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Horror Filmography
Tower of London
The
Invisible Man Returns
Shock
Dragonwyck
The Web
Abbott and
Costello Meet Frankenstein
House of Wax
The Mad Magician
The Fly
House on
Haunted Hill
The Tingler)
Return of
the Fly
War-Gods
of the Deep
The Bat
House of Usher
Master of
the World
Pit and
the Pendulum
Tales of Terror
Tower of London)
The Raven)
Diary of a Madman
The
Haunted Palace
Twice-Told Tales
The Comedy
of Terrors
The Last
Man on Earth
The Masque
of the Red
Death
The Tomb
of Ligeia
Witchfinder
General
More Dead
Than Alive
Scream and
Scream Again
The Oblong Box
Cry of the Banshee
The
Abominable Dr. Phibes
An Evening
with Edgar Allan Poe
Dr. Phibes
Rises Again
Theatre of Blood
Madhouse
Journey
Into Fear
Welcome to
My Nightmare
Scavenger Hunt
The
Monster Club
House of
the Long Shadows
Bloodbath
at the House of Death
Dracula,
the Great Undead
The 13
Ghosts of Scooby Doo
The Great
Mouse Detective
Vincent
Price: The Sinister Image
Don't
Scream It's Only a Movie
Edward Scissorhands |
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Vincent
Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 - October 25, 1993), born in St.
Louis, Missouri to Vincent Leonard Price and Marguerite Willcox
Price. His family started the National Candy Company. Vincent
attended the St. Louis, Missouri private high-school, Christian
Brother's College continued his education at Yale University where he
received degrees in Art History and English then taught school for a
year. Price returned to college to take his Masters in Fine Arts at
the Courtauld Institute in London, he also studied briefly in Vienna.
An avid
art collector, Price and his second wife Mary donated hundreds of
works of art and a large monetary gift to East Los Angeles College in
the early 1960s in order to endow the Vincent and Mary Price Gallery
there, which stands to this day. He wrote a syndicated art column in
the 1960s always encouraging others to develop a personal passion for art. |
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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), directed by Otto Preminger. He acted as Joseph Smith, Jr. in
the movie Brigham Young (1940).
In the
1950s he moved into horror films, enjoying the role in the successful
curiosity House of Wax (1953), the first 3-D film to land in the
year's top ten at the North American box office. He also starred in
the original House on Haunted Hill (1959) as eccentric millionaire
Fredrick Loren. (The actor playing the same character in the 1999
remake was made to not only resemble, but was renamed after Price.)
In the 1960s, Price and Peter Lorre starred as crimefighting antique
dealers in the unsold pilot, "Collector's Item." According
to Price, when he and Peter Lorre went to view Bela Lugosi's body at
Lugosi's funeral, Lorre, upon seeing Lugosi dressed in his famous
Dracula cape, quipped, "Do you think we should drive a stake
through his heart just in case?" |
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Also in
the 1960s, he had a number of low-budget successes with Roger Corman
and AIP including the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations House of Usher
(1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Raven (1963), The Masque
of the Red Death (1964); he also appeared in The Abominable Dr.
Phibes (1971) and Theatre of Blood (1973). He often expressed an
interest in doing Shakespeare, which is why Theatre of Blood was one
of his favorite roles.
He
often spoke of his joy at playing "Egghead" on the popular
Batman television series. He actually started an egg throwing fight
while rehearsing on the show. Another
of his co-stars, Yvonne Craig (Batgirl), often said Price was her
favorite co-star. |
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In 1964
at the request of a personal friend, he narrated a brief history of
Tombstone, Arizona (titled, "Tombstone, The Town Too Tough To
Die") for use in the diorama at the site of the O.K. Corral
gunfight site. He reportedly recorded the 20-minute piece in a single
take at a recording studio in Hollywood and when asked about his fee,
asked for his pal, the owner of the exhibit at the time, to buy him
lunch. Price never visited Tombstone but his narration is still used
in the diorama.
He had
his own mail-order book club in the 1970s, "Vincent Price
Books", specializing in mystery and detective novels.
He
greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself
suffered a slump, and increased his narrative and voice work. For
example, Price's voiceover is heard on Alice Cooper's first solo
album Welcome to My Nightmare also playing "the spirit of the
nightmare" in Alice Cooper's 1975 television special.
“Vincent’s Rap” in Michael Jackson's mini-movie music
video, Thriller, is by far his best remembered voiceover. Another of
these fantastic renditions was one of his last major and one of his
favourite feature film roles, as the voice of Professor Ratigan in
Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective, in which two
original songs had been written for especially for him.
