The flaming Vincent Price

She died as she lived, a flaming queen.

Vincent being "Butch".

He didn't die at the end of "Beach Party."

Tallulah Bankhead once allowed Vincent into her bedroom one morning, pulled back the covers and graciously let him suck off husband John Emery's huge cock while he was still sleeping.

Does anyone consider Price sexy in any way, or is he the Liberace or Paul Lynde of horror?

When he was young, he was do-able.

I've lately been listening to "Librivox," an app that has people reading books out loud. It also has an old time radio show feature.

One radio show, called "The Saint" stars Vincent Price. I've been listening to it and it's pretty good. But he sure sounds like a queen.

R5 John Waters apparently worshiped him.

Worshipped him because he found him sexy or because he was an artistic inspiration, R8?

Coral Browne!

He was creepy on screen and off

Vincent was flaming in every sense of the word.

He was a wonderful actor and a lover of Pre-Columbian art. Saw him at the STL Art Museum years ago. He was very tall with a booming voice and wonderful laugh.

A nice memory from my younger days.

Both, r9. He did a retrospective of Price for TCM that they have been showing consistently in between movies for the last coupe of weeks and Waters himself states that Price was not only sexy, but Waters admits to praying before he went to bed that we wake up to be Vincent Price. And the artistic inspiration is very clear in Waters' style and work.

He seemed like the type to be a wonderful dinner party guest, bringing stories and a lovely hostess gift and knowing the perfect moment to bid adieu.

[quote]Coral Browne!

The men in Browne's life form a cast of thousands. Top of the bill is the British spy Guy Burgess, with whom she spent several weeks in Moscow in 1958, listening to him complain about the dodgy craftsmanship of Russian dentures, and observing the shabby circumscription of his exile. The husbands, are here, naturally: Philip Pearman, whom she married in 1950, despite his homosexuality, and Vincent Price, whom she met while playing a theatre critic whom he scorched to death under a salon hairdryer. The ones she didn't marry make up the Chorus: explicable candidates such as Paul Robeson and Christopher Cazenove; more leftfield acquisitions such as Cecil Beaton and Michael Hordern, that magnificently crusty character actor who turned throat-clearing into a high art. It's hard to escape the conclusion that Browne ate her lovers for breakfast. Or at least she would have done, had she been sufficiently relaxed about her weight to entertain the idea of breakfast.

Wasn't Browne more of a lady lover, though?

R17. Really? Beef curtains. Who knew?

Coral Browne and Michael Hordern having sex - now I can't get that image out of my head!!!!

Vincent pinged like an arcade game in "Leave Her to Heaven".

I have a hard time believing that Browne and that major queen Beaton being lovers.

R 21. I guess that puts the kibosh and Beaton and Garbo as lovers, too. Perhaps Beaton and any woman.

Christopher Hawtree reviews Carol Browne: 'This Effing Lady' by Rose Collis Michael Jackson missed a trick when he hired Vincent Price for that lugubrious Thriller voiceover. A bonus mix improvised by Price's salty wife, the actress Coral Browne, would have brought him some X-rated kudos. Unlike Price, however, she might not have settled for a flat $20,000. She'd have taken a royalty, and netted over a million. Nobody was more surprised than Price when in 1991, aged just 71, she died and left $6 million, mostly in funds. Although films and the stage had not made her widely known until she played her earlier self in Alan Bennett's An Englishman Abroad (1983), she had astutely invested her modest fees and legacies. Coral Brown - without the "e" - was born in a Melbourne suburb dominated by a combine-harvester factory. She was an only child and her destiny was fostered by elocution lessons heavy with Hiawatha, and by visits to Shakespeare productions that, sparsely staged, made the words thrill. Her own language was so startlingly foul that her parents considered medical advice. While studying art, she took a course in stage design at Melbourne's Repertory Company, where she met the theatre director Gregan McMahon. "Except that his blue eyes twinkled elfishly, he had a face like Humpty Dumpty. In middle age, his high-domed head went bald and his skin wrinkled and was as yellowish as faded parchment," recalled one writer. With a rich, remarkably understanding wife, McMahon often turned his teaching skills to wider account; as Rose Collis remarks, "Coral made steady progress under McMahon (in all senses)". It was more than a fling. Their parting brought sorrow, despite his encouraging of her move to London. As understudy in 1935 to Nora Swinburne in Philip Johnson's largely forgotten Lover's Leap, she was soon summoned from her needlework and, after she added an "e" to her name, other work followed as swiftly as lovers. Such beaux as Rex Harrison, Douglas Fairbanks, Maurice Chevalier, Jack Buchanan, Cecil Beaton and Paul Robeson were, however, put aside during several years of a lesbian affair, perhaps with Mary Morris, who into her seventies sported full leathers while motorcycling. After she took up with the producer Firth Shephard during the Second World War, Browne was inevitably called "Shephard's Bush". As she herself said: "Firth is my Shephard, I shall not want. His rod and staff comfort me. Though he makes me lie down in strange places…" Such is stage life.

