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Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American film
actor, remembered for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of
distinctive horror films. His tall 6' 4" (1.93 m) stature and polished, urbane
manner made him something of an American counterpart to the older Boris
Karloff.
 Early life
and career
Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Vincent Leonard Price and Marguerite
Willcox. His father was president of the National Candy Company. His grandfather,
Vincent Clarence Price invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder", the first cream of
tartar baking powder, and secured the family's fortune. Vincent Jr. attended St.
Louis Country Day School. He was further educated at Yale in art history and fine
art. He was a member of Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity and the Courtauld Institute,
London. He became interested in theater in the 1930s, appearing professionally on
stage from 1935.
He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself as a
competent actor, notably in Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto
Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith, Jr. in the movie Brigham Young (1940), as
well as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944). During the 1940s,
he appeared in a wide variety of films from straight-forward drama to comedy to
horror (he provided the voice of The Invisible Man at the end of Abbott and
Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948).
In 1946 he reunited with Gene Tierney in two notable films Dragonwyck and Leave Her
to Heaven. There were also many villainous roles in slick film noir thrillers like
The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues Regiment (1948) and The Bribe (1949)
with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner and Charles Laughton. He was also active in radio,
portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar, aka. The Saint, in
a series that ran from 1947 to 1951.
In the 1950s, he moved into horror films, with a role in House of Wax (1953), the
first 3-D film to land in the year's top ten at the North American box office, and
then the monster movie The Fly (1958).
Price also starred in the original House on Haunted Hill (1959) as the eccentric
millionaire Fredrick Loren. (Geoffrey Rush, playing the same character in the 1999
remake, was not only made to resemble Price, but was also renamed Steven
Price.)
1960s
In the 1960s, Price had a number of low-budget successes with Roger Corman and
American International Pictures (AIP) including the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations
House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The
Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1965).
These were followed by numerous other roles throughout the 1960s in which he played
characters in horror films who were often closely modeled on the Corman Poe films.
In 1968 he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day
opposite Patricia Routledge, displaying an adequate if untrained singing voice.
He often spoke of his pleasure at playing "Egghead" on the Batman television
series. Another of his co-stars, Yvonne Craig (Batgirl), often said Price was her
favorite co-star.
In an often-repeated anecdote from the set of Batman, Price, after a take was
printed, started throwing eggs at series stars Adam West and Burt Ward, and when
asked to stop replied, "With a full artillery? Not a chance!", causing an eggfight
to erupt on the soundstage. This incident is reenacted in the behind-the-scenes
telefilm Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt.
It was also in the 60's that he began his role as a guest on the game show The
Hollywood Squares, even becoming a semi-regular in the 70's, including being one of
the guest panelists on the finale in 1980. He was known for usually making fun of
Rose Marie's age, and using his famous voice to answer maliciously to
questions.
Later
career
Price accepted a cameo part in the children's television program The Hilarious
House of Frightenstein (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario Canada, on the local television
station CHCH. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the
show was to recite poems about the show's various characters, sometimes wearing a
cloak or other costumes.
He has also appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Theatre of Blood
(1973), in which he created a series of campy, tongue-in-cheek villains. Price also
recorded dramatic readings of Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected
together with readings by Basil Rathbone.
He greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a
slump, and increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton
Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture. Price's voiceover is heard on Alice
Cooper's first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare from 1975, as well as the TV
special entitled Alice Cooper-The Nightmare. He also starred for a year in the
early 1970s in a syndicated daily radio program, Tales of the Unexplained. He also
made a guest appearance in a 1972 episode of The Brady Bunch, in which he played a
deranged archaeologist.
In the summer of 1977, he began performing as Oscar Wilde, in the one man stage
play Diversions and Delights. Written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, the
play is set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death.
In an attempt to earn some much-needed money, he speaks to the audience about his
life, his works and, in the second act, about his love for Bosie, Lord Alfred
Douglas, which led to his downfall.
The original tour of the play was a success in every city that it played, except
for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed it at the Tabor Opera
House in Leadville, Colorado on the same stage that Wilde had spoken to the miners
about art some 96 years before. Price would eventually perform the play worldwide
and to many, including his daughter Victoria, it was the best acting that he ever
did.
In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, Tim Burton's six-minute
film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent
Price. That same year, he performed a sinister "rap" on the title track of Michael
Jackson's monumental "Thriller" album. In addition to the album being a
mega-seller, the video was a huge hit for MTV. It included a stunning sequence in
which Jackson transforms into a werewolf and was a major landmark for music videos.
One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of
Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective from 1986.
From 1981 to 1989, he hosted the PBS television series Mystery!. Also, in 1985, he
was voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the
mysterious Vincent Van Ghoul who aided Scooby-Doo and the gang in capturing
thirteen evil demons into an ancient chest. During this time (1985-1989), he
appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser. His last
significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands
(1990).
A witty raconteur, Price was a frequent guest on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show,
where he once demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher. He also was a
frequent panelist on Hollywood Squares during its initial run.
Price was also a noted gourmet cook and art collector. From 1962 to 1971, Sears,
Roebuck offered the Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art, selling about 50,000
pieces of fine art to the general public. Price selected and commissioned works for
the collection, including works by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. He
also authored several cookbooks.
Family
Price was married three times and fathered a son, named Vincent Barrett Price, with
his first wife, former actress Edith Barrett. Price and his second wife Mary Grant
donated hundreds of works of art and a large amount of money to East Los Angeles
College in the early 1960s in order to endow the Vincent and Mary Price Gallery
there. Their daughter, Victoria, was born in 1962.
Price's last marriage was to the Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with
him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). He converted to Catholicism
to marry her, and she became a US citizen for him.
Death
Price was a lifelong smoker. He had long suffered from emphysema and Parkinson's
disease, which had forced his role in Edward Scissorhands to be much smaller than
intended.
His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery, as his condition was
becoming noticeable on-screen. He died of lung cancer on October 25, 1993. The Arts
& Entertainment Network aired an episode of Biography highlighting Price's
horror career the next night, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the
show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E produced its updated episode,
a show titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12,
1997; it is often rebroadcast and is available on DVD. The script was by Lucy Chase
Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price (Citadel Press, 1995). In
early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title
Conversations With Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent
Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Vincent
Price - Manifesting Generator - Biography
