<Archive Obituaries> Vincent Price (October 25th 1993)
Bill Schenley
20th-Century Renaissance Man Enjoyed Art, Gourmet Cooking
And The Lecture Circut.
He Never Tired Of Being Best Known For Portraying Goulish Villains
Los Angeles Times
Photo: http://www.eofftv.com/images/p/price_vincent4.jpg
FROM: The Los Angeles Times (October 26th 1993) ~
By Myrna Oliver, Staff Writer
Vincent Price, art historian and collector, gourmet cook, author,
raconteur and multifaceted "Merchant of Menace" best known for his
blood-curdling roles in horror films, died Monday night at his home in
the Hollywood Hills. He was 82.
The veteran actor succumbed to lung cancer after a long battle with
the disease, according to his personal assistant, Reg Williams.
Tall, graceful, worldly and well-spoken (he was educated at Yale and
the University of London), Price became a popular lecturer on college
campuses and guest on television talk shows, passing along such
non-bloodthirsty tidbits as how to cook fish in a dishwasher.
But unlike most actors who gained fame in their younger years, Price
retained box office appeal well into in his 70s, when he was still
reaching into new entertainment venues, performing briefly in Michael
Jackson's music video "Thriller" and as the voice of the rat in
Disney's animated "The Great Mouse Detective."
Although something of a 20th-Century Renaissance man, Price was
remembered best by mass audiences as a slimy, horrifying ghoul.
"I think I've made 110 pictures and only 20 of them have been in the
thriller category," he said in 1986. "But that is what people
remember. I guess it all started with 'The House of Wax,' one of the
greatest successes in that field. I've been stuck with it ever since."
The "House of Wax" (1953) gave the genre and Price an extra boost
because it introduced the short-lived technique of three-dimensional
movies. As the evil proprietor of a wax museum who chose to coat real
bodies with wax -- after he had killed them -- the actor literally
reached out to audiences wearing special viewing glasses for the
three-dimensional effect.
Price's other horror films included a series based on the writings of
Edgar Allen Poe (whom Price considered the greatest American author)
-- "The Raven," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The House of Usher,"
"Tales of Terror," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Masque of the Red
Death" and "The Tell-Tale Heart."
Price was still a force in film at age 80, when he performed a typical
role as the kindly creator of a fantasy teen-ager, Edward
Scissorhands. His character died before he had completed the youth's
hands, leaving dangerous metal scissors at the ends of his wrists.
Price frequently borrowed Poe's climactic line from "The Raven" when
asked all too frequently if he objected to being type-cast as a
villain:
"Nevermore."
"It's the fact that you are type-cast that gives you your fame," he
told The Times in 1985. "I'm not the least bit disappointed that I'm
remembered primarily for my horror roles.
"We were all very serious about those pictures," he said of his
colleagues in the fright fraternity. "Boris (Karloff), Basil
(Rathbone), Peter (Lorre) and I knew we weren't doing 'Hamlet,' but we
also thought we were doing marvelous entertainment."
"I've just done everything," he told another questioner, "but 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."
Although his distinguished speech caused many to think Price was a
native of Britain, he was born in St. Louis, the youngest of four
children of well-to-do Margaret and Vincent Leonard Price. His
grandfather had made a fortune in baking powder, but lost it in the
economic crash of 1893. His father was able to save and make a success
of one subsidiary, the National Candy Co., which provided sweets for
the nation's five-and-dime stores.
Price decided as a child that he wanted to be an actor, but he had
better luck grounding himself in food and art. In his acting debut --
as an angel in the school Christmas play -- he forgot his lines.
He learned his culinary skills from his mother -- "a one-woman home
economics class. We learned about cooking. We learned about sewing. I
still mend suits and I do it very well."
As for the fine arts, at 12 he bought his first piece, a Rembrandt
etching, for $37.50 -- paying "$5 down and 50 cents a month for the
rest of my natural life."
Developing his early talents, Price went on to write a cookbook, "A
Treasury of Great Recipes," and instruct Johnny Carson and the nation
watching "The Tonight Show" on how to prepare fish in a dishwasher:
"Tightly wrap trout in foil with lemon, wine, parsley, salt and
pepper. Put it through the whole cycle. No soap!"
He also wrote art books, such as "I Like What I Know" and "Treasury of
American Art;" a book on monsters with his son, Barrett, and one about
his dog called "Book of Joe."
A well-received lecture at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park
led him late in life to donate the art and then endow the Vincent
Price Gallery at the community college. He normally was booked a year
in advance for about 60 lectures a season on food, art and Hollywood
monsters.
He also found time to act, although it took him a while to get
started.
