The Man Behind The Famous Voice
Vincent Price spent decades terrifying audiences with a raised eyebrow, a perfectly timed pause, and a voice that made even dinner invitations sound dangerous. Away from the screen, however, he lived a far more complicated life involving art, food, three marriages, two children, and one deeply personal truth he never publicly defined.
Prime Video, House of Wax (1953)
He Was Born Into Privilege
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on May 27, 1911. His father was president of the National Candy Company, and the family’s wealth allowed young Vincent to attend private schools, travel through Europe, and explore interests far beyond his Midwestern upbringing.
Art Was His First Great Love
Price graduated from Yale University in 1933 after studying fine arts and English. He later continued his art studies at the University of London and the Courtauld Institute. Long before wax museums and haunted houses made him famous, he imagined building a serious life around paintings, sculpture, and art history.
Acting Interrupted The Plan
While studying in London, Price secured a small role in a production of Chicago at the Gate Theatre, making his stage debut on March 13, 1935. He soon played Prince Albert opposite Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina, first in London and then on Broadway. His scholarly career had been permanently interrupted.
Edith Barrett Became His First Wife
In 1938, Price married actress Edith Barrett, an accomplished stage performer who later appeared in films including I Walked with a Zombie. Their marriage coincided with his transition from Broadway to Hollywood, where the tall, polished young actor was initially marketed as a romantic leading man.
De Carvalho Collection, Getty Images
Fatherhood Changed His Private World
Price and Barrett welcomed their son, Vincent Barrett Price, in 1940. Known by his middle name, Barrett later became a poet, columnist, educator, and author. Price’s demanding career frequently took him away from home, beginning a lifelong struggle to balance professional ambition with fatherhood.
Hollywood Did Not Initially See A Monster
Price made his film debut in the 1938 comedy Service de Luxe. During the 1940s, he appeared in prestigious pictures including The Song of Bernadette, Laura, Leave Her to Heaven, and Dragonwyck. His cultured voice suggested sophistication, although it increasingly came with a trace of menace.
Screenshot from The Song of Bernadette, 20th Century Studios (1943)
His First Marriage Ended
Price and Edith Barrett divorced in 1948 after approximately ten years of marriage. The following year, he married costume designer Mary Grant, whom he had met while working on Up in Central Park. Mary would become much more than the wife waiting at home while Vincent made movies.
Michael Ochs Archives, Getty Images
House Of Wax Changed Everything
Price’s performance as the murderous sculptor Henry Jarrod in the 1953 3D thriller House of Wax transformed his career. The film’s success established him as a master of elegant menace, even though horror represented only a fraction of his total filmography. Audiences simply remembered his villains best.
Screenshot from House of Wax, Warner Bros. (1953)
He Learned To Enjoy The Coffins
Price did not regard horror as beneath him. He understood that audiences found his villains frightening partly because he played them with wit and intelligence. “I’m not the least bit disappointed that I’m remembered primarily for my horror roles,” he eventually said. He was having far too much fun to complain.
CBS Television, Wikimedia Commons
Mary Shared His Larger Curiosity
Mary Grant Price was an accomplished costume designer with Broadway and Hollywood credits of her own. Together, she and Vincent traveled, collected artwork, entertained constantly, and developed an unusually public partnership based on culture, conversation, and food. Their home became an extension of their restless curiosity.
Evening Standard, Getty Images
Their Home Was Almost A Museum
The Prices filled their Benedict Canyon home with paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and objects collected during their travels. Guests encountered art almost everywhere, including a towering Tlingit totem pole once owned by John Barrymore. Their daughter remembered the outdoor fire pit and pole as the center of family gatherings.
Pictorial Parade, Getty Images
They Wanted Ordinary People To See Art
In 1957, Vincent and Mary donated 90 works from their collection to East Los Angeles College. Price continued contributing artwork for decades, ultimately giving approximately 2,000 pieces. That teaching collection became the foundation of the Vincent Price Art Museum, one of his proudest legacies.
Sears Gave Him An Unusual Mission
From 1962 into the 1970s, Price worked with Sears to make original artwork available to middle-class shoppers. Pieces ranged from affordable prints to expensive originals. The horror star who frightened people inside movie theaters was quietly helping families purchase their first serious artwork at the local department store.
![Vincent Price [Misc.]](https://www.factinate.com/storage/app/media/theshot/2026/10/16/10-2.jpg)
He Was Also A Serious Gourmet
Vincent and Mary published A Treasury of Great Recipes in 1965, adapting dishes from celebrated restaurants around the world. He later hosted the British television series Cooking Price-Wise. Few stars could move so naturally from boiling victims in oil onscreen to explaining the correct preparation of an elegant sauce.
Screenshot from Cooking Price-Wise, Thames Television (1971)
Victoria Completed Their Family
Mary gave birth to their daughter, Mary Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962. Vincent was already 50, and Victoria grew up surrounded by movie stars, artists, elaborate meals, and unusual treasures. Her father’s fame seemed less remarkable to her than his enthusiasm for discovering something new.
