A new biography of Maila Nurmi, who gained fame as Vampira in the mid 1950s, claims the TV horror hostess had a child with Orson Welles and put the boy up for adoption during the early 1940s.

A DNA check and Ancestry.com confirmed that retired attorney David Putter of Montpelier, Vermont, is Nurmi’s biological son.

“My partner here is always accusing me a blood-sucking lawyer now. She didn’t use to use that term, now she does,” Putter, 76, joked in an interview withWCAX-TV, CBS-3, in South Burlington, Vermont.

However, there has been no DNA test to determine if he is related to Welles — and the claim might best be taken with a grain of salt.

The relationship between Nurmi and Welles is detailed by Nurmi’s niece, Sandra Niemi, in her new biography,Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi.  According to the book, Welles and Nurmi reportedly met at the venerable Hollywood restaurant Musso and Frank Grill.

Putter was born in March 1944 during the time Welles was married to Rita Hayworth. (Welles and Hayworth had a daughter, Rebecca, in December 1944.)

However, Nurmi revealed in aninterview weeks before her death in January 2008 how she met Welles in a New York casting office while he was separated from Hayworth. Welles was living in New York in the spring and summer months of 1946 when he was stagingAround the Worldon Broadway. Nurmi said she and Welles dated for several months before he reunited with Hayworth to filmThe Lady from Shanghai in October 1946.

Nurmi made it clear to the interviewer she did not get involved with married men, but Welles and Hayworth were separated at the time.

She said she and Welles briefly resumed their relationship in San Francisco after the filming ofThe Lady from Shanghai  and his attempted reconciliation with Hayworth had failed.

According toGlamour Ghoul, the goth TV star’s mother, Sophie Nurmi, met Welles many years later when she was a maid at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. She told him about his son who had been put for adoption and he reportedly gave her $200 to go away.

In addition to hosting 50 episodes ofThe Vampira Show, Nurmi appeared in the films Plan 9 from Outer Space,The Beat Generation and Sex Kittens Go to College.

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