Graduating from Yale University (where he majored in art history and
English) into the Great Depression in 1933, Price was unable to find
work as an actor, so he took the only job offered -- as an apprentice
teacher at the Riverdale Country Day School in New York. He drove a
bus, coached soccer and supervised a dormitory in addition to teaching
art history.
Financed by a $900 gift from his parents, Price went to England,
seeking a master's degree in art history at the University of London.
But he soon was cutting classes in favor of bit parts in London's West
End theaters.
Within a couple of months, he auditioned successfully for the lead
part of Albert to Helen Hayes' Queen Victoria in a play about the
royal couple, "Victoria Regina."
"To my amazement, the play was a hit," he wrote years later in Art &
Antique magazine. "The classes I missed became faraway guilts."
Price dropped out as a student and went to Broadway with the play. The
change in geography increased his salary from 5 pounds, or about $24 a
week at that time, to $250 a week on Broadway.
After two years in the hit show, Price signed a contract with
Universal Pictures. When no film roles materialized, he returned to
legitimate theater. During his lifetime, Price appeared in more than
75 plays, including his one-man show devoted to the writings of Oscar
Wilde, which he performed more than 800 times.
In 1937, Price joined Orson Welles' famed Mercury Theater, with a role
in "The Shoemaker's Holiday."
"Actually, Orson was just a kid at the time -- only about 22 years
old," Price said years later. "But he was the finest director I ever
worked for. He was really brilliant . . . inventive . . . a marvelous,
marvelous director."
Price's roles for Welles included some of theater's greatest villains
-- Fagin in "Oliver!" Captain Hook in "Peter Pan" and the devil in
"Damn Yankees."
He finally shifted to Hollywood in 1938, when he was 27, as a tractor
inventor in "Service de Luxe," a film that critics labeled "a
pathetically unfunny farce."
In 1939, Price began establishing himself in horror films, appearing
with Rathbone and Karloff in "Tower of London."
One of his favorites, "The Eve of St. Mark," was made during World War
II. He played a Southern soldier in what he described fondly as "one
of the few good-guy roles."
He later played a key dramatic part as an Egyptian architect in Cecil
B. DeMille's colossal "The Ten Commandments," which required eight
years to film and was released in 1956.
He also portrayed a series of fops and dandies in many films, of which
the best known may have been Shelby Carpenter in the classic 1944
thriller "Laura."
Price also dabbled in radio theater, portraying Simon Templar on "The
Saint" (later done on television by Roger Moore). Television audiences
may remember him as Egghead, archvillain of the television version of
"Batman" in the 1960s, or the host of PBS' "Mystery" series in the
1980s. He also appeared on more than 300 episodes of the television
game show "Hollywood Squares" and once tied for the top prize on
"$64,000 Question" when the subject was art.
During World War II, when there was little acting to do, Price and
some friends opened a small art gallery in Beverly Hills, called The
Little Gallery, and were awe-struck when actresses Katharine Hepburn
and Greta Garbo appeared as customers.
Over several years, Price selected some 15,000 art pieces for Sears,
Roebuck & Co. to sell to the working class.
"Art is everywhere," he once said, "and where it isn't, I don't want
to go."
Price wrote an art column for a time, syndicated to more than 80
newspapers, and served as chairman of the U.S. Department of the
Interior's Indian Arts & Crafts Board. He was also on the UCLA Art
Council and was an art juror for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Among Price's honors was the George Washington Carver Institute's
award for outstanding contributions to art, science, education and
betterment of race relations.
Price painted only one canvas himself -- a portrait of his mother,
which he destroyed after her death.
"I am," he said pragmatically, "an art lover, not an artist."
Price was married three times: to actress Edith Barrett, mother of his
son, Vincent Barrett Price; to costume designer Mary Grant, mother of
his daughter, Mary Victoria, and to actress Coral Browne, who died in
1991.
As Price aged, he became the subject of frequent retrospectives of his
films.
"You really feel ancient when they start showing retrospectives of
your work," quipped the typically unassuming actor. "That and when
you're in a wax museum. It all makes you feel as if you've been
buried."
And Price said that his history of horror roles may have taught him
something about that consummate act.
"I'll go on acting until I die," he said. "They will have to bury me
before I retire, and even then, my tombstone will read: 'I'll be
back.' "
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Photo:
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Vincent Price, A Suave But Menacing Film Presence, Is Dead At 82
FROM: The New York Times (October 26th 1993) ~
By Peter B. Flint
Vincent Price, the suavely menacing star of countless low-budget but
often stylish Gothic horror films, died at his home in Los Angeles
yesterday. He was 82 years old and died of lung cancer, a personal
assistant, Reggie Williams, told the Associated Press.
The flamboyant 6-foot-4-inch actor with a silken voice and mocking air
helped start a major revival of science-fiction films in 1953 with his
portrayal of a cruelly scarred sculptor in "The House of Wax." He went
on to play a succession of macabre characters in the director Roger
Corman's film adaptations of stories by Edgar Allan Poe, including
"Pit and the Pendulum" and "Masque of the Red Death."