In 1974 she married the charming, civilised Price after meeting him during Theatre of Blood (1973) - a union that assauged her long grief after the death of her first husband, Philip Pearman, in 1965. Rose Collis quotes reviews too often and her biography sometimes veers towards chronicle - but brio is added by the performers' anecdotes. While performing in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1944, for example, David Dodimead bet Browne a pound that she could not arouse the scantily clad John Humphry while they were lying together on stage. One witness recalls: "We could see a very slight movement of the hand…and John was starting to twitch a little bit. At the end of the scene, she came back into the wings and said to Dodders, 'I owe you ten shillings.'" Her widowed mother's visit to London - she stayed on for many fraught years until dying only shortly before Browne, aged 100 - could be a play. Browne's Catholicism made her a natural choice for the sorts of confession-box stage roles now irretrievably lost to us. Many of her films are among those now even shunned by Channel 4. Yet Let George Do It (1940), with Formby, is a terrific comedy, relished by George Harrison.

More brilliant than the 1958 Shakespeare tour of Russia it was based on, An Englishman Abroad is her most enduring work, along with Dreamchild (1985). But The Killing of Sister George (1968) has more than period interest, too - and would that Joe Orton had supplied more than the flawed posthumous production of his What the Butler Saw.

Rose Collis says that, "on paper, we don't make a natural 'Collis Bro

Coral Browne deserves good BBC bio film, perhaps with Janet McTeer in the lead.

You have to admire the guy. He kept working long after his 1940's contemporaries- even managing to top off his career with a Michael Jackson duet(!). Always a consumate professional.

And entertaining. Many Saturday afternoons as a kid with only 4 TV channels, enjoying his campy horror.

I read somewhere he was bullied as a youth for being too fey. He's an honorary gay.

R25, his daughter outed him as bi after his death.

r26 As if.....

What, no mention of her Vera Charles in "Auntie Mame" (Coral, that is, not Vincent).

No. My performance is definitive.

"Tower of London" is my fave movie of his. Great actor. Iconic. No one around now can match him

Vincent's second wife, Mary, was my friend's landlady in Boston.

With a few drinks in her, she would cough up some good old Hollywood dish.

Best r1 reply EVER. And so true!

Trivia: he was not British. The accent was an affectation. From Missouri.

R33, perhaps but he went to school in London after Yale and started his acting career there. He lived there for a whole, if I recall.

Bastard sold me a defective egg-decorating kit!

I believe the accent he used is referred to as "mid-Atlantic," which many actors learned to use in the early days. Google it.

Christopher Guest used to do a great impression of Price on SCTV, in which he mocked Price's affectation of always referring to Coral during talk show interviews as "my wife, the actress Coral Browne." I've been searching YouTube for a clip of either Price or Guest saying it, with no luck.

Christopher Guest was on SNL, not SCTV.

I remember that bug zapper commercial he and Coral Browne did back in the 80s. They had great chemistry together.

He's one of the few celebrities you'll never heard anything bad about. Everyone who dealt with him always described him as a kind, amiable person.

He was great in all those campy horror movies.

[quote]But The Killing of Sister George (1968) has more than period interest, too - and would that Joe Orton had supplied more than the flawed posthumous production of his What the Butler Saw.

Somebody gets paid to write shitty sentences like that? I'm moving to England. I'll be rich!

