Coral Browne
Who was Vincent Price 's spouse from 1974 to 1991?
Vincent Price Vincent Leonard Price Jr . ( May 27 , 1911 – October 25 , 1993 ) was an American actor best known for his performances in horror films , although his career spanned other genres . He appeared on stage , television , and radio , and in more than 100 films . He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame , one for motion pictures and one for television . His first film role was as leading man in the 1938 comedy Service de Luxe . Price became well known as a character actor , appearing in films such as The Song of Bernadette ( 1943 ) , Laura ( 1944 ) , The Keys of the Kingdom ( 1944 ) , Leave Her to Heaven ( 1945 ) , Dragonwyck ( 1946 ) , and The Ten Commandments ( 1956 ) . He established himself as a recognizable horror-movie star after his leading role in House of Wax ( 1953 ) . He subsequently starred in other successful or cult horror films , including The Fly ( 1958 ) , House on Haunted Hill ( 1959 ) , The Tingler ( 1959 ) , The Last Man on Earth ( 1964 ) , Witchfinder General ( 1968 ) , The Abominable Dr . Phibes ( 1971 ) , and Theatre of Blood ( 1973 ) . He was particularly known for his collaborations with Roger Corman on Edgar Allan Poe adaptations such as House of Usher ( 1960 ) , The Pit and the Pendulum ( 1961 ) , and The Masque of the Red Death ( 1964 ) . Price occasionally appeared on television series , such as in Batman as Egghead . In his later years , he voiced the villainous Professor Ratigan in Disneys classic animated film The Great Mouse Detective ( 1986 ) , and appeared in the drama The Whales of August ( 1987 ) , which earned him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male nomination and Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands ( 1990 ) , his last theatrical release . For his contributions to cinema , especially to genre films , he has received lifetime achievement or special tribute awards from Academy of Science Fiction , Fantasy and Horror Films , Fantasporto , Bram Stoker Awards , and Los Angeles Film Critics Association . Known for his iconic voice , Price has narrated several animation films , radio dramas , and documentaries , as well as the monologue on Michael Jackson song Thriller . For his voice work in Great American Speeches ( 1959 ) , he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album . Price was also an art collector and arts consultant , with a degree in art history , and he lectured and wrote books on the subject . The Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College is named in his honor . He was also a noted gourmet cook . Early life and career . Price was born on May 27 , 1911 , in St . Louis , Missouri , the youngest of the four children of Vincent Leonard Price , Sr. , president of the National Candy Company , and his wife Marguerite Cobb ( née Wilcox ) Price . His grandfather was Vincent Clarence Price , who invented Dr . Prices Baking Powder , the first cream of tartar–based baking powder , and it secured the familys fortune . Price was of Welsh and English descent and was a descendant of Peregrine White , the first white child born in colonial Massachusetts , being born on the Mayflower while it was in Provincetown Harbor . Price attended the St . Louis Country Day School and Milford Academy in Milford , Connecticut . In 1933 , he graduated with a degree in English and a minor in art history from Yale University , where he worked on the campus humor magazine The Yale Record . After teaching for a year , he entered the Courtauld Institute of Art in London , intending to study for a masters degree in fine arts . Instead , he was drawn to the theater , first appearing on stage professionally in 1934 . His acting career began in London in 1935 , performing with Orson Welless Mercury Theatre . In 1936 , Price appeared as Prince Albert in the American production of Laurence Housmans play Victoria Regina , which starred Helen Hayes in the title role of Queen Victoria . Introduction to film roles . Price started out in films as a character actor . He made his film debut in Service de Luxe ( 1938 ) , and established himself in the film Laura ( 1944 ) , opposite Gene Tierney , directed by Otto Preminger . He played Joseph Smith in the movie Brigham Young ( 1940 ) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson ( 1944 ) , as well as Bernadettes prosecutor , Vital Dutour , in The Song of Bernadette ( 1943 ) , and as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom ( 1944 ) . His first venture into the horror genre , for which he later became best known , was in the Boris Karloff film Tower of London ( 1939 ) . The following year , Price portrayed the title character in The Invisible Man Returns ( a role he reprised in a voice-only cameo in the closing scene of the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein released in 1948 ) . Price reunited with Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven ( 1945 ) and Dragonwyck ( 1946 ) . He also had many villainous roles in film noir thrillers such as The Web ( 1947 ) , The Long Night ( 1947 ) , Rogues Regiment ( 1948 ) , and The Bribe ( 1949 ) , with Robert Taylor , Ava Gardner , and Charles Laughton . His first starring