is that I think that even in the lowest moments of her life, she always found her counterculture people, her counterculture tribe at all ages of her life. But I do, I feel like she, like, was artistic even in the lowest moments of her life. I think she had like that, like she, that instinct that we've seen from her the whole time.
Speaker 3:Like always wanting to make characters, even when she had, like a job selling magazines or whatever you know, it's like that never goes away with her, and that's what I really love about her.
Speaker 2:I love that I mean, when I'm in a lot of pain, I don't know what else to do with it except turn it into art. So god, I love her I love her.
Speaker 3:I love her too, she's, and I feel like, yeah, like it's one of those I I'm really I think we're doing a three-parter on her, because I think this woman's story needs to be told. I mean, I am using the glamour ghoul I've mentioned this in the last episode, but it's obviously still the source for this one. It's called glamour ghoul the passions and pain of the real vampyra, and it was written by her niece, but using a bunch of her own writings, because her niece had access to all of that stuff because at the time she was her only living relative. So I mean, I've I don't know how many people have read this book I don't think it's that many and I thought it was like just the most fascinating and incredible story, and so I'm really glad to be talking about it on here, because's kind of amazing, so you all should read this book, cause it's it's pretty great.
Speaker 3:It's a story that needs to be told. I mean, we're telling it, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for doing the Lord's work, Courtney.
Speaker 3:You're welcome. You're welcome For all you gobs out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, ghouls out there. I'm bringing you the story of mother.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2:Dead and Kind of Famous is written, researched and produced by Courtney Blomquist. It is co-hosted by Marissa Rivera. We tag team on socials. Jesse Russell and Courtney Blomquist do our editing.
Speaker 3:Until next time. You might not be famous, but you got a story to tell and you're not dead yet.
