VINCENT PRICE Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

Biography » actors and actresses » vincent price

VINCENT PRICE

Name: Vincent Leonard Price, Jr.                                                     
Born: 27 May 1911 St. Louis, Missouri                                                 
Died: 25 October 1993 Los Angeles, California                                         
                                                                                     
Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 - October 25, 1993) was an American         
film actor, remembered for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a       
series of distinctive horror films. His tall 6' 4" (1.93 m) stature and polished,     
urbane manner made him something of an American counterpart to the older Boris       
Karloff.                                                                             
                                                                                     
Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Marguerite Cobb (nee Willcox)       
and Vincent Leonard Price, Sr., who was the president of the National Candy           
Company. His grandfather, Vincent Clarence Price, invented "Dr. Price's               
Baking Powder", the first cream of tartar baking powder, and secured the family's     
fortune. Vincent Jr. attended St. Louis Country Day School. He was further           
educated at Yale in art history and fine art. He was a member of Alpha Sigma Phi     
Fraternity and the Courtauld Institute, London. He became interested in theater       
in the 1930s, appearing professionally on stage from 1935.                           
                                                                                     
He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself as a     
competent actor, notably in Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by         
Otto Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith, Jr. in the movie Brigham Young (1940),   
as well as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944). During the         
1940s, he appeared in a wide variety of films from straight-forward drama to         
comedy to horror (he provided the voice of The Invisible Man at the end of           
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948).                                       
                                                                                     
In 1946 he reunited with Gene Tierney in two notable films Dragonwyck and Leave       
Her to Heaven. There were also many villainous roles in slick film noir               
thrillers like The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues Regiment (1948) and     
The Bribe (1949) with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner and Charles Laughton. He was         
also active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon         
Templar, aka. The Saint, in a series that ran from 1943 to 1951.                     
                                                                                     
In the 1950s, he moved into horror films, with a role in House of Wax (1953),         
the first 3-D film to land in the year's top ten at the North American box           
office, and then the monster movie The Fly (1958). Price also starred in the         
original House on Haunted Hill (1959) as the eccentric millionaire Fredrick           
Loren. (Geoffrey Rush, playing the same character in the 1999 remake, was not         
only made to resemble Price, but was also renamed Steven Price.)