He learned his culinary skills from his mother-”a one-woman home economics class. In his acting debut-as an angel in the school Christmas play-he forgot his lines. Price decided as a child that he wanted to be an actor, but he had better luck grounding himself in food and art. His father was able to save and make a success of one subsidiary, the National Candy Co., which provided sweets for the nation’s five-and-dime stores. His grandfather had made a fortune in baking powder, but lost it in the economic crash of 1893. Louis, the youngest of four children of well-to-do Margaret and Vincent Leonard Price. I haven’t been as ‘successful’ as some people, but I’ve certainly had more fun.”Īlthough his distinguished speech caused many to think Price was a native of Britain, he was born in St. “I’ve just done everything,” he told another questioner, “but I feel that I’ve had a good life. “Boris (Karloff), Basil (Rathbone), Peter (Lorre) and I knew we weren’t doing ‘Hamlet,’ but we also thought we were doing marvelous entertainment.” “We were all very serious about those pictures,” he said of his colleagues in the fright fraternity. “I’m not the least bit disappointed that I’m remembered primarily for my horror roles. “It’s the fact that you are type-cast that gives you your fame,” he told The Times in 1985. Price frequently borrowed Poe’s climactic line from “The Raven” when asked all too frequently if he objected to being type-cast as a villain: His character died before he had completed the youth’s hands, leaving dangerous metal scissors at the ends of his wrists. Price was still a force in film at age 80, when he performed a typical role as the kindly creator of a fantasy teen-ager, Edward Scissorhands. Price’s other horror films included a series based on the writings of Edgar Allen Poe (whom Price considered the greatest American author)-”The Raven,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The House of Usher,” “Tales of Terror,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” As the evil proprietor of a wax museum who chose to coat real bodies with wax-after he had killed them-the actor literally reached out to audiences wearing special viewing glasses for the three-dimensional effect. The “House of Wax” (1953) gave the genre and Price an extra boost because it introduced the short-lived technique of three-dimensional movies.
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