He Was A Playful Father
Victoria later remembered traveling, fishing, visiting museums, and riding roller coasters with her father. She described him as “infinitely curious” and said he taught her that curiosity could keep life interesting forever. Behind the sinister laugh was a man who delighted in sharing the world with his daughter.
Ron Galella, Ltd., Getty Images
Edgar Allan Poe Made Him Immortal
Beginning with House of Usher in 1960, Price starred in Roger Corman’s cycle of films inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, and The Masque of the Red Death strengthened his image as horror’s most sophisticated villain.
Screenshot from The Pit and the Pendulum, American International Pictures (1961)
The Real Man Was Rarely Frightening
Friends and colleagues generally remembered Price as warm, funny, generous, and enthusiastic. He answered fan mail, lectured about art, cooked for guests, and happily laughed at his own macabre image. The wicked smile was real, but the wickedness largely disappeared when the cameras stopped.
Theatre Of Blood Changed His Marriage
While making Theatre of Blood, released in 1973, Price worked with Australian actress Coral Browne. Their relationship became romantic while his marriage to Mary was collapsing. Vincent and Mary divorced in 1973 after 24 years together, bringing their highly visible creative partnership to a painful conclusion.
Screenshot from Theatre of Blood, United Artists (1973)
Coral Became His Third Wife
Price married Coral Browne on October 24, 1974. Their marriage was affectionate, theatrical, witty, and unconventional by traditional Hollywood standards. Victoria later rejected suggestions that the relationship was merely for appearances, describing it as genuine and physically passionate.
Donaldson Collection, Getty Images
The New Marriage Complicated His Family
Victoria was 12 when her father married Coral. According to Victoria’s biography, tension with her new stepmother placed distance between father and daughter. Their relationship suffered for years, although Vincent and Victoria eventually found their way back to one another during the final period of his life.
Ron Galella, Ltd., Getty Images
He Had Learned To Challenge Prejudice
Price’s social conscience appeared publicly long before most actors risked discussing controversial issues. In 1950, he concluded an episode of his radio series The Saint with a warning against racial and religious hatred, urging Americans to judge people as individuals rather than through prejudice.
Oscar Wilde Became Deeply Personal
From 1977 through 1982, Price toured in the one-man play Diversions and Delights, portraying Oscar Wilde near the end of his life. The role required Price to confront the persecution Wilde suffered because of his relationships with men, bringing the actor unusually close to questions about love, judgment, and identity.
Fairfax Media Archives, Getty Images
His Daughter Eventually Came Out To Him
Victoria came out during the 1980s. She later recalled that her mother initially reacted painfully and warned her against telling Vincent. When Victoria eventually spoke to her father, however, he and Coral accepted her with love rather than rejection. The conversation also became unexpectedly revealing.
His Support Went Beyond His Family
Victoria recalled that her father joined PFLAG’s honorary advisory board, criticized Anita Bryant’s anti-gay campaign, and agreed to appear in a public service announcement addressing fear surrounding HIV/AIDS. Many of Vincent and Coral’s friends were gay, and the epidemic was devastating their community.
Tim Evanson from Washington, D.C., United States of America, Wikimedia Commons
One Part Of Him Stayed Publicly Undefined
Price never publicly identified himself as gay, bisexual, or romantically fluid during his lifetime. In the Hollywood system where he built his career, such a declaration could have destroyed professional opportunities. Still, no surviving statement proves whether career protection, privacy, dislike of labels, or some combination determined his silence.
NBC Television, Wikimedia Commons
New Generations Kept Finding Him
Price delivered the sinister spoken section of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” in 1982, introducing his famous voice to a new audience. His final feature-film performance came as the gentle Inventor in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands in 1990, revealing tenderness rather than terror.
Screenshot from Edward Scissorhands, 20th Century Studios (1990)
His Final Years Brought Painful Loss
Coral Browne died from cancer on May 29, 1991. Price, already struggling with serious health problems, lost the woman who had shared the final 17 years of his life. He died from lung cancer at his Hollywood Hills home on October 25, 1993. He was 82.
Victoria Began Reconstructing The Private Man
In 1999, Victoria published Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography. The book examined his marriages, career, contradictions, mistakes, and emotional life without reducing him to a movie monster. It also discussed long-standing questions about his sexuality, although Victoria initially stopped short of drawing a definitive conclusion.
Then She Shared What She Believed
During a 2015 interview, Victoria addressed the question more directly. “I am as close to certain as I can be that my dad had physically intimate relationships with men,” she said. She carefully acknowledged that some information came through others, while emphasizing what her father had personally told her.
His Private Life Resisted A Simple Label
Victoria later said she did not know whether her father would have called himself bisexual. She believed he would have understood the modern idea that sexuality can be fluid and resistant to labels. Vincent Price had loved women, formed deep relationships with men, and guarded that complexity while Hollywood knew him as something much simpler: the man waiting inside the haunted house.
unknown (20th Century Fox), Wikimedia Commons
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