'An Englishman Abroad' (Coral Browne meeting Guy Burgess in Moscow) is quite wonderful: one of the best things Alan Bennett and John Schlesinger ever did (maybe THE best), plus Alan Bates doing seedy charming posh camp par excellence.

Possibly available in full on YT.

Re: Coral's Past (spoiler): there's a lovely scene-end where Coral and Guy leave his bleak flat. They've just had 'lunch', and chatted - the meat of the film. To entertain her, he's played a record - his only record: 'Who Stole My Heart Away', by Jack Buchanan.

So, walking away from the flat later, Guy, keeping the chat going, asks Coral, "Did you know Jack Buchanan?" She casually replies, "I suppose so. I nearly married him."

I can't imagine Coral and Christopher Cazenove (now dead young) together ... that book This Effing Lady is a great read though.

I love the story about Coral and a gay friend at the first night of a pretentious play by Peter Brook where a giant gold phallus was wheeled on stage. Coral turned to her pal and said "nobody we know".

Vincent must have been one of the busiest actors of the 50s, turning up in all kinds of kitsch stuff - just look at his resume on IMDB. I like him as Joan Fontaine's campy sidekick in that Mario Lanza film SERENADE, now theres a camp classic.

"He was creepy on screen and off"

Not off screen.

Vincent and Coral brew magic soup stock:

Who can forget Coral Browne as the serpentine Molly Luther?

Who doesn't want to forget the dreary Kim Novak of the 60s?

Browne was wonderful in the film DREAMCHILD as the aging Alice Liddle (the inspiration for Alice in Lewis Carroll's books), as she recalls her childhood with the author.

Uh, "Laura." He doesn't die at the end of "Laura."

Merv!

Word on the street was that he was quite endowed, so they say

I love Coral as Mercy Croft from the BBC in the Sister George film, twiddling with Susannah York's nipples like she was trying to find a radio station ... and that raised eyebrow of hers rivals Joan Fontaine's.

Here's the "bug zapper" commercial I referred to at R39. It's actually for a Citibank credit card.

I just finished "This Effing Lady" and as someone upthread pointed out, it's a very entertaining read. I can believe that Beaton and Price fucked Coral; she had a rockin' hot body well into her 50s (see Auntie Mame, she's appx 45 there). She was very proud of her sexual prowess and the fact that she was still perceived as sexual even when she got older. She said Beaton was always very fast about it. And at one point, she refers to Vincent (to a friend) as "one of the biggest closet queens in Hollywood," so there ya go. But they were fucking when they first got together.

OTOH, there is just no excuse for what a total shit she was to his kids. But he let her get away with it.

In an interview with the Lake Tahoe newspaper Moonshine Ink earlier this year,HAZEL COURT reminisced about her cleavage-baring roles:

Q: You were pretty sexy yourself, in fact downright ravishing.

Hazel: Thanks. I’ve always had a big bust, but it was never bigger when, newly pregnant with my son Jonathan, I filmed The Raven. One reviewer wrote that I was a, “sexy, lusty redhead in whose cleavage you could stash the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe along with a bottle of his favorite booze.” It’s my favorite review.

One of Hazel Court's biggest fans was writer Stephen King who mentions her in his various novels and of course he loved her bosom in The Raven.

Wow. I just watched him in a pretty good flick from 1956 called 'While The City Sleeps', a few days back. I had seen it years ago but couldn't remember a thing about it.

Vince was a big, strapping hunk of English Beef during the first 5 years or so of his Hollywood career, beginning in 1938. His hairline receded a great deal throughout the 1940's.

Excuse me for suggesting that Vincent Price was from England. I ALWAYS forget he wasn't!

[There is nothing more tedious than a race baiting troll. Except the people that talk to it.]

Great photo R56. Thanks for sharing. By the way,i understand what you mean when it comes to your confusion about his nationality. In fact, yes, he seemed like an Englishman.

I think one of Price's best roles is in "The Witchfinder General" aka "The Conqueror Worm" as he's just playing pure evil, with no camp.

My wife, the actress, Coral Browne.

I still love the mid-Atlantic speech--it was my idea of what an actor SHOULD sound like.

