Hollywood film actor Vincent Price was one of the cinema’s greatest villains and went on to find his niche as the king of horror films.
Lean and sinister, Price possessed a distinctive, low-pitched, creaky, atmospheric voice and mock-serious facial expressions that that made him one of the horror genre’s most beloved and enduring stars.
Relatively young filmgoers, who only know Price in horror films, are often surprised to learn that he has had a long and by no means negligible career behind him in many other types of pictures.
Price was born on May 27, 1911, in St Louis, Missouri. He was the son of a wealthy biscuit manufacturer, also named Vincent Price, and his wife, Marguerite Wilcox. He received his education at the St Louis Country Day School and at Yale University, from where he graduated in art history and fine arts.
Price then went to England to obtain his master’s degree in fine arts at the Courtauld Institute in London. While in Britain, he became interested in the theatre and in 1935 began appearing professionally on the stage. When he went back to America, he established himself as an actor on the New York stage.
Price made his film debut in Service de Luxe (1938); then he joined Errol Flynn and Bette Davis in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). His first taste of horror was in Tower of London (1939), in which he appeared with Boris Karloff, and as the eponymous character in The Invisible Man Returns (1940).
Next on Price’s list of films were the drama House of Seven Gables, the historic Brigham Young (both 1940) and the religious drama The Song of Bernadette (1943).
He went on to establish himself with a strong performance in the classic thriller Laura (1944) opposite Gene Tierney, with whom he had already appeared in Hudson’s Bay (1941). He then played a missionary priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).
Price reunited with Tierney in two notable films – Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Dragonwyck (1946). Before the decade ended, he appeared in several film noir thrillers like The Web, The Long Night (both 1947), Rogues’ Regiment (1948) and The Bribe (1949).
The 1950s started with Price showing his flair for comedy in the enjoyable film Champagne for Caesar (1950) and then played a shady businessman in The Las Vegas Story (1952) before establishing his reputation as the Merchant of Menace.
The film that opened the floodgates of horror for Price was House of Wax (1953), which was filmed in the then new medium of 3-D.
The film, which also featured Charles Bronson who appeared under his real name, Charles Buchinsky, became a resounding success and made Price a favourite for this type of films; he followed it with The Mad Magician (1954).
But there was still time for Price to appear in other types of films, before totally immersing himself in horror. He was in the Bob Hope comedy Casanova’s Big Night, the action thriller Dangerous Mission (both 1954), appeared opposite Mario Lanza and the Maltese actor Joseph Calleia in Serenade and then played Baka the master builder in The Ten Commandments (both 1956).
But after that it was almost all horror for Price, as he appeared in The Fly, House on Haunted Hill (both 1958), Return of the Fly, The Tingler and The Bat (all 1959).
Then he embarked on a number of films based on the novels of Edgar Allan Poe, like The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors, The Raven (both 1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1965).
Price then went to England to do the silly Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965), the disappointing The Oblong Box and the confusing Scream and Scream Again (both 1959). It was only Witchfinder General (1968) that found favour with the critics and the public.
The Abominable Dr Phibes and its sequel Dr Phibes Rises Again (both 1972) were mild successes but Theatre of Blood (1973) and Madhouse (1974) were just routine pictures. During his reign of cinematic terror, Price rarely strayed out of it, notable exceptions were The Big Circus (1959) and the Elvis Presley film The Trouble with Girls (1969).
Price’s last film appearance was as the inventor in Edward Scissorhands (1990), but later he lent his voice to the animated feature The Princess and the Cobbler (1993). He also did some television work.
Price was married to Edith Barrett from 1938 to 1948 when they divorced; they had a son named Vincent. Then he married Mary Grant in 1949 and divorced in 1973 and this marriage yielded a daughter, Victoria. His third and last wife was actress Coral Browne whom he married in 1974; she died in 1991.
Price himself died from lung cancer and emphysema on October 25, 1993 in Los Angeles.