Vincent Price (1911–1993)

Vincent Price, a versatile actor of stage, screen, and television, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on May 27, 1911. One of four children born to Vincent Leonard and Margaret Cobb Price, he had a pedigree that included being the descendant of Peregrine White, the first colonial child born in Massachusetts. His father, a wealthy candy maker, was the president of the National Candy Company. The family wealth shaped young Vincent’s life and future career. He was able to attend private schools, travel to Europe at age sixteen, and graduate from Yale University in 1933 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in fine arts and English.

Convinced from an early age that he would like to be an actor, Price sought theater work in New York following his graduation from Yale. Unsuccessful, he took a position as an apprentice teacher at the Riverdale Country Day School. With financial assistance from his family, he decided to go to London for further study. In England he studied fine arts at London University and the Courtauld Institute. Although he had failed to launch his acting career in New York, Price was still a theater buff. He was able to secure a small part in a production of Chicago at the Gate Theater and made his stage debut on March 13, 1935. He then won the role of Prince Albert in the West End production of Victoria Regina and was such a hit that the play’s producer retained him for the same role on Broadway opposite Helen Hayes. The play ran at the Broadhurst Theater until June 1937.

Price had begun an acting career that would span more than fifty years. In 1938 he accepted his first Hollywood offer to appear in a film, Service DeLuxe, with Constance Bennett. In December 1938 he returned to Broadway in Outward Bound. Gathering further stage experience with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre and in summer stock, he continued playing a variety of parts. In 1940 he was called back to Broadway to star in Angel Street.

From Broadway, Price moved again to Hollywood, where he established a permanent residence. Under contract to Twentieth Century Fox he appeared in many films, including Song of Bernadette, Wilson, Leave Her to Heaven, Dragonwyck, and, most notably, Laura, in the role of Shelby Carpenter. As a freelance actor he also appeared in Up in Central Park, The Three Musketeers, and Son of Sinbad. During this period he also worked for RKO and Republic Pictures.

In 1947 Universal-International signed Price to a long-term contract. With his six-foot-four frame, well-spoken English, and highly bred demeanor, he gave performances that were always singled out favorably by the critics, though the films themselves were not. Price’s reputation as a master of the macabre was established in 1953 with his appearance in the three-dimensional horror movie House of Wax. Although he subsequently appeared in a variety of films, numerous New York stage productions, and summer-stock theaters, his name would always be synonymous with a lengthy roster of villains.

Along with his acting career, Price never lost his lifelong interest in art. He bought his first work, a Rembrandt etching, at age twelve for $37.50. He became an authentic art expert and appeared as a legitimate finalist on television’s $64,000 Challenge. An avid collector, his private art collection came to be valued at more than $5 million. As an art expert he served as an art-buying consultant for the Sears Company during the 1960s. For more than forty years Price donated works to the Vincent Price Gallery of East Los Angeles College.

In film Price’s most fruitful union was with Roger Corman, an actor, producer, and film director who starred him in a series of Gothic tales inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. Appearing with Price were such great horror-film stars as Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Lon Chaney Jr. The House of Usher; The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Raven would all become classics of the genre. Villainy became Price’s destiny, and though some may have been critical of his film roles, he said, “I’m not the least bit disappointed that I’m remembered primarily for my horror roles.”

Throughout his later years Price appeared in television commercials, as a panel member of Hollywood Squares, and as one of the voices in the Disney feature The Great Mouse Detective. Between film and television appearances he toured in a one-man show portraying Oscar Wilde and made frequent appearances on the lecture platform, which made him familiar to college audiences. Away from acting Price wrote several books on his other two loves, art and cooking. One on art, I Like What I Know, was very popular, and his Treasury of Great Recipes sold more than 350,000 copies.

In his long acting career he worked with artists as diverse as Cecil B. DeMille and Elvis Presley. His willingness to work with teen idols from Frankie Avalon to Michael Jackson won him a new generation of fans, as did his appearance as a regular on the Batman series on television. Toward the end of his life he exploited his reputation as the “Gable of Gothic” by contributing a ghostly voice on Michael Jackson’s hit record Thriller and playing in his last film in 1990 as the creator in Edward Scissorhands.

Once described as a modern Renaissance man who dedicated his life to the arts, Price was honored by the American Cinematheque in 1990 with a retrospective of his work. For many years Price served on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Museum of Art and also the Latin Arts and Crafts Board. He was a member of the Elizabethan Club, the Yale Club, the Board of the Archives of American Art, the Whitney Museum Friends of American Art, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Fine Arts Commission for the White House, and numerous other organizations.

Price savored acting and dismissed people who looked down on his horror-film roles. In 1986 he observed, “People remember you as someone who is working for their pleasure. A man came up to me and said, ‘Thank you for all the nice times you’ve given me.’ That’s really what it’s all about.” Price added, “I feel that I’ve had a good life. I haven’t been as successful as some people, but I’ve certainly had more fun.”

In 1974 Price wed the actress Coral Browne and remained with her until her death in 1991. Price’s previous marriages to actress Edith Barrett from 1938 to 1948 and designer Mary Grant from 1949 to 1973 ended in divorce. The veteran of more than one hundred films, two thousand television shows, and one thousand radio programs died at his Hollywood Hills home on October 25, 1993, from lung cancer.

This article was first published in Lawrence O. Christensen, William E. Foley, Gary R. Kremer, and Kenneth H. Winn, eds., Dictionary of Missouri Biography (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), and appears here by permission of the author and original publisher.