Mr. Price appeared in scores of movies, more than 2,000 television
shows and occasionally on stage. In his early films he frequently
played historical figures -- Sir Walter Raleigh in "The Private Lives
of Elizabeth and Essex" (1939); Joseph Smith, the Mormon founder, in
"Brigham Young -- Frontiersman" (1940); England's King Charles II in
"Hudson's Bay" (1941) and Richelieu in "The Three Musketeers" (1948).
In other supporting roles, Mr. Price was a caddish gigolo in "Laura"
(1944), a cynical monsignor in "The Keys of the Kingdom" (1944), a
murderous aristocrat in "Dragonwyck" (1946) and a florid actor in "His
Kind of Woman" (1951).
The Horror Films
But starting with the three-dimensional "House of Wax," Mr. Price
joined the pantheon of horror occupied by Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff
and Peter Lorre. His specialty was the tongue-in-cheek archfiend --
often a demented scientist, inventor or doctor -- whose talents had
been corrupted and turned to evil ends.
"The best parts in movies are the heavies," Mr. Price said in a 1971
interview. "The hero is usually someone who has really nothing to do.
He comes out on top, but it's the heavy who has all the fun."
"Horror movies don't date because they were dated to begin with, they
were mannered and consciously so -- Gothic tales with an unreality,"
he said in 1977. "They have the fun of a fairy tale."
"To me, films that deal with drug addiction, crime and war are the
real horror films," he said on another occasion. "In a world where
slaughter and vicious crimes are daily occurrences, a good ghoulish
movie is comic relief."
He savored acting and dismissed people who looked down on his
horror-film roles. "I like to be seen, I love being busy and I believe
in being active," he once said. "I know some people think I've lowered
myself as an actor, but my idea of 'professional decline' is 'not
working.' "
Art Collector and Lecturer
Mr. Price was also a noted art connoisseur and collector. He lectured
on art at colleges and clubs, tied for a top prize for his art
expertise on "The $64,000 Challenge" television quiz show in 1956 and
for years was a syndicated newspaper columnist on art. He was the
art-buying consultant of Sears, Roebuck & Company, and he wrote
several popular books on fine art. He was also an accomplished cook
and was the co-writer of some best-selling cookbooks.
Vincent Leonard Price's manner and speech reflected his cultured
background. He was born on May 27, 1911, in St. Louis, one of four
children of the former Marguerite Cobb Wilcox and Vincent Leonard
Price, the president of a candy-manufacturing company. He attended
private schools in St. Louis, made the grand tour of Europe's museums
as a teen-ager and earned degrees in art history at Yale and the
University of London, where he became hooked on the theater and
resolved to be an actor.
He soon won praise on the London stage as Prince Albert in the play
"Victoria Regina." He repeated the role opposite Helen Hayes in an
18-month run on Broadway and on tour and honed his craft in summer
stock and on Broadway, where he emerged as a first-rate villain in the
role of a maniacal husband in "Angel Street" in 1941.
Among his 100-odd movies were "The Song of Bernadette," "Wilson,"
"Leave Her to Heaven," "Moss Rose," "The Baron of Arizona," "The
Tingler," "The Conquerer Worm" and "The Abominable Dr. Phibes." His
personal film favorites included the 1973 "Theater of Blood," in which
he played a deranged actor who gleefully kills drama critics in ways
inspired by Shakespeare; the 1987 "Whales of August," in which he
appeared as a Russian nobleman charming two elderly sisters (Bette
Davis and Lillian Gish), and "Edward Scissorhands," in 1990, which
found him cast as the bizarre inventor of the film's surreal title
character.
Diverse Capacities
The irrepressible Mr. Price also did a monologue for Michael Jackson's
1983 hit video "Thriller" and performed an eight-year stint as the
host of the "Mystery" series on public television. For decades, he
enlivened commercials for sponsors as disparate as Burger King and the
United States Treasury.
On the stage, he portrayed the dying Oscar Wilde in John Gay's one-man
play "Diversions and Delights" in a tour of more than 200 cities from
1977 to 1982. Reviewers hailed the portrait as a delicate and
compelling tour de force.
What matters eventually is the sum total of one's career, Mr. Price
observed in 1986. "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."
Mr. Price expressed his passion for art in "I Like What I Know: A
Visual Autobiography," published in 1959. He won over reviewers and
readers with "The Vincent Price Treasury of American Art" (1972) and
several cookbooks written with his second wife, Mary, including "A
Treasury of Great Recipes: Famous Specialties of the World's Foremost
Restaurants Adapted for the American Kitchen" (1965).
