TV horror host: Ottola Nesmith

This photo of Ottola Nesmith being creepy appears in the May 26, 1958, issue of Life magazine, which features on its cover the attack on Vice President Richard Nixon's limousine in Caracas, Venezuela, on May 13, 1958. ("Week of World Tumult," states one of the headlines.)

Nesmith was featured as part of a Life photo essay on television's "Night Harbingers of Horror" — "The horror movie, now a staple of local late-night television shows, has spawned a new breed of announcers who take farfetched ways of introducing their spooky fare. ... These macabre masters of ceremonies try to get the viewers teetering on the edge of terror before The Frozen Ghost or Calling Dr. Death from a 52-film series called Shock."

Nesmith was the only woman horror host featured in the photo essay¹, which also included KRON's John Barclay (whom I believe was actually second fiddle to Russ Coglin on Nightmare Theater), KTNT's Warren Reed, WCAU's John Zacherle, and KFJZ's Bill "Gorgon" Camfield.

The caption for Nesmith under "A Little Old Lady Ghoul" states: "One of the few lady ghouls on TV is Ottola Nesmith of KTLA in Hollywood. She plays the role of a little old demented lady who sits in front of Victrola in rooming house, has weird visions. On show, directed by her son, she fancies herself the young beauty who gets abused in the horror films her program shows."

Nesmith appeared in more than 100 films, typically in smaller and uncredited roles. Some of her most notable films were The Wolf Man (1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942), Sunset Boulevard (1950) and the Val Lewton films The Leopard Man and The Seventh Victim.

If I may recommend a great book, film historian Gregory William Mank's The Very Witching Time of Night (2014) features a chapter on a pair of Shock! horror hosts, one of whom is Nesmith.² It's filled with wonderful details about her short time at KTLA and why her act as the "Lady Ghoul" got her sued by Frankenstein star Mae Clarke. It's quite the story.

Related posts

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• Late nights and weekend afternoons of horror in the 1970s
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Footnotes

1. The very first TV horror was a woman: Maila Nurmi, aka Vampira, hosted The Vampira Show in 1954 and 1955 on KABC in Los Angeles. But her show was off the air by the time of this Life photo essay. The 2021 book Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi, by Sandra Niemi, documents Nurmi's life.

2. Naturally, Mank is from Delta, Pennsylvania. Because everything revolves around York County, as we've long said.