Dean Riesner (November 3, 1918, New York – August 18, 2002, Encino, California) was a prolific American film and television writer.

Riesner's father was a silent film director, and Dean began acting in films at the age of five. His career at this young age ended because his mother wanted her son to have a real childhood. As an adult, his first job in films was as a co-author for the 1939 Ronald Reagan movie Code of the Secret Service.

Reisner won an Oscar for directing Bill and Coo (1948), a feature film with a cast of real birds, costumed as humans, acting on the world's smallest film set.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Riesner worked primarily in television, including writing for Rawhide and the "Tourist Attraction" episode of The Outer Limits, although he occasionally contributed to feature films like The Helen Morgan Story. In 1968 he landed a job working on the Clint Eastwood action film Coogan's Bluff, and this in turn would lead to him writing several other Eastwood features throughout the 1970s. Riesner helped pen the screenplays for two Eastwood films in 1971, Play Misty for Me and the original Dirty Harry. In 1973 he provided an uncredited rewrite for High Plains Drifter, and in 1976 he was one of the writers to draft The Enforcer, the third Dirty Harry thriller. That same year he provided the teleplay for NBC's highly rated miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, starring Nick Nolte. In 1979 he wrote an early draft screenplay for The Godfather Part III, but his script was discarded when Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo finally agreed to collaborate on a third entry in the series.

Riesner continued to write into the 1980s, though most of his work from that period went uncredited. Those films include Das Boot, The Sting II, and Starman.

Riesner died in 2002 of natural causes. He had been married to actress Maila Nurmi, better known as the horror hostess Vampira.

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Elizabeth Walters tells the story of Bill and Coo

External links

Category:1918 births Category:2002 deaths Category:American screenwriters Category:American television writers

Name	Maila Nurmi
Caption	Nurmi in Plan 9 from Outer Space
Birthname	Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi
Birth date	December 11, 1922
Birth place	Petsamo, Finland (now Pechenga, Russia)
Death date	January 10, 2008
Death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Othername	Maila Syrjaniemi NurmiVampira
Occupation	Actress
Spouse	Dean Riesner (1949 - 2002)Fabrizio Mioni (1961 – 19??)}}

Maila Nurmi (December 11, 1922 – January 10, 2008) was a Finnish-American actress who created the campy 1950s character Vampira. She portrayed Vampira as TV's first horror host and in the Ed Wood cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Early life

Born as Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi, she claimed to be the niece of the Finnish athlete Paavo Nurmi, who began setting long-distance running world records in 1921, the year before her birth. She moved to the United States with her family when she was two years old and grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio, home to the largest Finnish-American community in the state. She and her family lived in Ashtabula until 1939, when they moved to Oregon.

She graduated high school in Astoria, Oregon, before arriving in Los Angeles. She modeled for Alberto Vargas, Bernard of Hollywood and Man Ray, gaining a foothold in the film industry with an uncredited role in Victor Saville's 1947 film, If Winter Comes.

She reportedly was fired by Mae West from the cast of West's Broadway play Catherine Was Great in 1944 because West feared that she was being upstaged. On Broadway, she gained much attention after appearing in the horror-themed midnight show Spook Scandals, in which she screamed, fainted, lay in a coffin and seductively lurked about a mock cemetery. She also worked as a showgirl for the Earl Carroll Theatre and as a high-kicking chorus line dancer at the Florentine Gardens along with famous stripper Lili St. Cyr. In the 1950s she supported herself mainly by posing for pin-up photos in men's magazines such as Famous Models, Gala and Glamorous Models. Before landing her role as 'Vampira', she was working as a hat-check girl in a cloakroom on Hollywood's Sunset Strip.

Origin of Vampira

The idea for the Vampira character was born in 1953 when Nurmi attended choreographer Lester Horton's annual Bal Caribe Masquerade in a costume inspired by a character in The New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams. Her appearance with pale white skin and tight black dress caught the attention of television producer Hunt Stromberg, Jr. (1923–86), who wanted to hire her to host horror movies on the Los Angeles television station KABC-TV, but Stromberg had no idea how to contact her. He finally got her phone number from Rudi Gernreich, later famed as the designer of the topless swimsuit. The name Vampira was the invention of Nurmi's husband, Dean Riesner. Nurmi's characterization was influenced by the Dragon Lady from the comic strip Terry and the Pirates and the evil queen from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

