The idea for the Vampira character was born in 1953, when [Maila] Nurmi attended choreographer Lester Horton's annual Bal Caribe Masquerade in a costume inspired by as-yet-unnamed Morticia Addams 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., who wanted to hire her to host horror films on the Los Angeles television station KABC-TV, ... 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.[20][21] ...
The Vampira Show premiered ... May 1, 1954. ... 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 then introduced (and mocked) 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.
In one publicity stunt, she ran as a candidate for Night Mayor of Hollywood with a platform of "dead issues". In another, 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 BΓ©la Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr.[23] That week, Life magazine ran an article on her, including a photo spread of her show-opening entrance and scream.
When her KABC series was cancelled in 1955,[21] Nurmi retained rights to the Vampira character and took the show to a competing Los Angeles television station, KHJ-TV. ...
Examination of Nurmi's diaries in 2014 by filmmaker and journalist R. H. Greene verified longtime rumors that in 1956 she was the model for Maleficent, the evil witch in the Disney conception of the classic fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty." A Disney archivist subsequently confirmed these findings. ...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.
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 eventually left the project over creative differences. ... Unable to continue using the name Vampira, the show was abruptly renamed Elvira's Movie Macabre with [Cassandra] Peterson playing the titular host.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maila_Nurmi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vampira_Show
https://youtu.be/TJp7fr1EUJ8?t=72
There's also an interesting anecdote where James Dean met up with her because he "had studied The Golden Bough and the Marquis de Sade, and ... was interested in finding out if this girl was obsessed by a satanic force" and was kinda disappointed to find out that she wasn't. (apparently they were still friends, tho...)