October 24, 2016 • 56 mins
If you only know of Vincent Price from his films, you may be surprised by his rich life story. Victoria Price joins the show to talk about her famous father and his life beyond the silver screen.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Matt, I'm no, I'm Ben, and we are Stuff
they Don't want you to know. Each week we cover
the latest and strangest in fringe, science, government cover ups,
allegations at the paranormal and more. New episodes come out
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you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff you missed in
(00:23):
History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson.
And in recent years, uh we have started this tradition
where we cover the life of a classic horror actor
each October as part of our sort of Halloween programming,
(00:46):
and this year is no different, but it's a little
bit different in terms of how we're doing it this time.
Vincent Price is perhaps the best known horror actor of
all time. His acting career started on the stage in
the Is when he was in his twenties, and he
eventually made the move to star in Hollywood films in
(01:06):
the nineteen fifties. Vincent's work in horror began with films
such as House of Wax and The Fly, and in
the nineteen sixties he worked with director Roger Corman on
a series of movies based on the works of Edgar
Allan Poe, beginning with my very very favorite House of Usher.
And this group of projects really made Vincent Price an
icon of Gothic cinema. But they were really just a
(01:27):
small part of a career which spanned more than five
decades and included literally hundreds of projects. So today, rather
than just telling you his life story, as we so
often do, we have the delight of welcoming his daughter,
Victoria Price to talk about her father. She wrote a
really fantastic biography of him, entitled Vincent Price, a Daughter's Biography. Yeah,
(01:50):
I highly recommend it. It is I don't think I
have ever read a deeper dive biography of anybody ever before.
It's quite amazing. In the interview actually does not go
into his acting career all that much, and that's because
Vincent Price was so much more than an actor. H
And even with my paired down list of questions, this
episode is going to run quite long because Victoria was
(02:11):
very gracious and let me just yap at her forever.
We're gonna jump right into that chat with Victoria Price,
and I hope that you will be surprised by what
an incredibly interesting life Mr Price led off screen. So
welcome to the podcast, Victoria Price. Thank you thanks for
having me on. But it is so exciting for me.
(02:34):
I can't even tell you. Regular listeners to our show
know that I am a huge fan of your father's
So this is like Halloween and Christmas and birthdays all
wrapped up together for me that uh. And I wanted
to just first talk about kind of one of the
most endearing things about your dad that you've written a
lot about and other people have too, and that was
(02:56):
the fact that he was incredibly cultured. Uh. And you know,
really had a great sense of aesthetics and was a
very smart man. But he was so disdainful of snobbery,
just a real person completely. Why do you think it
was always so important for him to stay so grounded,
even at the height of his fame. It's a really
(03:19):
good question. I don't think anybody's really asked me that
that way, But that's how he was raised, and I
think part of it came from being raised in the Midwest.
You know, he saw himself as a Midwestern boy. He
was raised in St. Louis in a wealthy family, um,
but not a family that saw itself as pretentious. Certainly,
(03:44):
his mother had aspirations of pretensions. She applied to be
a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. But
but it wasn't that sort of East Coast um kind
of sense of snobbery that might have been possible for him.
And so when he went to Yale, he was an
(04:09):
outsider in in a sense that most of the boys
came from the same schools as as one another, they've
known each other in high school, and then the Midwestern
and the West Coast boys were very different. So even
though his dad had gone to Yale and his older
brother had gone to Yale, he he felt very much
(04:31):
like a Midwesterner. I also think that he loved the arts,
and that made him kind of an odd ball growing
up as well, in the sense that he you know,
to love the arts, if you come out of a
business family, makes you kind of strange. And so I think,
and I say that, you know as as a good thing.
(04:55):
So I think that really made him somebody who saw
himself as an outsider, who didn't feel like he fit
the norm, And so he never was going to be
someone who viewed himself as better than anyone else. And
I think that really um made all the difference. And
(05:17):
you mentioned that he came from a wealthy family, and
there's a really interesting aspect of your father's life and
his sort of mentality regarding money that you talk about
a lot in your biography of him that he was
always convinced, due to the fact that his grandfather had
lost everything in the panic of that, he was ever
in danger of losing his money and his ability to
(05:39):
provide for the family. And I know that affected his career.
Can you talk a little bit about that. Yeah, I
think he was very fearful, uh, that that there wouldn't
be enough. Now, that's not how he lived his everyday
life like. He didn't walk around being paralyzed by fear.
But I do think that he may decisions that weren't
(06:02):
necessarily decisions based on I think I can say no
to this, I'm I'm okay. He always said yes. Not
only was he interested in everything, but he he also
wanted to say yes to a job coming into, money
coming in and I think that that's in part because
(06:26):
he did have fear that the next job might be
his last. And and certainly there are many actors who
who have that sense you know that it's not a
it's not a profession with assurances. But but I think
that was very strong for him, and in his early career.
