Actor and writer, born in St Louis, Missouri, USA. He travelled in Europe, studied at Yale, and became an actor. He made his screen debut in 1938, and after many minor roles he began to perform in low-budget horror movies such as House of Wax (1953), achieving his first major success with The Fall of the House of Usher (1960). Known for his distinctive, low-pitched, creaky, atmospheric voice, and his quizzical, mock-serious facial expressions, he went on to star in a series of acclaimed Gothic horror movies, such as The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971). He abandoned films in the mid-1970s, going on to present cookery programmes for television - he wrote A Treasury of Great Recipes (1965) with his second wife, Mary Grant - but he had two last roles in The Whales of August (1987) and Edward Scissorhands (1991).
| Vincent Price | |
|
Vincent Price publicity photo |
|
| Birth name | Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. |
| Born |
May 27, 1911 St. Louis, Missouri, USA |
| Died |
October 25, 1993 Los Angeles, California, USA |
| Height | 6' 4" (1.93 m) |
| Notable roles |
Dr. Anton Phibes in The Abominable Dr. Phibes The Inventor in Edward Scissorhands |
| Spouse(s) |
Edith Barrett Mary Grant Coral Browne |
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American film actor.
Biography
Early life and career
Vincent Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Vincent Leonard Price and Marguerite Willcox.
In the 1950s, he moved into horror films, enjoying a 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, and then the classic 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 after him.)
1960s
In the 1960s, he 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). 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.
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?
Later career
Price undertook a small part in the children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) in Canada. One of his last major roles, and one of his favourites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective from 1986. He also made a guest appearance in a well remembered 1972 episode of The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archeologist.
In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, a Tim Burton's six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price.
Family
Price was married three times and fathered a son, named Vincent Barrett Price, with his first wife, a former actress named Edith. Price and his second wife Mary 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.
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).
Death
Price was a lifelong smoker. The museum features detailed life-size wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes and The Masque of the Red Death (see ). In 1999, a frank and detailed biography of Vincent Price, written by his daughter Victoria Price, was published by St Martin's Griffin Press. Starting in 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch where Vincent Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the late 1950's-early 1960's. Other cast members who have played Price on SNL include "Not Ready For Primetime" castmember Dan Aykroyd and one-season castmember Michael McKean (McKean played Vincent Price when he hosted a season 10 episode [this was before he was hired as a castmember in 1994]).
Filmography
Service de Luxe (1938) The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) Tower of London (1939) The Invisible Man Returns (1940) Green Hell (1940) The House of the Seven Gables (1940) Brigham Young - Frontiersman (1940) Hudson's Bay (1941) The Song of Bernadette (1943) The Eve of St. Mark (1944) Wilson (1944) Laura (1944) The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) A Royal Scandal (1945) Leave Her to Heaven (1945) Shock (1946) Dragonwyck (1946) The Web (1947) The Long Night (1947) Moss Rose (1947) Up in Central Park (1948) Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) (voice only) Rogues' Regiment (1948) The Three Musketeers (1948) The Bribe (1949) Bagdad (1949) The Baron of Arizona (1950) Champagne for Caesar (1950) Curtain Call at Cactus Creek (1950) Notes on the Port of St. Francis (1951) (short subject) (narrator) Adventures of Captain Fabian (1951) His Kind of Woman (1951) Pictura: An Adventure in Art (1951) (documentary) (narrator) The Las Vegas Story (1952) House of Wax (1953) Crucifixion (1953) (short subject) (narrator) Dangerous Mission (1954) Casanova's Big Night (1954) (Cameo as Casanova) The Mad Magician (1954) Born In Freedom: The Story of Colonel Drake (1955) (short subject) Son of Sinbad (1955) Serenade (1956) While the City Sleeps (1956) The Vagabond King (1956) (narrator) The Ten Commandments (1956) Eight Steps to Peace (1957) (documentary) (narrator) The Story of Mankind (1957) The Fly (1958) House on Haunted Hill (1959) The Big Circus (1959) The Tingler (1959) Return of the Fly (1959) The Bat (1959) House of Usher (1960) Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile (1961) Rage of the Buccaneers (1961) Master of the World (1961) The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) Naked Terror (1961) (documentary) (narrator) Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962) Tales of Terror (1962) Convicts 4 (1962) Tower of London (1962) Taboos of the World (1963) (documentary) (narrator) The Raven (1963) Diary of a Madman (1963) Beach Party (1963) The Haunted Palace (1963) Twice-Told Tales (1963) The Comedy of Terrors (1964) The Last Man on Earth (1964) The Masque of the Red Death (1964) Chagall (1964) (short subject) (narrator) The Tomb of Ligeia (1965) War-Gods of the Deep (1965) Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966) The Jackals (1967) The House of 1,000 Dolls (1967) Spirits of the Dead (1968) (narrator in English version) Witchfinder General (1968) (AKA: The Conqueror Worm) More Dead Than Alive (1968) Scream and Scream Again (1969) The Oblong Box (1969) The Trouble with Girls (1969) Cry of the Banshee (1970) Mooch Goes to Hollywood (1971) (Cameo) The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) The Beginning of the End of the World (1971) (documentary) (narrator) The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) (Canadian) (cameo: narrator/host) An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe (1972) (narrator) The Aries Computer (1972) Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972) Theatre of Blood (1973) It's Not the Size That Counts (1974) Madhouse (1974) The Devil's Triangle (1974) (documentary) (narrator) Journey Into Fear (1975) Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare (1975) (documentary) The Butterfly Ball (1976) (voice) Days of Fury (1978) (documentary) (narrator) Scavenger Hunt (1979) The Monster Club (1980) Pogo for President: 'I Go Pogo' (1980) (voice) Vincent (1982) (short subject) (voice) Thriller (1983) (music video) (guest "rap") House of the Long Shadows (1983) Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984) Dracula, the Great Undead (1985) (documentary) (narrator) The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo (1985) (voice) The Nativity (film)|The Nativity]] (1986) (short subject) (voice) The Great Mouse Detective (1986) (voice) Escapes (1986) The Whales of August (1987) The Offspring (1987) Vincent Price: The Sinister Image (1988) (documentary) Dead Heat (1988) Don't Scream It's Only a Movie (1989) (documentary) (narrator) America Screams (1990) Catchfire (1990) Edward Scissorhands (1990) The Thief and the Cobbler (1995) (voice) (audio was recorded in 1968)
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