role was as con man James Reavis in the biopic The Baron of Arizona ( 1950 ) . He did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters , co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar ( also 1950 ) , one of his favorite film roles . He was active in radio , portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in The Saint , which ran from 1947 to 1951 . In the 1950s , Price moved into more regular horror-film roles with the leading role in House of Wax ( 1953 ) as a homicidal sculptor , the first three-dimensional film to land in the years top 10 at the North American box office . His next roles were The Mad Magician ( 1954 ) , the monster movie The Fly ( 1958 ) , and its sequel Return of the Fly ( 1959 ) . That same year , he starred in two thrillers by producer-director William Castle : House on Haunted Hill as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren , and The Tingler as Dr . Warren Chapin , who discovered the titular creature . He appeared in the radio drama Three Skeleton Key , the story of an island lighthouse besieged by an army of rats . He first performed the work in 1950 on Escape and returned to it in 1956 and 1958 for Suspense . Outside the horror realm , Price played Baka ( the master builder ) in The Ten Commandments released in 1956 . About this time , he also appeared in episodes of a number of television shows , including Science Fiction Theatre , Playhouse 90 , and General Electric Theater . In the 1955–56 television season , he was cast three times on the religion anthology series Crossroads . In the 1955 episode Cleanup , Price portrayed the Reverend Robert Russell . In 1956 , he was cast as Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas in The Rebel , and as the Rev . Alfred W . Price in Gods Healing . 1960s . In the 1960s , Price achieved a number of low-budget filmmaking successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures ( AIP ) starting with the House of Usher ( 1960 ) , which earned over $2 million at the box office in the United States and led to the subsequent Edgar Allan Poe adaptations of The Pit and the Pendulum ( 1961 ) , Tales of Terror ( 1962 ) , The Comedy of Terrors ( 1963 ) , The Raven ( 1963 ) , The Masque of the Red Death ( 1964 ) , and The Tomb of Ligeia ( 1964 ) . He starred in The Last Man on Earth ( 1964 ) , the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend , and portrayed witch hunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General ( US : The Conqueror Worm , 1968 ) set during the English Civil War . He starred in comedy films such as Dr . Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine ( 1965 ) and its sequel Dr . Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs ( 1966 ) . In 1968 , he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day , opposite Patricia Routledge . In the 1960s , Price began his role as a guest on the television game show Hollywood Squares , becoming a semiregular in the 1970s , including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980 . Price made many guest-star appearances in television shows during the decade , including The Red Skelton Show , Daniel Boone , F Troop , Get Smart , The Man from U.N.C.L.E. , and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea . He had a recurring role in the Batman TV series as the villain Egghead from 1966 to 1967 . In 1964 , he provided the narration for the Tombstone Historama in Tombstone , Arizona , which was still in operation as of 2016 . He also starred as the host of the Australian TV series If These Walls Could Speak , in which a short history of a historical building ( supposedly narrated by the building itself ) was covered , and as the narrating voice of the building . Later career . During the early 1970s , Price hosted and starred in BBC Radios horror and mystery series The Price of Fear . He accepted a cameo part in the Canadian childrens television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein ( 1971 ) in Hamilton , Ontario , on the local television station CHCH . In addition to the opening and closing monologues , his role in the show was to recite poems about various characters , sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes . In 1969 , Price recorded Witchcraft , Magic : An Adventure in Demonology , a double album on the history and practice of witchcraft , including folk legends , references to witches in literature and art , facts on communication with spirits , demonology and necromancy , some herbal recipes , and an introduction to the Wicca faith . Price appeared in The Abominable Dr . Phibes ( 1971 ) , its sequel Dr . Phibes Rises Again ( 1972 ) , and Theatre of Blood ( 1973 ) , in which he portrayed one of two serial killers . That same year , he appeared as himself in Mooch Goes to Hollywood , a film written by Jim Backus . He was an admirer of the works of Edgar Allan Poe , and in 1975 visited the Edgar Allan Poe Museum ( Richmond , Virginia ) , where he had his picture taken with the museums popular stuffed raven . Price recorded dramatic readings of Poes short stories and poems , which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone . In 1975 , Price and his wife Coral Browne appeared together in an