On April 30, 1954, KABC-TV aired a preview, Dig Me Later, Vampira, at 11:00 p.m. The Vampira Show premiered on the following night, May 1, 1954. For the first four weeks, the show aired at midnight, moving to 11:00 p.m. on May 29. Ten months later, the series aired at 10:30 p.m., beginning March 5, 1955. Each show opened with Vampira gliding down a dark corridor flooded with dry-ice fog. At the end of her trance-like walk, the camera zoomed in on her face as she let out a piercing scream. She would then introduce (and mock) that evening's film while reclining barefoot on a skull-encrusted Victorian couch. Her horror-related comedy antics included ghoulish puns such as encouraging viewers to write for epitaphs instead of autographs and talking to her pet spider Rollo. She also ran as a candidate for Night Mayor of Hollywood with a platform of "dead issues". In another publicity stunt, KABC had her cruise around Hollywood in the back of a chauffeur-driven 1932 Packard touring car with the top down, where she sat, as Vampira, holding a black parasol. The show was an immediate hit, and in June 1954 she appeared as Vampira in a horror-themed comedy skit on The Red Skelton Show along with Bela Lugosi, Peter Lorre, and Lon Chaney Jr.. That same week Life magazine ran an article on her, including a photo-spread of her show-opening entrance and scream (June 14, 1954, pp. 107, 108, 110).

When the series was cancelled in 1955, she retained rights to the character of Vampira and took the show to a competing Los Angeles television station, KHJ-TV. Several episode scripts and a single promotional kinescope of Nurmi re-creating some of her macabre comedy segments are held by private collectors. Several clips from the rare kinescope are included in the documentaries American Scary and Vampira: The Movie.

In 2007, the kinescope film of Nurmi in character was restored by Rerunmedia, whose restorations include The Ed Sullivan Show and Dark Shadows. The restoration utilized the groundbreaking LiveFeed Video Imaging process developed exclusively for the restoration of kinescopes. The restoration was funded by The Clint Hickman Collection and Coffin Case.

A reconstructed episode of The Vampira Show was released on DVD by the Vampira's Attic web site in October 2007. The release imitated a complete episode by using existing footage of the show combined with vintage commercials believed to have been directed by Ed Wood and the full-length 1932 feature film The Thirteenth Guest.

Nurmi made television history as the first horror movie hostess. In 1957, Screen Gems released a syndicated package of 52 horror movies, mostly from Universal Pictures, under the program title Shock Theater. Independent stations in major cities all over the U.S. began showing these films, adding their own ghoulish host or hostess (including Vampira II and other lookalikes) to attract more viewers.

Nominated for an Emmy Award as 'Most Outstanding Female Personality' in 1954, she returned to films with Too Much, Too Soon, followed by The Big Operator and The Beat Generation. Her most notable film appearance was in Ed Wood's camp classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space, as a Vampira-like zombie (filmed in 1956, but released in 1959). In 1960 she appeared in I Passed for White and Sex Kittens Go to College, followed by 1962's The Magic Sword. The classic clip from Plan 9 from Outer Space featuring Vampira walking out of the woods with her hands pointing straight out, was used to start the original opening sequence of WPIX Channel 11 New York's Chiller Theatre in the 1960s.

Personal life

In the early 1950s, Nurmi was close friends with James Dean, and they spent time together at Googie's coffee shop on the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. She explained their friendship by saying, "We have the same neuroses." Dean allegedly repudiated their friendship toward the end of his brief life. As Hedda Hopper related in a 1962 memoir that included a chapter on Dean: "We discussed the thin-cheeked actress who calls herself Vampira on television (and cashed in, after Jimmy died, on the publicity she got from knowing him and claimed she could talk to him 'through the veil'). He said: 'I had studied The Golden Bough and the Marquis de Sade, and I was interested in finding out if this girl was obsessed by a satanic force. She knew absolutely nothing. I found her void of any true interest except her Vampira make-up. She has no absolute.'"

The 2010 NPR radio documentary Vampira and Me by author/director R. H. Greene took issue with Hopper's depiction of the Nurmi/Dean relationship, pointing to an extant photo of Dean and Vampira sidekick Jack Simmons in full Boris Karloff Frankenstein make-up as evidence of Nurmi and Dean's friendship. The documentary also described a production memo in the Warner Bros. archive citing a set visit from "Vampira" while Dean was making Rebel Without a Cause. The Warner Bros. memo was first mentioned in the 2006 book Live Fast, Die Young: The Making of Rebel Without a Cause by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel, who were given access to the Rebel production files. An interview Frascella and Weisel conducted with actress Shelley Winters also uncovered an instance where Dean interrupted an argument with director Nicholas Ray and Winters so he could watch The Vampira Show on TV.