Mr. Price, who lived for decades on a hilltop overlooking Los Angeles,
was a member of many arts panels, a former president of the art
council of the University of California at Los Angeles and the founder
and prime donor of a major art collection at East Los Angeles College.
Mr. Price's third wife, the actress Coral Browne, whom he married in
1974, died in 1991. He was previously married to Edith Barrett, an
actress, from 1938 to 1948, and to Mary Grant, a designer, from 1949
to 1973. He is survived by a son, Vincent Barrett, and a daughter,
Mary Victoria.
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Photo: http://www.hothouse.force9.co.uk/oldvince.jpg
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The Comedy Of Terrors; Vincent Price
FROM: The Guardian (October 27th 1993) ~
By Ronald Bergan
Vincent Price, who has died aged 82, was one of the most cultured men
in Hollywood.
A noted art collector and connoisseur, he often lectured
on art, was for many years the art-buying consultant for the Sears
Roebuck company, and was on the board of the Whitney Museum, the Royal
Academy and the Archives of American Art.
Price was also an expert on
cooking. Among his many publications were Drawings Of Delacroix, the
Michelangelo Bible, and A Treasury of Great Recipes (with his second
wife Mary Grant). His first wife was the actress Edith Barrett, whom
he met while appearing on stage with Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre in
1938.
His third wife was the late Coral Browne, whose wit surpassed
even his own. The son of a wealthy sweet manufacturer, Price had a
golden youth, which included a grand tour of Europe's art museums as a
gift upon graduation from high school.
After a degree in art history
and English at Yale, he then obtained his master's degree in fine arts
at the University of London and studied at the Courtauld Institute.
However, this budding Bernard Berenson decided to become an actor and
made his stage debut in Chicago, starring John Gielgud. The same year
(1935) Price was cast as Prince Albert in the West End production of
Victoria Regina, a role he repeated in Broadway opposite Helen Hayes.
He then went on to establish himself in the New York theatre in the
Wild Duck,What Every Woman Knows, Parnell, and Eden End, returning
only infrequently to the stage in later years. If this were all,
Vincent Price might have been lucky to merit a few paragraphs in the
posh papers to mark his death. However, it was the other Vincent Price
- the suave, mocking, degenerate and ghoulish villain who will be
remembered and cherished. Unlike other malefactors of the screen,
Price's polished evil-doing was more likely to raise screams of
laughter than of terror.
After his film debut at Universal in 1938 as
the juvenile lead in a screwball comedy called Service De Luxe, it was
quite clear that his rather effete and aquiline features, and his
affected, sibilant voice would disqualify him from romantic roles. For
almost 15 years, Price was cast mainly as caddish, malicious and
languid men, most notably as Judith Anderson's feeble fiance in Otto
Preminger's Laura (1944), CardinalRichelieu in The Three Musketeers
(1948), and an impossibly vainglorious actor in His Kind Of Woman
(1951), claiming, "survivors will get parts in my next picture". It
was House Of Wax (1953) that launched Price's "O horrible! most
horrible!" career. There was little humour in his portrayal of the
hideously scarred sculptor who murders people and covers them with wax
to display in his chamber of horrors, but he struck a popular chord
with audiences.
After playing an urbane devil in The Story of Mankind
(1957) and exhorting audiences to scream or die in The Tingler (1959),
Price found his perfect director in Roger Corman. In the early 1960s,
Corman moved more upmarket from his previousZ movies with a series of
cheaply-made adaptations from Edgar Allan Poe. These took their tone
from Price's campy, yet often poignant, performances. In House Of
Usher, Price was a sensitive, white-haired Roderick Usher mourning his
dead wife; in The Pit And The Pendulum, he was a Spanish nobleman who
goes crazy thinking his wife has been buried alive; and in The Masque
Of The Red Death, he is a Satan-worshipping prince lusting after Jane
Asher in plague-ridden, 12th-century Italy.
The Poe tales were
stylish, incidentally amusing, shockers. They led Price into amusing,
incidentally stylish, shockers. These included The Abominable Dr
Phibes (1971), in which he played a madman killing off surgeons who
had unsuccessfully operated on his late wife. Without a face or voice,
he constructs an imitation face and talks by plugging a cord from his
neck into agramophone. "Love means never having to say you're ugly!"
he comments. While the killings of Dr Phibes were inspired by the Ten
Plagues Of Egypt, the manner of the murders in Theatre Of Blood (1973)
was each taken from a Shakespeare play. In a role that allowed him to
put the ham in Hamlet, Price played a supposedly dead actor wreaking
revenge on critics who had dared slate him in the Bard. It was the
ideal vehicle for the master of the comedy of terrors.
Vincent Price, born May 27, 1911; died October 25, 1993
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Vincent Price in art: http://www.3dlegends.com/vincent/price.jpg
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