international stage adaptation of Ardèle , which played in the US and in London at the Queens Theatre . During this run , Browne and Price starred together in the BBC Radio play Night of the Wolf first airing in 1975 . He greatly reduced his film work from around 1975 , as horror itself suffered a slump , and he increased his narrative and voice work , as well as advertising Milton Bradleys Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture . Price provided a monologue for the Alice Cooper song The Black Widow in 1975 , and he appeared in the corresponding TV special . He starred for a year in the early 1970s in the syndicated daily radio program Tales of the Unexplained . He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Heres Lucy , showcasing his art expertise , and in a 1972 episode of ABCs The Brady Bunch , in which he played a deranged archaeologist . In October 1976 , he appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show . In 1976 , Price recorded a cover of Bobby Boris Picketts Monster Mash as a 45-rpm single , putting his voice to a backing track laid down in London by record producers Bob Newby and Ken Weston . It was released on both sides of the Atlantic later that year without much success . In 1977 , he began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights , written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy , and set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wildes death . The original tour of the play was a success in every city except for New York City . In the summer of 1979 , Price performed the role of Wilde at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville , Colorado , on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before . He eventually performed the play worldwide . Victoria Price stated in her biography of her father that several members of Prices family and friends thought that this was his best acting performance . In 1979 , Price starred with his wife in the short-lived CBS TV series Time Express . In 1979 , he hosted the hour-long amusement-park and roller-coaster television special America Screams , riding on many of the roller coasters himself and recounting their history . During 1979–1980 , he hosted the Mystery Night segment of the radio series Sears Radio Theater . In 1982 , Price provided the narrators voice in Vincent , Tim Burtons six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price . He appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Gilbert and Sullivans Ruddigore ( with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple ) . In 1982 , Price provided the spoken-word sequence to the end of the Michael Jackson song Thriller . In 1983 , he played the Sinister Man in the British spoof horror film Bloodbath at the House of Death . He appeared in House of the Long Shadows with Christopher Lee , Peter Cushing , and John Carradine . He had worked with each of those actors at least once in previous decades , but this was the first time that all had teamed up . One of his last major roles , and one of his favorites , was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures The Great Mouse Detective in 1986 . From 1981 to 1989 , Price hosted the PBS television series Mystery ! In 1985 , he provided voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the mysterious Vincent Van Ghoul who aided Scooby-Doo , Scrappy-Doo , and the gang in recapturing 13 demons . He was a lifelong fan of roller coasters , and he narrated a 1987 30-minute documentary on the history of roller coasters and amusement parks including Coney Island . During this time ( 1985–1989 ) , he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser . In 1984 , Price appeared in Shelley Duvalls live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , and the narrator for The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers . In 1987 , he starred with Bette Davis , Lillian Gish , and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August , a story of two sisters living in Maine facing the end of their days . His performance in The Whales of August earned the only award nomination of his career , an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor . In 1989 , Price was inducted into the St . Louis Walk of Fame . His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burtons Edward Scissorhands ( 1990 ) . In 1990 , Price recorded the narration as the Phantom for Disneyland Pariss Phantom Manor . After the attraction opened in 1992 , though , the narration was shortly removed and replaced with one entirely in French , performed by Gérard Chevalier . Only Prices infamous laughter remained on the soundtrack . In 2018 , during Phantom Manors major renovation , parts of Prices narration were announced to be restored to the soundtrack of the attraction . Since the 2019 reopening , the new tracks are dual-language ; Prices original excerpts as well as previously unused material from his 1990 recording comprise the English-speaking portions , while actor Bernard Alane voices the Phantom in French . Art . Price , who studied art history ( along with English ) at Yale , was an art lover and collector . He was a commissioner of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board . In 1957 , impressed by the spirit of the students and the communitys need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand , Vincent and Mary Grant Price donated 90 pieces from their private collection and a large amount of money to establish the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park , California , which was the first teaching art collection owned by a community college in the United States . They ultimately donated some 2,000 pieces ; the collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of $5 million . Price also spent time working as an art consultant for Sears-Roebuck : From 1962 to 1971 , Sears offered the Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art , selling about 50,000 fine-art prints to the general public . Works which Price selected or commissioned for the collection included some by Rembrandt , Pablo Picasso , and Salvador Dalí . Public access to fine art was important to Price , who according to his daughter Victoria , saw the Sears deal as an opportunity to put his populist beliefs into practice , to bring art to the American public . Price amassed his own extensive collection of art , and in 2008 , a painting bought for $25 by a couple from Dallas was identified as a piece from Prices collection . Painted by leading Australian modernist Grace Cossington Smith , it was given a modern valuation of AU$45,000 . Cooking . Price was a gourmet cook , and he authored several cookbooks with his second wife , Mary . These include : - A Treasury of Great Recipes ( 1965 ) - Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery ( 1967 ) - Mary and Vincent Prices Come into the Kitchen Cook Book : A Collectors Treasury of Americas Great Recipes ( 1969 ) - Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price ( 1971 ) Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery was a five-volume series , packaged in a boxed set and published by the Heirloom Publishing Company . These five books were combined into a single book two years later and published as Mary and Vincent Prices Come into the Kitchen Cook Book : A Collectors Treasury of Americas Great Recipes . Most of the Prices cookbooks remained in print throughout the 1970s . After being out of print for several decades , two of their books were reprinted ; A Treasury of Great Recipes ( in August 2015 by Calla Editions ) and Mary and Vincent Prices Come into the Kitchen Cook Book ( in November 2016 by Calla Editions ) , both featuring new forewords by their daughter Victoria Price . Cooking Price-Wise with Vincent Price was scheduled to be reprinted by Dover Publishing in October 2017 under the updated title Cooking Price-Wise – The Original Foodie . In 1971 , Price hosted his own cooking program on British TV , called Cooking Price-Wise produced for the ITV network by Thames Television , which was broadcast in April and May 1971 . This show gave its name to Prices fourth and final cookbook later that year . Price promoted his cookbooks on many talk shows , one of the most famous instances being the November 21 , 1975 , broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson , when he demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher . Price recorded a number of audio cooking tutorials titled International Cooking Course . These were titled Bounty of Paradise , Classical Spanish Cuisine , Cuisina Italiana , Delights from the Sultans Pantry , Dinner at the Casbah , Dining at Versailles , Exotic Delights from the Far East , Food of the Gods , Foods from the Austro-Hungarian Empire , La Cocina Mejicana , The Bards Board , and The Wok . In addition to those , he recorded an audio wine course titled Wine Is Elegance . These audio recordings were released on 33⅓ LPs by Nelson Industries in 1977 , and were also packaged in a 12-cassette boxed set titled Beverly Hills Cookbook – Cookbook of the Rich and Famous , Your Host Mr . Vincent Price . In August 1982 , he co-hosted A Taste of China for Britains Thames Television/ITV over five episodes . He also prepared a fish recipe on Wolfgang Pucks Cooking with Wolfgang Puck VHS , released in October 1987 by Warner Home Video . Personal life . Price married three times . His first marriage was in 1938 to former actress Edith Barrett ; they had one son , poet and columnist Vincent Barrett Price . Edith and Price divorced in 1948 . Price married Mary Grant in 1949 , and they had a daughter , inspirational speaker Victoria Price on April 27 , 1962 , naming her after Prices first major success in the play Victoria Regina . The marriage lasted until 1973 . He married Australian actress Coral Browne in 1974 ; she had appeared as one of his victims in Theatre of Blood ( 1973 ) . The marriage lasted until her death in 1991 . His daughters biography Vincent Price : A Daughters Biography ( 1999 ) details Prices early antisemitism and initial admiration for Adolf Hitler . According to his daughter : When he went to Germany and Austria as a young man , he was struck by a lot of things going on during the Weimar Republic and the disillusion of the empire.. . So when Hitler came into power , instead of seeing him as a dangerous force , he was sort of swept up in this whole idea that Hitler was going to bring German pride back . However , Price became a liberal after becoming friends with New York intellectuals such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman in the 1930s , so much so that he was greylisted under McCarthyism in the 1950s , for having been a prewar premature anti-Nazi , and after being unable to find work for a year , agreed to requests by the FBI that he sign a secret oath to save his career . His daughter said that her father became so liberal that one of my brothers earliest memories is when Franklin Roosevelts death was announced , my father fell backwards off the sofa sobbing . Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison at the end of an episode of The Saint , which aired on NBC Radio on July 30 , 1950 , claiming that Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nations enemies . He was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D . Eisenhower administration ; he called the appointment kind of a surprise , since I am a Democrat . He was supportive of his daughter when she came out as a lesbian , and he was critical of Anita Bryants antigay-rights campaign in the 1970s . Death . Price suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and Parkinsons disease . His symptoms were especially severe during the filming of Edward Scissorhands , making cutting his filming schedule short a necessity . His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery ! in 1989 . He died at age 82 of lung cancer on October 25 , 1993 , at his home in Los Angeles . His remains were cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu , California . Legacy . The A&E Network aired an episode of Biography the night following Prices death , highlighting his horror-film career , but because of its failure to clear copyrights , the show was never aired again . Four years later , A&E produced its updated episode , a show titled Vincent Price : The Versatile Villain , which aired on October 12 , 1997 . The script was by Lucy Chase Williams , author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price . In early 1991 , Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent , in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery , but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved . Rhythmeen , the ZZ Top album from 1996 , includes a track named Vincent Price Blues . Price was an honorary board member and strong supporter of the Witchs Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol , Connecticut until his death in 1993 . The museum features detailed life-sized wax replicas of characters from some of Prices films , including The Fly , The Abominable Dr . Phibes , and The Masque of the Red Death . A black-box theater at Prices alma mater , Mary Institute and St . Louis Country Day School , is named after him . Director Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent , about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who is obsessed with the grim and macabre . It is narrated by Price . Vincent Twice , Vincent Twice was a parody on Sesame Street . He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ( Sunday , Cruddy Sunday ) . Price had his own Spitting Image puppet , who was always trying to be sinister and lure people into his ghoulish traps , only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws . Starting in November 2005 , featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch in which Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s/60s . Other cast members who played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean ( who played Price when he hosted a season-10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season ) . In 1999 , a frank and detailed biography about Price written by his daughter , Victoria , was published by St . Martins Press . In late May 2011 , an event was held by the organization Cinema St . Louis to celebrate what would have been Prices 100th birthday . It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall . In an unusual convergence of widely different generational and cultural backgrounds , the genteel Price was a friend of the English hard rock band Deep Purple , and in 1975 , he appeared on Roger Glovers live version of The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshoppers Feast as a narrator . Decades later , in 2013 , Deep Purple released Vincent Price , a single the band members dedicated to him . That same year , American director and writer John Waters composed a heartfelt and appreciative retrospective on Price for Turner Classic Movies , which recognized the actor as its Star of the Month in October 2013 and showcased then a selection of his most popular films . The tribute was repeatedly broadcast on TCM to promote and complement those televised presentations . In sharing with viewers his feelings about Price , Waters at one point describes the actors screen appeal , especially when he was featured in his darker roles : External links . - Vincent Price Official Website - Vincent Price Gallery - St . Louis Walk of Fame - Vincent Price Papers catalog - Vincent Price at Virtual History - Cooking with Vincent , A Treasury Of Great Recipes - Vincent Price Papers ( MS 1625 ) . Manuscripts and Archives , Yale University Library .