In Vampira and Me, Nurmi can be heard telling Greene that Dean once appeared in a live bit on The Vampira Show in which Vampira, dressed as a librarian, rapped his knuckles with a ruler because "he was a very naughty boy."

On June 20, 1955, Nurmi was the target of an attempted murder when a man forced his way into her apartment and proceeded to terrorize her for close to four hours. Nurmi eventually escaped and managed to call the police, with assistance from a local shop owner.

Marriages

She married her first husband, Dean Riesner, in 1949, a former child actor in silent films and later the screenwriter of Dirty Harry, Charley Varrick, Play Misty for Me and numerous other movies and TV episodes. She married actor Fabrizio Mioni on June 20, 1961 in Orange County, California. She had no children.

Later life

By 1962, Nurmi was making a living installing linoleum flooring. "And if things are slow in linoleum, I can also do carpentry, make drapes or refinish furniture", she told the Los Angeles Times.

In the early 1960s, Nurmi opened Vampira's Attic, an antiques boutique on Melrose Avenue. She also sold handmade jewelry and clothing. She made items for several celebrities, including Grace Slick of the music group Jefferson Airplane and the Zappa family.

In 1981, Nurmi was asked by KHJ-TV to revive her Vampira character for television. She worked closely with the producers of the new show and was to get an executive producer credit, but Nurmi eventually left the project over creative differences. According to Nurmi this was because the station cast comedic actress Cassandra Peterson in the part without consulting her. "They eventually called me in to sign a contract and she was there", Nurmi told Bizarre magazine in 2005. "They had hired her without asking me."

Unable to continue using the name Vampira, the show was abruptly renamed Elvira's Movie Macabre with Peterson playing the titular host. Nurmi soon filed a lawsuit against Peterson. The court eventually ruled in favor of Peterson, holding that "likeness' means actual representation of another person's appearance, and not simply close resemblance." Peterson claimed that Elvira was nothing like Vampira aside from the basic design of the black dress and black hair; Nurmi claimed that the entire Elvira persona, which included comedic dialogue and intentionally bad graveyard puns, infringed on her creation's "distinctive dark dress, horror movie props, and...special personality." Nurmi herself claimed that Vampira's image was in part based on the Charles Addams The New Yorker cartoon character Morticia Addams, though she told Boxoffice magazine in 1994 that she had intentionally deviated from Addams' mute and flat-chested creation, making her own TV character "campier and sexier" to avoid plagiarizing Addams' idea.

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

In 2001, Nurmi opened her official website, and began selling autographed memorabilia and original pieces of art on eBay. Until her death, Nurmi lived in a small North Hollywood apartment.

Unlike Elvira, Nurmi authorized very few merchandising contracts for her Vampira character, though the name and likeness have been used unofficially by various companies since the 1950s. In 1994, Nurmi authorized a Vampira model kit for Artomic Creations, and a pre-painted figurine from Bowen Designs in 2001, both sculpted by Thomas Kuntz. In 2004, she authorized merchandising of the Vampira character by Coffin Case.

Death

On January 10, 2008, Nurmi died of natural causes at her home in Hollywood, aged 85. She was buried in the Griffith Lawn section of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Films and documentaries

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), Ed Wood's infamous film. A DVD release in 2000 from Image Entertainment contains a bonus two-hour documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion with extensive interviews with Nurmi and other cast members. Another DVD containing both a colorized version and a digitally restored black and white print was released by Legend Films in 2006.

Ed Wood (1994), Tim Burton's bio-pic features actress-model Lisa Marie as Maila Nurmi. The film recreates parts of The Vampira Show.

About Death, Sex and Taxes (1995), a Finnish documentary about Nurmi by Mika J. Ripatti.

The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood Jr. This 1995 Brett Thompson documentary about the life and films of Ed Wood also includes a recreation of The Vampira Show.

I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1998) features Nurmi's last dramatic film role.

Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies (2001), Ray Greene's documentary about the American exploitation and sexploitation films of the 1950s and 1960s features Nurmi alongside cult filmmakers Roger Corman, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman, and others.

Vampira: The Movie (2004), Kevin Sean Michael's documenary about Nurmi, which won the 2007 Rondo Award for Best Independent Feature.

American Scary (2006) a documentary about local late-night horror movie hosts includes an interview with Nurmi.

Vampira: The Movie (2006) Maila Nurmi stars in this labor-of-love documentary about her career as horror host, directed by Kevin Sean Michaels. Alpha Video released it in 2007.

