I was once married to a Lisa Marie, but it wasn’t this one. Nor was this one the daughter of Elvis Presley. What she was was incredibly late. In fact, she ended up showing up so late (arriving around 2pm) to the Hollywood Show on April 2, 2011, that she was the last celebrity I met that day. But regardless of being late, there was no way that I was going to skip meeting the attractive and expressionlessly charming Lisa Marie, who had made a career out of starring in Tim Burton’s strangely odd films.
Her first and most famous work with Mr. Burton was in Ed Wood, in which she portrayed real-life Woodsian actress Vampira. She would go on to work with Burton again in Sleepy Hollow, Mars Attacks!, and Planet of the Apes. Her most recent work is in Rob Zombie’s film Silent Night, Deadly Night – to be released later this year.
Naturally I went with the Vampira/Ed Wood connection and chose the color shot to have her sign – despite the film actually being in black and white. I didn’t have much problem shelling out the 30$ for the autograph and photo op combo, even though she got off easy by not being required to add her third name “Smith” to the photo.
As a postscript to this posting, I’m also displaying my autographed photo of the real Vampira, whose real name was Maila Nurmi. She had starred in Ed Wood’s classic horrible film Plan 9 from Outer Space. Bob had obtained this signed photo for me at one of the Hollywood Shows of the early 2000’s. Sadly, I never got to meet her and she passed away in 2008 at age 85.
Celebrities of the Spring 2011 Hollywood Show will conclude in the next posting…
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