Vincent Price

Born on May 27, 1911 (the same day of the year that Christopher Lee, another fanterror legend, would also come into the world 11 years later) in St. Louis, Missouri, Vincent Leonard Price Jr. came from a wealthy family. . His father was president of the National Candy Company, while his grandfather, Vincent Clarence Price, invented cream of tartar, a prized confectionery ingredient, which brought him a substantial fortune.

Vincent Price was a good student from an early age. Passionate about culture in general and painting in particular, he graduated in Art History from Yale University. Later he traveled to the United Kingdom to study a Master’s degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art, of the University of London, but in the Old Continent he ended up seduced by the theater, and became an actor by participating in a production of “Victoria Regina”, a text by Lawrence Housman, which was released in Europe and then in New York. Price ended up settling in the latter city, where he joined The Mercury Theater, the Orson Welles company . At this time, the First Lady of the American theater, Helen Hayes , recommended that he spend time on the stage before turning to celluloid.

Finally, Vincent Price made his film debut as the protagonist of the comedy Service Deluxe , where he played an inventor who was looking for the woman of his life. He was directing Rowland V. Lee , who would require his services again in The Tower of London , a film with a terrifying setting about the rise to power of Richard III, very much in line with the cinema that the actor was predestined to play. . Carried out by Basil Rathbone (a Richard III who every time he kills one of his competitors eliminates one of the various figurines that he has placed on a model) and Boris Karloff(the limping executioner of the tower), Price played the Duke of Clarence, brother of the monarch, executed for treason. He also revolved around the history of England in Michael Curtiz ‘s excellent The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex , where Price plays the military and politician Sir Walter Raleigh.

His first strictly horror film was The Invisible Man Returns , a sequel to the legendary Universal film, where he plays a man sentenced to death who escapes thanks to the invisibility formula of the brother of the protagonist of the first installment.

During the initial stage of his long career, Vincent Price was under the orders of the best directors, such as John M. Stahl ( The Keys of the Kingdom , Heaven judge ), Henry Hathaway ( Frontiersman ), Henry King ( Bernadette’s Song ), and even Joseph L. Mankiewicz ( Dragonwyck Castle). “My character in Mankiewicz’s film was very difficult to approach, because he was a deranged, a monomaniac, who is not aware of his condition. For that very reason it was a challenge to play him,” said the actor. But He always declared that he considered Shelby Carpenter, the dodgy fiancé and womanizer of a murdered woman, in Laura , by the great Otto Preminger , his favorite role of his entire career .”It was an almost perfect film,” he declared in an interview.

It is clear that the actor stands out especially as a villain, in The Legion of the Damned , by Robert Florey , Bribery , by Robert Z. Leonard , and especially The Three Musketeers (1948) , by George Sidney , where he embroidered the Machiavellian Cardinal Richelieu.

In the 50s he began to be closely linked to horror cinema after starring in the emblematic and disturbing The Wax Museum Murders , by André De Toth , shot in 3D, where he plays Professor Henry Jarrod, a guy who achieves unusual realism by sculpting wax figures. He was also the brother of the scientist doomed to a tragic fate in The Fly (1958) , a role he reprized as the lead in the sequel, Edward Bernds’s deteriorated The Return of the Fly . He did not give up playing supporting roles in films of other genres, such as in The Ten Commandments (1956) , by Cecil B. DeMille, where he has a prominent appearance as the cruel architect Baca. In this decade he plays another of his best roles, the owner of the newspaper in While New York Sleeps , an excellent film noir by the master Fritz Lang .

In 1960, Vincent Price incarnated one of his most popular characters, Roderick Usher, an artist with health problems who lives with his delicate sister, who tells a friend invited about the curse that has affected his family for many years. It was in The Fall of the House of Usher , a memorable adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe ‘s story , with which Roger Corman began his unforgettable saga of versions of the Gothic writer. Vincent headlined The Pendulum of Death , Horror Stories , The Palace of the Spirits , The Masque of the Red Death , The Tomb of Ligeia, and The Raven (1963). In other words, he was in the entire series, except for The Obsession , which starred Ray Milland .

Most of these titles ( The House of Usher , The Pendulum , Histories and The Raven ) had as a screenwriter the prominent writer of the fantasy genre Richard Matheson , closely linked to Price’s career, since he later also wrote another of his greatest hits, The comedy of horrors , by Jacques Tourneur . The actor was also the protagonist of The Last Man on Earth , an adaptation of his best-known novel, which also gave rise to The Last Man… Alive I Am Legend .

Among many other jobs, Vincent Price gave Elvis Presley himself morality lessons in My Trouble With Women . He was also Egghead, a villain with a brain so big he had a large head in Batman (1966) , the series about the character.

In the 1970s, he drifted into horror comedy, laughing at his previous characters. For example, she had huge success with The Abominable Doctor Phibes , in which he played a mysterious organist who murdered a series of doctors. He had an dispensable sequel, Return of Doctor Phibes . The excellent To Kill Or Not To Kill, This Is The Problem , also includes plenty of laughs, where he plays an actor specializing in Shakespeare who, after being humiliated by the London Critics Circle, decides to finish off its members one by one, choosing deaths inspired by the works of the English bard. In the monster club, from 1981, became a mysterious gentleman who invites a writer to a curious place where he will tell him three stories halfway between the disturbing and the hilarious.

Divorced from the American actress Edith Barrett ( I walked with a zombie ), mother of his son Vincent Jr., Price was linked for more than 20 years to the British Mary Grant, costume designer for titles such as The Princess and the Pirate , who gave birth to Victoria, their second and last daughter. At the end of his life, he was linked to the Australian interpreter Coral Browne ( The Night of the Generals ), who died two years before him. Vincent Price considered himself a gourmet, a lover of the most exquisite cuisine, following the family tradition. He published several cookbooks that were very well received.

Lindsay Anderson brought back the aging Vincent Price along with other old glories ( Bette Davis and Lillian Gish ) in The Whales of August , where he played a Russian-born gentleman. The very young Tim Burton conceived Vincent, one of his first shorts, shot in stop-motion, as a tribute to his career, as it focused on a tormented boy who wanted to be like the characters of the legendary actor. The filmmaker was scared to death when he asked his idol to serve as narrator, but he was pleasantly surprised when he saw that he was a very approachable man, who thanked him for the tribute, and gladly accepted. Later, Burton offered him the symbolic role of the fatherly inventor who creates the character of Johnny Depp , in Edward Scissorhands .. In one of the most emotional sequences, the doctor died before he could put normal hands on his invention that would have prevented the tragedy. It was his last job in cinema, because in reality lung cancer caused by his addiction to tobacco ended his life, on October 25, 1993, when he was 82 years old. His mortal remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. In 1999 his daughter Victoria published a complete biography of the interpreter.