(06:48):
I think a lot of people that maybe know him
from his his later gothic and horror films don't realize
that he really started on Broadway and even before that
on the London stage playing Albert in Victoria Regina, which
is near and dear to my heart as well, um,
And I think it's interesting that one he started on
the stage, but two he was so lauded for that
(07:09):
performance early on that he pretty quickly started getting offers
to do films, but he initially turned a lot of
them down and was reluctant to take romantic leads. Can
you talk about the way he wanted to be a
character actor? He really did, and I think that he
was so handsome that nobody really saw that as a possibility.
(07:32):
And for him, it was not interesting to be kind
of a fluffy actor, a lightweight actor, somebody who was
just going to be in in comedy rules or in
leading man roles. It really wasn't what he wanted to do.
And so when he got the movie contract, was a
(07:55):
million dollar movie contract in the middle of the depression,
and he asked his co stars advice. And his co
star was Helen Hayes, the first lady of the American Theater,
and she had had a long and storied career, and
he asked her advice what to do, and she said,
(08:16):
do you want to just be, you know, a flash
in the pan, And he said, of course not. And
so that was really the impetus for him to do
something different. She said, if you don't learn your craft,
then you're just going to fade out. You need to
learn how to become an actor. And so he stayed
(08:39):
on Broadway, but he also did summerstock because in those days,
Broadway stay closed in the summer because there was no
air conditioning. So that was really his impetus to learn
how to become an actor, and that's what he wanted,
and that's what he did. And you mentioned that he
was so terribly handsome that of course they were offering
(09:01):
him those rules, which makes me have to ask about
his multiple nose breaks with he would reset on his
own in most cases, and he seemed really reluctant to
actually have a doctor fix his nose for a long time.
Why do you think he was so trepidacious about it.
(09:21):
I think they he thought they might pretty em up,
And you know, he liked having having a nose that
had some distinction to it. I love it. And there's
some interesting political stuff that you wrote a lot about
with your father, and I know, unfortunately, I know I've
seen online like people will cherry pick parts of of
your father's politics when he was very young and sort
(09:42):
of impressionable and making kind of not the best choices,
um are not the best assessments of situations. Will you
talk a little bit about one, why you shared kind
of those parts of his political journey, and also you
know how you see him going from those kind foolish
writings that he did when he was very young and
traveling through Europe up through when he became really very
(10:05):
liberal later in life. Yeah, I included them. So in
doing research, I found my father writing things that really
surprised me, but particularly anti Semitic things, which was completely
shocking to me because it seemed so unlike the man
I knew he was the least racist or um discriminatory
(10:29):
person you know, you could possibly meet. And so I thought,
who was this person and what I realized was that
he came from a certain class background, UM, where that
was the norm. I mean, Roosevelt turned away Jewish refugees
(10:51):
in boats on our shores. Uh. And you know, we
think of Roosevelt as being this incredible liberal president, which
he was, but that was there was a great deal
of anti semitism in this country. And of course, now,
given everything that's going on politically in our country, that's
(11:11):
probably not so surprising. But when I wrote the book
in and we were in a seemingly much more open
minded and liberal um. And I don't mean that politically liberal,
I mean just liberally open minded um phase than we
are now. To talk about someone's um anti semitism or
(11:33):
discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity seems, you know,
it seems like, wow, they must have been a freak.
Now we're seeing all sorts of things in our country
about how all of those undercurrents continue to exist and um.
And I wrote what I wrote because I wanted to
(11:54):
show that someone can change their mind, and someone can
recognize the air of their way. Someone can look at
how they grew up or what they were taught by
the world in which they lived, and choose to think differently,
choose to recognize that we don't need to discriminate against
(12:14):
other people based on anything. And that's what happened to
my dad, And that's why I included in the book.
I'm so glad you did, because it is a really
sort of beautiful story of how he shifted his mindset
and also talking about politics. You found out really after
his death that he had been on the Gray List
(12:35):
during the McCarthy era, and I know he had talked
about it somewhat when you were when he was still alive,
but you didn't really know the depth of his involvement
in that whole uh dramatic proceedings. Will you talk about
that a little bit? Yeah, I knew that he had
been gray listed because he and I did talk about that,
because I became very interested in that in high school.
(12:58):
I was studying the McCarthy era and I remember talking
to him about it. And in my high school history
book there was a photograph of McCarthy with his two
right hand men, and one was of course Roy Khne,
who we've all heard about, but the other's last name
was Shine, and it was an unusual spelling of the
name Shine, and it sort of rung a bell, and
(13:21):
I went and did some research on it, and I
found out that that man was the father of our
student body president in my school, and she was I
was on the student council. She was somebody I saw
at every student council meeting. And so it, you know,
here was this period that I found so despicable and
(13:46):
just perfectly normal. Nice girl's father had been responsible for
ruining the lives of so many people and spewing all
this Vitriolso it brought it home to me, and I
asked my dad then when I was in high school, fifteen,
in that class, about that period of time, and so
(14:06):
he told me his story, and then towards the end
of his life, he elaborated a little bit more about
how his name was cleared, and my mom told me
a little bit more. But what I didn't really know
um was what he had to do to clear his name.
