GRACIOUS VINCENT PRICE ENJOYED ART, AND THE ART OF LIVING

By Gene Seymour

From The Plain Dealer, 10.31.1993

The end, from lung cancer, was more painful than a gracious person like Vincent Price deserved. Still, given the available evidence, one suspects strongly that Price died last Monday, at 82, a happy man.

After all, Price's career as one of cinema's best known scary guys allowed him to enjoy all the gratifications of fame while enduring few of its attendant agonies. His renown allowed him to pursue his passion of art collecting and even speak at length about it to audiences on college campuses and talk shows. He seemed at ease everywhere he went and, scary guy or not, the ease was infectious.

What more could anyone want out of life?

Price said as much once to an interviewer: "I've done just about everything, but I feel that I've had a good life. I haven't been as 'successful' as some people, but I've certainly had more fun.'

We did, too, whether one's first memory of him was as the simpering twit in Laura (1944), the obsessed scientist in The Fly (1958) or the sadistic id-monster in any number of Roger Corman horror flicks. He may have gone over the top on occasion, but he never bored.

One demonstration of Price's good taste and well-honed theatrical instincts came in his voice-over on the title track from Michael Jackson's multitrillion selling album from 1982, "Thriller." Arguably, the peak of Price's "rap" came when that familiar cultivated voice oozed the African-American idiomatic phrase, "yawl," with solicitous care and surprising precision.

In retrospect, that also may have been the most distinctive evidence provided in more than a half-century of performances that Price was born, not in England as many suspected, but in St. Louis.

The youngest of a candy magnate's four children, Price studied art history and English literature at Yale and taught briefly at the Riverdale Country Day School in New York before heading to England to get a master's degree in art history.

While overseas, however, Price was seriously bitten by the acting bug, appearing in several small parts in London's West End theaters before landing the lead of Prince Albert to Helen Hayes' Queen in Victoria Regina. He came back to New York to play the role on Broadway.

So began a long, varied career that encompassed 75 plays, 110 films (by Price's count) and thousands of TV appearances - the most notable being his long-running stint as host of PBS' "Mystery" anthology series.

Somehow the art history graduate degree got lost. But Price more than made up for leaving school by advancing the cause of art everywhere he could find a forum.

He personally chose 15,000 art pieces for Sears, Roebuck & Co. to sell to the masses. He wrote a syndicated art column for about 80 newspapers and served as chairman of the U.S. Department of the Interior's Indian Arts and Crafts Board.

Price highlights

Early in his long career, Vincent Price played a wide variety of historical figures and contemporary villains. But he found his true love in the horror film, a genre he embraced with zest.

Here are some of his film and stage credits:

Films

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, 1939
The Song of Bernadette, 1944
Laura, 1944
Leave Her to Heaven, 1945
Dragonwyck, 1946
The Three Musketeers, 1948
House of Wax, 1953
The Ten Commandments, 1956
The Fly, 1958
The House of Usher, 1960
The Pit and the Pendulum, 1961
Diary of a Madman, 1963
The Masque of the Red Death, 1964
The Abominable Dr. Phibes, 1971
Theater of Blood, 1973
The Whales of August, 1987
Edward Scissorhands, 1990

Plays

"Victoria Regina," 1935
"Elizabeth the Queen," 1936
"The Shoemaker's Holiday," 1938
"Angel Street," 1941
"Darling of the Day," 1968