Silver Screen Standards: Vincent Price

Silver Screen Standards: Vincent Price

During the Halloween season, of course, we think of Vincent Price, the undisputed icon of horror whose many roles in the genre put him in the lofty company of Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee. Price was so associated with horror that he got nicknames like “The Merchant of Menace,” but the unmistakably clumsy voice actor really was a man for all seasons, with a long career spanning many different genres. Like most Generation Xers, I first met Price in the late 1970s and early 80s when he was making kid-friendly dishes such as Vincent (1982), The 13 ghosts of Scooby-Doo (1985), and The great mouse detective (1986) as well as Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” hit (1983) and Edward with the scissor hands (1990). As I started looking for classic films, I realized what an amazing and diverse career Price actually had and how we don’t really appreciate him unless we look at his roles outside of horror as well as his appearances in the creepy classics we remember him most for today.

Vincent Leonard Price Jr. was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1911, where his father was the president of a confectionery company. His wealthy upbringing gave him access to quality education and the opportunity to travel; He graduated with a liberal arts degree from Yale and then studied arts and history in London at the Courtauld Institute. Price made his stage debut in the UK in the 1930s but soon switched to film with his first screen appearance Service de luxe (1938), a romantic comedy in which he starred alongside Constance Bennett.

He went on to work regularly and, before his death in 1993, amassed an astonishing list of over 200 recognized roles, with at least one for almost every year. In addition, he became known as an art collector and cook and gave lectures on these two passions as well as literary topics. Despite his cultivated interests and Ivy League background, Price never seemed to take himself or his job too seriously; he played villains with relish and pounded it with relish in horror comedies and special appearances like his guest star The Muppet Show 1977. Although he was never nominated for an Academy Award, his legion and legacy were assured when he died of lung cancer at the age of 82.

It’s strange to think that an actor so well-known for horror could get his first film role in a romantic comedy, but Price always had a knack for comedy, whether that comedy was bright or pitch black. It would serve him well in horror comedies like The Raven (1963), The comedy of horror (1963), The monster club (1981), and House of Long Shadows (1983), among others. Price also seems like an unlikely choice for a western, but there he is in the lead role in Samuel Fullers The Baron of Arizona (1950), a biopic about a real-life scammer who tried to claim the entire state of Arizona in the late 19th century^NS Century. You can also find it in Curtain up at Cactus Creek (1950) in which he plays a Hammy actor, a guy he would most memorably revert to Theater of blood (1973). Price continued to appear in surprising places in his later years, most notably in the gentle, intimate drama The whales in August (1987), in which he joins other icons such as Lillian Gish, Bette Davis and Ann Sothern.

Price worked more often in genres that had certain elements in common with his horror imagery, especially in historical dramas where his talents as a heavyweight came in very useful. Following his romantic comedy debut, Price made a number of historical dramas and exhibited high levels of comfort in tights, Elizabethan ruffs, and other period costumes that he often donned in his horror roles. His second film was the star-studded spectacle Elizabeth and Essex’s personal lives (1939) with Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, in which Price plays Sir Walter Raleigh. From there he went on to roll in Tower of London (1939), Brigham Young (1940), Hudson’s Bay (1940), The song of Bernadette (1943), and The Ten Commandments (1956). He has always been a solid cast choice for a lavish nobleman, a corrupt priest, or an ambitious schemer of all stripes. His sneering grin and dripping sarcasm made him an actor the audience loved in a juicy villain role. In the Gothic thriller Drachenwyck (1946) gives Price a delicious but utterly serious performance as the Byronic husband of Gene Tierney’s naive heroine, and in The three musketeers (1948) he takes up the role of the main villain Cardinal Richelieu. Even if he had never become a horror icon, his work in these films would have secured him a place in Hollywood history.

Classic noir is another genre that Vincent Price works well with his on-screen personality, and his years at Fox saw him in two notable noir pictures with Gene Tierney, the rightly beloved Laura (1944), and Leave them to Heaven (1945). The less successful shock (1946) merged the themes of noir and horror with Price as a murderous psychiatrist who runs a private sanatorium. In His kind of woman (1951) Price got another memorable noir role as – what else? – an amateur actor who befriends the protagonist of Robert Mitchum. Unfortunately, noir roles dried up pretty quickly, and Price spent much of the 1950s bouncing around in television and smaller film roles while Guard house (1953) and The fly (1958) paved the way for the great horror performances that loomed on the horizon.

Most classic movie fans know and love Vincent Price as a horror star, and they should. It wouldn’t be Halloween without movies like House on Haunted Hill (1959), The Tinger (1959), Usher’s house (1960), Stories of terror (1962), and The hideous Dr. Phibes (1971). Still, we shouldn’t forget Price when November pulls by and the jack-o-lanterns are swapped for pumpkin pie. No matter what time of year, from Saint Mark’s Eve (1944) April to The whales in August (1987), there is a matching Vincent Price picture.

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– Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub

Jennifer Garlen writes our monthly column on Silver Screen Standards. You can read all of the articles on Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards here.

Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic films on her blog Virtual Virago and presents classic film programs for lifelong learning groups and retirement communities. She is the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 film classics worth seeing and its continuation, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 film classics worth seeing, and she is also the co-editor of two books on the work of Jim Henson.