For more than 90 years, the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz has been home to all manner of esoteric exploration. Their enormous research library was started by founder Manly P. Hall and is still available to researchers. Their calendar is filled with an outrageous variety of classes, lectures, performances and on Saturday night they are presenting An Evening Celebrating Vampira with comedian Dana Gould.
The evening includes rare videos of Maila Nurmi, who created the horror host character in the 1950s, a display of props and artifacts, a lookalike contest and memories from Gould, a friend four decades her junior. “It’s an hour of funny weird stories about a strange friendship,” Gould tells Los Angeles, “She was very much a beatnik. No makeup, capri pants, ballet shoes without socks, hanging out at Googies with James Dean and Jack Simmons. She was in the movie The Beat Generation. That was Maila in real life.”
The Emmy Award-winning writer, producer and actor (The Simpsons, Stan Against Evil) is not only an expert in all things comedy, but a lifelong fan of horror, sci-fi and monster movies. Back in the 1990s, he was shopping at Hollywood Book and Poster when he mentioned a TV project he was working on to the clerk. He was a big fan of Ed Wood’s 1959 classic Plan 9 From Outer Space and wanted to contact Nurmi, who created the character Vampira and had a part in the film.
“Carol Hernandez, whose husband Gilbert writes (comic) Love and Rockets, worked at the store and told her I was doing a special for the Sci-Fi Channel called The Big Scary Movie Show about horror movies and hosts,” Gould says. “It was my attempt to become a horror movie host, which I’m still trying to make happen.”
Gould wanted to include Vampira, L.A.’s first monster movie host, who created The Vampira Show for KABC in 1954. “She was the first person I wanted to interview,” Gould says. “This was before cell phones, and she did not have a landline. We were pen pals for 4 or 5 years.”
Gradually, after exchanging letters through the shop, Nurmi and Gould became cross-generational friends sharing a love for the quirkier corners of the culture. “I just tend to like things that have a little bit of dust on them. I would much rather watch Robot Monster than Avengers: Endgame, or something with no scratches or imperfections or humanity.”
Gould bought Nurmi a phone, helped with groceries and set her up in a new apartment when she lost hers. He eventually procured a final resting place for her at Hollywood Forever Cemetery when she died at age 85 in 2008. “She did not think she was ever going to die so she never had any plans in place,” Gould says. “When I went looking for her plot, I found one near Darren McGavin who played Kolchak: The Night Stalker. I thought wouldn’t it be funny if he was chasing a vampire through eternity. I placed Maila right next to him just for giggles. The funeral story occupies a lot of the show, and you have to see it but it involves me giving the Church of Satan a stern talking to.”
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