Yes, R60, he was excellent in that "straight" role. I also think Tomb of Ligeia is terrific. It's a great Halloween movie. I agree, R43, Serenade is total camp. An inexplicable offering from the great Anthony Mann. I believe he was briefly married to the leading lady, Sara Montiel.

I was born in and spent the first years of my life in England, and I still have what has been described by Americans as a "mid-Atlantic" or English accent even though English people never confuse my accent as being English other than at Heathrow or Gatwick. I was teased frequently about it when I was a kid in the late 80s/early 90s. It's not easy to deal with it especially when I couldn't really do anything to rid myself of it. When I was a budding gay, I came to like it in classic films, but dealing with it in real life was not pleasant at all. Classic films were a sort of refuge, a fantasy land in black and white, because people talked like me. In contrast, in school not only did I have to deal with being called "gay" and a "fag", which I knew and acknowledged early on, but I also had to have the voice that supposedly went with it and marked me as even more distinct from the kids at school. I also had (and have) a lisp and a stammer. I've gotten over those somewhat with age and medication, but that teasing is always in the background. Voice and accent have an enormous influence on life even in the United States.

I believe the correct term for his accent is "Mid Atlantic Faggot."

I especially love Vincent Price as the vain, flamboyant movie star in the Robert Mitchum/Jane Russell noir His Kind Of Woman from 1951.

One of the most entertaining movies around. Also has Raymond Burr and Jim Backus, among others.

r16 Thanks for the prompt. If Price made no other movie than "Theater of Blood," I'd be happy. It was extremely campy, and they managed to drag in a bunch of Brit character actors(including his soon-to-be wife, the actress, Coral Browne) who were a joy to watch. IMO, he was never a good actor, just less bad in some films as opposed to others. I don't believe he actually cared what people thought of his performances, as opposed to his role in "TOB."

[quote] Classic films were a sort of refuge, a fantasy land in black and white, because people talked like me.

MARY!

My favorite Vincent Price movie is "Theater of Blood" (1973), in which Price plays a hammy Shakespearean actor who sets out to kill the critics who panned his acting. The cast is a camp dream: In addition to Price and Coral Browne, "Theater of Blood" has Harry Andrews, Robert Morley (playing gay) and two veterans from TV's "The Avengers", Diana Rigg (playing Price's daughter) and Ian Hendry.

[quote]John Waters apparently worshiped him.

Is that why he's become him in his old age?

See "Champagne for Caesar"(1950) to see Price do comedy along side Ronald Colman, Celeste Holm and ...Art Linkletter. He's the funniest character in the movie and clearly having a lot of fun in the role.

Watching Vincent Price movies makes me realize how great horror/theater actors are.They are truly extinct in today's special effect movie world. Nowadays anybody can do a horror movie.

It is funny that until I read this thread I had no idea that Price was gay or had any queer tendencies at all. I had never seen or heard about his early films and only knew of him from his days as the host of PBS's 'Mystery' which was a very matter of fact and subdued kind of gig. His cameo in 'Edward Scissorhands' and his role as the unhinged archeology professor in the Brady Bunch Hawaii special were the only credits I ever associated with him. Millennials would have probably have no memory or knowledge of him at all.

I watched The Tomb of Ligeia yesterday evening because someone on this thread described it as a perfect Halloween movie. Oh boy, it was so horrible. It's basically a schlocky melodrama posing as a horror movie (and this is coming from someone who usually enjoys Corman movies). I thought at least the grand finale will be exciting but the last scene had Vincent Price fighting with a black cat. Talk about a catfight! But it would be fun to watch this movie and play a drinking game where you take a shot everytime that annoying black cat jumps out of nowhere. You'd probably be drunk before the ten minute mark. Luckily other movies I watched were much more fun so my Halloween wasn't completely ruined.

LOVE Price. Always have. One of my favorite actors. It's a crying shame that people today don't know him or his work. The philistines!

He and Karloff would have been a total blast to have at a party, I think.

I grew up on those old horror movies - yes, most of them are campy and goofy but they are so much fun!

