Vincent Price – Biography of Vincent Price

by

Place of birth: St. Louis, Missouri (USA)
Family: Father: Vincent Leonard Price
Mother: Marguerite Willcox Price

Biography:

He attended Yale and the Courtauld Institute in London. In the ’30s, he became interested in the theater, appearing five years later professionally for the first time.

His film debut came with “Service de Luxe” in 1938. He played Joseph Smith in the movie “Brigham Young” (1940).

In the 1950s he entered horror cinema with “House of Wax” (1953) and “The fly” (1958).
He acted in the original version of “House of the Haunted Hill” (1959) as Fredrick Loren, an eccentric millionaire (in his remake of ’99 Geoffrey Rush would take over the character, and his surname would be Price, instead of Loren, in honor of the mythical actor).

During the 1960s he participated in several class B films directed by Roger Corman, such as the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1960), “The well and the pendulum” (1961), “Tales of Terror” (1962), “The Raven” (1963), “The Masque of the Red Death” (1964) and “The Tomb of Ligeia” (1965). Also did “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” in 1971 and “Theater of Blood” in 1973.

He played Egghead in the television series “Batman”, in the 1960s.

In the following decade, Price decreased his appearance in films to dedicate himself to narrating and using his voice as a work element. He participated with his voice on the album “Welcome to my Nightmare” by Alice Cooper, “The Number Of The Beast” from Iron Maiden, the music video “Thriller” (1982) Michael Jackson and the animated film “The Great Mouse Detective” (1986) from Disney.
I also work in a radio program called “Tales of the Unexplained”.

Between 1981 and 1989 he was the presenter of “Mystery!”, a TV series that PBS launched.
One of his last jobs was in “Edward Scissorhands” (1990) as the scientist who gave hands to young Edward. In 1982 he had participated in another Tim Burton project, an animated short called Vincent.

Vincent was married three times. His first wife was the actress Edith with whom he had Vincent, their son. Along with his second wife, Mary donated work and art to East Los Angeles College in the 1960s, creating a gallery that still exists. In 1962 their daughter Victoria was born. The third and last marriage was with Coral Browne, an actress who acted with him in Theater Of Blood. Price converted to Catholicism for her, and Browne became a US citizen for him. According to his friends, Vincent Price did not recover after the death of his wife in 1991.

He died of lung cancer on October 25, 1993 at the age of 82, caused by his addiction to tobacco. He also suffered from emphysema and Parkinson’s disease, so his role in Edward Scissorhands was shorter than expected. His voice was used posthumously in the film Arabian Knight (1995).

In 1999 a biography of Price written by his daughter Victoria was published. In 2004, the Spanish publishing house T&B published “Vincent Price. Terror with an open face”, by José Manuel Serrano Cueto.

Filmography:

  • Service de Luxe (1938)
  • The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
  • The 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)
  • Rogues’ Regiment (1948)
  • The Three Musketeers (1948)
  • The Bribe (1949)
  • Baghdad (1949)
  • The Baron of Arizona (1950)
  • Champagne for Caesar (1950)
  • Curtain Call at Cactus Creek (1950)
  • Notes on the Port of St. Francis (1951, narrator)
  • Adventures of Captain Fabian (1951)
  • His Kind of Woman (1951)
  • Pictura: An Adventure in Art (1951, narrator)
  • The Las Vegas Story (1952)
  • The House of Wax (1953)
  • Crucifixion (1953) (narrator)
  • Dangerous Mission (1954)
  • Casanova’s Big Night (1954)
  • The Mad Magician (1954)
  • Born In Freedom: The Story of Colonel Drake (1955)
  • 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, 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)
  • The Fall of the House of Usher (1960)
  • Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile (1961)
  • Rage of the Buccaneers (1961)
  • Master of the World (1961)
  • Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
  • Naked Terror (1961, narrator)
  • Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962)
  • Tales of Terror (1962)
  • Convicts 4 (1962)
  • Tower of London (1962)
  • Taboos of the World (1963, 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, 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)
  • Witchfinder General (1968)
  • 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)
  • The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
  • The Beginning of the End of the World (1971, narrator)
  • The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971, narrator / presenter)
  • An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe (1972, narrator)
  • The Aries Computer (1972)
  • Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)
  • Theater of Blood (1973)
  • It’s Not the Size That Counts (1974)
  • Madhouse (1974)
  • The Devil’s Triangle (1974, narrator)
  • Journey Into Fear (1975)
  • Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare (1975)
  • The Butterfly Ball (1976, voice)
  • Days of Fury (1978) (narrator)
  • Scavenger Hunt (1979)
  • The Monster Club (1980)
  • Pogo for President: ‘I Go Pogo’ (1980, voice)
  • Vincent (1982, voice)
  • House of the Long Shadows (1983)
  • Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984)
  • Dracula, the Great Undead (1985, narrator)
  • The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo (1985, voice)
  • The Nativity (1986, voice)
  • The Great Mouse Detective (1986, voice)
  • The Whales of August (1987)
  • The Offspring (1987)
  • Vincent Price: The Sinister Image (1988)
  • Dead Heat (1988)
  • Don’t Scream It’s Only a Movie (1989, narrator)
  • Catchfire (1990)
  • Edward Scissorhands (1990)
  • Preminger: Anatomy of a Filmmaker (1991)
  • Arabian Knight (1995, voice prerecorded and later used)