(2009), TV documentary on scream queens and other women in the horror industry.

Vampira and Me (2010), radio documentary/podcast about Nurmi by her friend R. H. Greene. First broadcast by KPCC 89.3 FM, a Southern California NPR affiliate. In addition to previously unheard interview clips with Nurmi about her life and career, interviews with friends from Nurmi's declining years are also included. The program is available as a free download through the KPCC website.

Awards

Being the originator of the Television Horror Host sub-genre of movie shows, Maila Nurmi and The Vampira Show received a special citation at a ceremony on the event of the 50th Anniversary of the television Emmy Awards. Escorting her to this ceremony was long time friend Sid Terror.

Nurmi was inducted into "The Horror Drunx" Hall Of Fame as Horror royalty in 2007.

Nurmi was inducted posthumously into the Monster Kid Hall of Fame at the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards. Vampira: The Movie won a Rondo for Best Independent Production as a tribute to Nurmi.

In popular culture

In 1958, singer Bobby Bare recorded a song about Nurmi's character titled "Vampira."

London Punk pioneers The Damned paid homage to Vampira with the track "Plan 9 Channel 7" on their 1979 album Machine Gun Etiquette. A video of this song was made by The Damned's record label, which featured Damned singer David Vanian's then wife Lori as Vampira.

The New Jersey horror-punk group The Misfits also recorded an original song named after and based on Nurmi's character. Versions of the song date to 1979, but it was not released until 1982 on their first full-length LP Walk Among Us.

The Devin Townsend Band had two songs, "Vampolka" and "Vampira", on the album Synchestra. "Vampira", the first single from the album, was made into a music video.

The Greg Kihn novel Horror Show has a character called Devilla, based on Vampira.

In 2004 The Moon-Rays band out of Chicago recorded "Blues For Vampira" that was featured in the Horror Host Documentary American Scary during the Maila Nurmi segment.

References

Bibliography

Keesey, Pam (1997) Vamps: An Illustrated History of the Femme Fatale. San Francisco, Cleis Press. ISBN 1573440264.

External links

Vampira's Attic

Vampira and Me mp3 of 50 minute Vampira radio documentary]

Vampira: The Movie Official Website of Documentary

BOXOFFICE Magazine interview

Vampira: Inducted into The Horror Drunx Hall Of Fame as Horror Royalty -

Vampira Show filmography

Category:American film actors Category:American television personalities Category:Burials at Hollywood Forever Cemetery Category:Finnish immigrants to the United States Category:American people of Finnish descent Category:Horror hosts Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People from Astoria, Oregon Category:People from Ashtabula, Ohio Category:1922 births Category:2008 deaths

Name	Keith Coogan
Caption	Keith Coogan with Katie Barberi, in 1989
Birth name	Keith Eric Mitchell
Birth date	January 13, 1970
Birth place	Palm Springs, California, U.S.
Other names	Keith Mitchell
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1976–present
Awards

Keith Coogan (born January 13, 1970) is an American actor. He is a grandson of actor Jackie Coogan.

Biography

Coogan was born Keith Eric Mitchell but appeared on TV as early as two years old. As a child, he appeared on episodes of The Waltons, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Laverne and Shirley, Mork & Mindy, Eight is Enough, Knight Rider, Growing Pains, Silver Spoons, Fame, and CHiPs. He voiced a young fox named "Tod" in the Disney animated movie The Fox and the Hound.

He has also starred in films such as Adventures in Babysitting, Cousins, Hiding Out, Cheetah, Toy Soldiers, Book of Love, and Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, as well as straight-to-video releases such as Python, Soulkeeper and Downhill Willie. He guest-starred on Joan of Arcadia and Married to the Kellys.

His theater credits include John Olive's The Voice of the Prairie, James McClure's Pvt. Wars, and an unfinished Louisville work by Marsha Norman, The Holdup. All were performed at Timothy and Buck Busfield's "B" St. Theater in Sacramento, California, during the 1992 and '93 seasons.

In 2008, he worked in Dallas, TX, on a short film, The Keith Coogan Experience. On January 1, 2010, Coogan started the "Monologue a Day Project", where he learns a monologue or other short piece every day, "as inspired by Julie & Julia", and posts the resulting video performance on blogspot.com.

Selected Filmography

''Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

Hiding Out (1987)

Cousins (1989)

Under the Boardwalk (1989)

Book of Love (1990)

Toy Soldiers (1991)

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (1991)

References

External links

Monologue a Day Project at blogspot.com

Category:1970 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from California Category:American child actors Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:People from Palm Springs, California