Vana van Vama was born Mucha Laya, in the small town of Tapas, in the west of Argentina. While in her early teens, she was placed under the tenor, Roderiguez, an experience which she later described in her autobiography, “Virgin on the Rocks”, as ‘formative’. It was Roderiguez who memorably cast her as “The Angel” in Manzanotti’s controversial drama, “Leather Nuns”, despite no part having been written for her. It was a stunning theatrical entrée. Dressed only in waders and carrying a large wand, her role involved wandering aimlessly amongst the performers in a seemingly drug-induced torpor. “If ever a part was created for me, it was this,” she commented later, and she received much critical acclaim. The production was attended by, amongst others, the Danish film director, Arshöl, who made a point of visiting van Vama in her dressing room. (He wittily recounted his experience in the chapter entitled “Exhausted” of his book, “Salami Nights”). After playing the title role in Malinovsky’s Flesh and the lead in its sequel, Cleft, she left the stage forever, having been offered a lucrative Hollywood contract at Flux Pictures. She was never a success on celluloid and always claimed that no director understood her strong points well enough to convey them to expectant audiences (the director Dunmow Flitch was rumoured to have told her, “Impossible, darling. The censorship!”), but in truth, the Flux oeuvre was flaccid at the time and films like “Melons in a Basket,” “Romp on the Pampas” and the Western, “Big Guns” all conceived as vehicles for her talent, did little to enhance her status as one of the leading character actresses of the time. Multiple Oscar-winning writer Scott F Moribund described the process of writing for her as “impossible. She can’t remember more than four syllables at a time,” having met her on the set of his “Tender is the Spot”, though he married her some hours later. The marriage lasted the weekend. There were no children. She remained popular with audiences however, who appreciated her open attitude to life and her many lovers kept her in the public eye. Her romance with the controversial British director, Kev Lav, was short-lived like many of her relationships, although she was the inspiration behind his controversial prose work of the imagination, “The Peaks of van Vama” in which a mountaineering expedition, their bodies reduced in size after a nuclear accident, treks over her naked form at night. By this time however, Lav was on the dangerous edge of sanity, and indeed died soon after of hypothermia, having fallen from a cable car in the mountains clad only in lard, possibly while under the impression that he too, could mount an expedition on her body. “He was always promising me a stiff one after the show,” she commented, “ but somehow, we never got around to it.” In later life, she returned to the stage, starring in musicals such as “Big Bust Out”, and “Hot Sausage”, but her heart was in Hollywood and she returned to the west coast just in time to see the revival of her “Ovaries” in which she had a cameo role shortly after arriving at Flux. Her death in her peaceful villa in Gstaad was from overwork, after posing for several hours with a vacuum cleaner for the Italian magazine, Rumpi-Pumpi. Her agent, Max Effect, said, “The world saw a lot of Vana, and loved every inch of her.” She is survived by her two prized poodles and a lot of money.
Vana van Vama. Born Tapas, Argentina, 1955. Died Gstaad, Switzerland 2008. Married Scott F Moribund 1975. Divorced 1975. No children. Films: Leather Nuns (1973), Silk Nuns (1973) , Fetish Nuns on Heat (1974) , Ovaries (1974), Flesh (1974) – all directed by Malcolm Smutt). Tender is the Spot (1975), Romp on the Pampas (1976), Melons in a Basket (1976), More Melons (1977), Melons on My Mind (1977), Big Guns (1978) – all directed by Ron Arshöl. Her autobiography, Virgin on the Rocks, was published in 1981 by Pelvic Floor Press.
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