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 comissioned works for the collection, including works by
Rembrant, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dali. He also starred in
"How to Make a Movie," a short film that was included in
the "Vincent Price: Moviemaking the Hollywood Way," a home
movie outfit sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co.
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He was
the Wednesday night host for CBS Radio's "Sears Mystery
Theater" (1979). He was still Wednesday's host when it became
"The Mutual Radio Theater" on Mutual Radio (1980). Host of
BBC Radio's "The Price of Fear" (1973-1975, 1983). Vincent
portrayed Simon Templar on "The Saint" for CBS Radio
(1947-1948), Mutual Radio (1948-1950) and NBC Radio (1950-1951).
He
abandoned films in the mid 1970s, in favor of cooking programs for
television - he wrote "A Treasury of Great Recipes" (1965)
with his second wife, Mary Grant - He also recorded many Gothic
horror short stories for the spoken-word label Caedmon Records. |
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In 1990
Price was hired by Walt Disney Imagineering to voice the role of the
Phantom for Phantom Manor, a new ride for the upcoming Euro
Disneyland, scheduled to open in 1992. He was given a French script
but the takes were so bad, the entire performance was deemed
unusable. After working on the French script for over three hours,
sessions, gave him an English version of the script. Craig Fleming,
who adapted the script and directed the recording Price recorded the
entire piece in two takes. The English recordings were placed in the
attraction, but after a few months of operation, Euro Disney (the
company that owns and operates the resort) felt there was not enough
French in Euro Disneyland. So by 1993, in an attempt to add more
French to the park, Price's narration was removed from the attraction
and replaced by the French spiel, this time recorded by 'Gerard
Chevalier' . Price's narration can be found on a Disney Haunted
Mansion CD. The CD, which contains a full ride-through of the
attraction, claims Price's narration was "never used at
Disneyland Paris", but that's because the park was still called
Euro Disneyland when it was used. Today the park is now known as Parc
Disneyland (as of 2002) and although his narration is long gone, one
part of his performance remains in Phantom Manor: his laugh. Although
the spoken dialogue of the Phantom character was changed, Price's
original recordings of the Phantom's evil laughter still remain
intact, inside the attraction. |
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He
would often attend showings of his films in costumes; often to play
pranks on movie-goers. In his later years, Price spoke out against
modern horror films that glorified violence, pointing out that his
films were harmless spoofs by comparison.
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 theater, on a night about
one year before Wilde's death. In an attempt to earn some much-needed
money, he is speaking to the audience about his life, his works and,
in the second act, about his love for 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
he 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. From 1981 to 1989, he
hosted the PBS television series Mystery!. His last significant film
work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990). |
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Price
was married three times. Coral Browne (24 October 1974 - 29 May 1991)
(her death), Mary Grant (25 August 1949 - 1973) (divorced) 1 child,
Edith Barrett (23 April 1938 - 4 June 1948) (divorced) 1 child. Price
fathered a son named Vincent, Jr. with his first wife, a former
actress named Edith Barrett . Daughter Victoria was born in 1962 to
Vincent and his second wife, Mary Grant. Price's last marriage was to
the actress Coral Browne who appeared with him in Theatre Of Blood
(1973). People have said theirs was one of Hollywood's great love
stories; he converted to Catholicism for her, and she became a U.S.
citizen for him. Friends said Price never recovered from her death in
1991 from breast cancer. Coral was buried at St. Victor's with a
Mozart Requiem Mass accompanied by a full orchestra.
Vincent
Price died of lung cancer on October 25, 1993, at 82 years of age,
just six days before Halloween and, eerily, just three days before
his biography was aired on the Arts and Entertainment Network. He had
also long suffered from emphysema and Parkinson's disease, which had
forced his role in Edward Scissorhands to be much smaller than
intended. His ashes were scattered off the Californian coast of
Malibu together with his favorite gardening hat. Vincent Twice
Vincent Twice was a Price lookalike character on Sesame Street.
In 1999
a frank and detailed biography of Vincent Price, written by his
daughter Victoria Price, was published by St Martin's Griffin Press.
At the August 2004 Monster Mania convention in Cherry Hill, NJ, a
standing-room-only crowd attended the "Vincent Price
Tribute," which consisted of reminiscences of Price from
director Roger Corman, actresses Hazel Court and Caroline Munro,
artist Cortlandt Hull and moderator Tom Weaver. |
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