Portal:Horror/Selected biography archive/March 2007
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. Vincent Price is best remembered for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of distinctive horror films. His tall stature and polished urbane manner made him something of an American counterpart to the older Boris Karloff.
Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Vincent Leonard Price and Marguerite Willcox. His father was president of the National Candy Company, and his grandfather invented "Dr Price's Baking Powder"- the first commercially manufactured one. 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. Price's adult height was 6 foot, 4 inches.
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). During the 1940s, he appeared in a wide variety of films from straightforward drama to comedy to horror (he provided the voice of The Invisible Man at the end of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948). He was also active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crimefighter Simon Templar, a.k.a. The Saint, in a popular series that ran from 1947 to 1951.
In the 1950s, he moved into horror films, enjoying a role in the successful curiosity 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 classic monster movie The Fly (1958). (continued)