I love Vincent Price too! He's so hammy! I watched "The Pit and the Pendulum" and I kept thinking they must have been laughing their assess off in between takes because the whole thing is so bad. It's good to know he was in on the joke and enjoyed making films, even if they were campy

I keep meaning to pick up the book written by his daughter. I really like old Roger Corman films, such as "The Pit and the Pendulum." I agree with the previous posters who have provided examples of good Vincent Price films. (video of his daughter)

Saw Price and Michele Lee in a summer stock DAMN YANKEES in the 70's.

I wrote him for an autograph sometimes in the early 1990s. He sent me a photo of himself. He used one of this smaller-sized personal envelops, and addressed the letter himself, I believe, in an old man's chicken-scratch handwriting.

Very nice R79. :)

I saw 'House of Usher' the other day. Mark Damon also starred in it. Guys, do you happen to know if Mark Damon and Matt Damon are related? I cannot find anything particular on the web about that.

Below, there is a photo of Mark Damon from 'House of Usher'

I forgot to thank R77 for his very interesting link and all the other posters who wrote their opinion about the great and 'notorious' Vincent Price.

Thanks~~~~~~~

*nothing in particular

Bumping this old thread (sorry to the "I hate old threads being bumped" DLers).

I watched House of Wax tonight and was mesmerized by Price. He had such presence.

Fun movie to watch in 3D.

Thanks for bumping, R83. I had forgotten this thread, and I enjoyed re-reading it.

There was an interview with Price on UK TV back in the 80s, where he talked about the skill of playing camp effectively, as opposed to playing a comic part. He said the trick was to be in on the joke, but to take care that the audience never believed that your character was also in on the joke - in other words, play it straight. I thought that was an interesting insight, and for some reason it has stuck in my mind all these years.

Vincent Price must have more movies on Amazon Prime than any other actor. There are pages of them. I don't much care for the costume horror, but The House on Haunted Hill and The Bat are fun.

I love watching his campy old horror movies around Halloween; the best place I've found is to watch them on Amazon Prime. Any other good source?

I recently watched Fall of the House of Usher (1944?) & VP plays it straight as a young handsome dandy without campy affectations. I can see why he stayed in the campy/horror genre - as an actor in conventional dramas he was good, but maybe nothing special.

I always found him repulsive and get slightly nauseous even thinking about him.

R24 No, not McTeer.

The late Carol Browne was angular and acerbic with tiny breasts. But McTeer is merely vaudeville. She exposes her mammoth breasts, pouts and rolls her eyes like a 'Black 'n'white Minstrel'.

Why did this silly old man trash his own reputation?

He appeared in some quality movies at first but everything after 1960 was ridiculous trash.

R89, if you equate camp with trash you do not belong at the DL.

Nor do you belong in this seven-year-old thread.

R89 I don't mind camp. (There is intelligent quality camp; many of Maggie Smith's performances are camp). Olivia de Haviland and Joan Crawford did one or two camp horror movies.

But there is also trash. The subject of this thread appeared in and revelled in cheap and nasty, B grade trash for decades.

R90, I'm not R89, but:

1. Being gay or being at the DL does not require a love of camp. I am as gay as a daisy in May, and I find it boring.

2. In 1944, Vincent Price had a strong supporting role in [italic] Laura[/italic]. In 1962, he was starring in Roger Corman's [italic] The Raven[/italic]. While the latter has its fans and is probably fun to watch if you like campy horror, you would have to be crazy to consider it in the same category as [italic] Laura[/italic] in terms of quality or reputation.

I've tried to watch some of those 1940s Fox A-grade quality movies but whoever Price appears on screen I can't stop myself from thinking of the ludicrous persona he adopted in the 60s.

This is hilarious. Not ten minutes ago I finished watching Theatre of Blood (guess how Vincent dies at the end?), I get on here and this 7-year-old thread is at the top. That is rich.

He needed the money. Like everyone else.

In case you still care - Matt Damon is NOT related to Mark Damon.......

There's no shame in it - there are any number of his contemporaries who no one remembers, but even the kids know who Vincent Price is. He stuck with his schtick and never seemed embarrassed by it or try to distance himself from it.

Price and Browne were both gay. They were the quintessential Lavender Marriage. So much so that when they attended Hollywood functions together as het man and wife other attendees felt compelled to stifle their giggles.

I imagine Merv Griffin and Price never hooked up as both come off as bossy bottoms. Probably liked the same rent boys.