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Vincent Price
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Spouse
Coral Browne (1974 - died 1991)
Mary Grant (I) (1949 - 1973) (divorced)
Edith Barrett (1938 - 1948) (divorced)
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Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
It's odd that this well-educated, urbane, velvet-voiced actor found his greatest success-for at least one generation, anyway-as the King of the Horror Movie. A Yale graduate, he began a stage career in England, then returned to the U.S. in the mid 1930s, appearing on Broadway in "Victoria Regina" opposite Helen Hayes. Price went to Hollywood in 1938, debuting in Service De Luxe an ill-fated attempt to make him a conventional romantic leading man. Many of his early films were costume dramas-The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), The House of the Seven Gables (1940), The Song of Bernadette (1943)-but he also showed a flair for unusual characters, notably in Tower of London (1939) and The Invisible Man Returns (1940).
Price built a solid reputation in the 1940s as a utility player at 20th CenturyFox, where he appeared in Brigham Young-Frontiersman (1940, as the founder of the Mormon church, Joseph Smith), Hudson's Bay (1940), The Song of Bernadette The Eve of St. Mark Wilson, Keys of the Kingdom, Laura (all 1944, the last a personal favorite of his), A Royal Scandal, Leave Her to Heaven (both 1945), and Dragonwyck (1946), among others. His distinctive half-sneering smile, sly manner, and sinister chuckle marked him as a suave screen menace; even in sympathetic roles he seldom seemed wholly trustworthy. He was a perfect Richelieu in The Three Musketeers (1948), a hilariously distraught soap tycoon in Champagne for Caesar (1950), and the cunning land-grabber called The Baron of Arizona (also 1950). In 1953, he starred in what remains his most popular film, the 3-D smash House of Wax in which he played a mad sculptor who uses molten wax to make statues of corpses!
After The Ten Commandments, While the City Sleeps (both 1956), and The Story of Mankind (1957) the siren call of terror beckoned, and in rapid order came The Fly, House on Haunted Hill (both 1958), The Bat, The Tingler and Return of the Fly (all 1959). In 1960, he signed with Roger Corman for House of Usher and over the next five years became the principal screen interpreter of Poe in six more Corman adaptations, including The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), the farcical The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and Tomb of Ligeia (1965). Price continued to mine a livelihood from the dead, so to speak, in such chillers as the new version of Tower of London (1962, this time in the starring role), another spoof, The Comedy of Terrors (1964), The Conqueror Worm (1968), Madhouse (1974), and a trio of black comedies: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), and Theatre of Blood (1973); in the latter, as a Shakespearean ham who literally slays the critics, Price can be seen at his very best.
With the passing of years, good parts became fewer; Price often appeared on television and even spoofed his "image" in TV commercials. When asked why he agreed to appear in some of the terrible films he made, he explained without apology that as an actor, it was his job to act. He also used the money to support his passion for art, often turning in "per diem" money on location, and downgrading travel accommodations, to buy paintings. (Price wrote several books on art, and several more on his other great passion, food.)
His indelible identification with the macabre had its benefits: in the 1980s he was selected to host the PBS anthology series "Mystery," and was asked to recite a poem as a part of Michael Jackson's widely seen music video "Thriller" (1982). He also inspired a young filmmaker named Tim Burton to make a stopmotion animation short (with partner Rich Heinricks) called Vincent (1982), about a boy obsessed with Vincent Price. Price was so pleased with the project that he agreed to narrate the film. Toward the end of his life he had a handful of good parts: as the speaking and singing voice of cartoon villain Ratigan in the Disney studio's The Great Mouse Detective (1986), as an elegant Russian count in The Whales of August (1987), and as the kindly inventor who brings the title character to life in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990). He was visibly frail in that film, but rose to the occasion, a thorough professional to the end. Price's final appearance was in the cable-TV movie The Heart of Justice (1993). |  |
