Check out these frames from Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962) with Peter Sellers as hip TV playwright, "Clare Quilty," and Marianne Stone as his companion, "Vivian Darkbloom" (the name is an anagram of Lolita's author, Vladimir Nabokov). Ms. Darkbloom's look seems directly inspired by the look of Maila Nurmi as Vampira.
I have no proof that Kubrick knew or admired Vampira. He might simply have been trying to characterize Lolita's Vivian Darkbloom as a "Beat chick." Even so, the Beat chick look can be traced directly to Maila Nurmi and her Vampira creation. Maila was the archetypal Beat chick, hanging out at Googie's coffeeshop in the early '50s with such other non-conforming proto-Beats as Marlon Brando, Anthony Perkins, and James Dean. She even appeared as a Beat poetess in The Beat Generation (Producer: Albert Zugsmith; Director: Charles F. Haas) released in 1959 -two years after Audrey Hepburn adopted a Beat chick look in Stanley Donen's Funny Face, and one year after Kim Novak played a Greenwich Village Beat (actually a witch!) in Richard Quine's criminally underrated Bell, Book and Candle.
Maila says Vampira's look was based in part on Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard and partly on "the Addams woman," the macabre creation of New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams, nameless for years, who would ultimately be christened "Morticia" when she made her TV debut in 1964's The Addams Family.
I have no proof that Kubrick knew or admired Vampira. He might simply have been trying to characterize Lolita's Vivian Darkbloom as a "Beat chick." Even so, the Beat chick look can be traced directly to Maila Nurmi and her Vampira creation. Maila was the archetypal Beat chick, hanging out at Googie's coffeeshop in the early '50s with such other non-conforming proto-Beats as Marlon Brando, Anthony Perkins, and James Dean. She even appeared as a Beat poetess in The Beat Generation (Producer: Albert Zugsmith; Director: Charles F. Haas) released in 1959 -two years after Audrey Hepburn adopted a Beat chick look in Stanley Donen's Funny Face, and one year after Kim Novak played a Greenwich Village Beat (actually a witch!) in Richard Quine's criminally underrated Bell, Book and Candle.
Maila says Vampira's look was based in part on Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard and partly on "the Addams woman," the macabre creation of New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams, nameless for years, who would ultimately be christened "Morticia" when she made her TV debut in 1964's The Addams Family.ADDENDUM 6/7: I just learned by way of GreenCine Daily and Jason Kottke that Kubrick named his daughter Vivian!
3 comments:
I've never viewed "Lolita."
I must because "2000 Spun - A Spaced Odd Icy" and "A Cork Werk Sponge" both were quite crappy (as entertainment), to moi.....IMHO of course.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Now, if ya wants to see a real iconoclasitc filk, check this YouTube doc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7iQRFP_e90
Thanks for this post, you've rekindled my long unacted on intention of getting a Vampira tattoo... but where? Where?
An even closer "Beat chick" influence on Kubrick may have been his high school sweetheart and first wife, Toba Metz, who worked with him on Fear and Desire. In photos taken on the set she has the same dark hair with straight bangs and pale complexion as Vivian Darkbloom.
Post a Comment