And when I was cleaning out his house towards the
very end of all of that, I found a a
(14:31):
Manila envelope hidden behind the air conditioner in his house.
Now that house was a house he moved into in
the late eighties, and he had moved many times since
the nineteen fifties. So he had carried that piece of
paper with him and saved it. And that was the
(14:53):
really interesting thing to me because it showed me how
afraid he was. And it was the document that he
signed is the FBI to clear his name, and in
it he said many things that I know he did
not believe, and things like anyone who pleads the fifth
is an American. And so knowing that, Um, I was
(15:16):
really kind of blown away by by what he had
to do to clear his name. I had some judgment
about it, and I remember UM going and telling um
my uncle Eddie, who was Eddie Albert, that I had
(15:37):
just found this and he was just about the nicest,
most easy going human being on the planet. And he
ripped my head off. He said, you know, how dare
you judge somebody you don't know what it was like then,
And he proceeded to tell me that his wife, my
beloved aunt Marco Um had been black did and never
(16:01):
worked again during that era. And so I really um understood,
and I've understood even more as I've gone through my life, UM,
what my dad went through and what he felt he
(16:21):
needed to do to get his life back and he
made a little bit of a deal with the devil,
and yet may remain so afraid throughout his life that
it could still come back to bite him. And I
think that's really been for me um a real lesson
in humility and understanding that we can never judge another person.
(16:48):
So it's kind of sobering, I think, to realize that
even decades after McCarthy is m someone as prominent as
Vincent Price still harbored very real fear about it. And
I think there's a perception that once that raw was over,
people were like, WHOA, They're glad that's done with and
then not that it's still continued to be such a
presence in people's minds. Yeah. So next up things are
(17:12):
going to take a little bit of a lighter turn.
We're going to talk about Vincent Price's love of animals,
but first we will have a quick sponsor break. You
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(18:18):
is that there are some communities that survived that first
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your free month today. Go to the Great Courses Plus
dot com slash stuff. Remember the Great Courses Plus dot
com slash stuff as parromise. There is some animal talk
up next, and Holly is going to ask Victoria a
(19:26):
million questions about a topic that's almost as central to
Vincent Price's life as his acting career, which is his
deep love of art. I think most people probably don't
know unless they have read biographies about your father that
he was a huge animal lover, uh and even wrote
(19:48):
a book about one of his dogs. He did. He
wrote a wonderful book called The Book of Joe, which
we've just re released this year, and it's it's a
I think, one of his sweetest books. I did the
audiobook recording of it last year, and and when I
did it it, of course I'd read the book many times,
(20:11):
but reading it in his voice, um, I mean I
wasn't trying to sound like him. Who can found like him?
But reading you know what he sounded like. Writing it
first of all reminded me of who he was and
how much I loved that. But just the sweetness and
the humor that he had was incredibly endearing. And it's
(20:32):
a wonderful, wonderful book book of Joe about a dog
and his man. It's so sweet, um it is. It's
I mean, I'm an animal person, so it's always so endearing,
especially when you consider that too many people your dad
was such an icon of like villainy. To just picture
him like so completely enamored of his pets is very
(20:54):
very sweet. I feel like we really cannot talk about
your father without talking about art. That it would be
supremely weird not to talk about art. Um. One of
the things that you mentioned in your book that was
to me revelatory the first time I read it was
the fact that he bought his first piece of art
with his allowance when he was eleven. I know, it's
(21:17):
not unbelievable. Yeah, he was walking by a an art
gallery in St. Louis, Missouri, where he grew up, and
he fell in love with this piece of art in
the window. It was a first state rembrandt etching, and
so he decided to go in and talk to the
gallery owner. And you know, to this day, I blessed
that gallery owner who didn't have to do this, who
(21:39):
could have just laughed at this kid, but instead instead
saw a kid who was so earnest and interested in art,
and he made a payment plan with him. And so
my dad spent the next three years saving up all
of his money and he would go in and make payments.
And when he finally paid that piece off and took
(22:00):
possession of his first work of art, he was just
absolutely um so blown away by owning his first piece
of art. And uh, it changed his life. It gave
his life a focus. At the end of his life,
someone gave him a little pin and it said art
saves lives. And really that is how he felt, without hyperbole,
(22:24):
that art had saved his life because it gave him
a whole sense of purpose and focus in the world. Well,
and he was in fact planning to teach art history
and did teach for a year. M hmm, and I
think he would have made the most wonderful professor. Well,
and he did, I mean, he did continue to teach
(22:45):
the masses in many ways about art. Um. One of
the other art stories that I wanted to mention that
you also have in your book is the piece that
he purchased when he was living in New York. Uh,
the Zapata painting, which was so massive it took up
an entire wall and you couldn't really look at it
(23:07):
properly unless you laid down unto the kitchen table. Yeah,
it was meant to be seen from below. And he
got at home and he realized that and he was
he was like, oh, and so he would lie down
under the kitchen table, you know, to really see it,
which is so cute. And he he felt that it
(23:27):
was too important of a painting for him to keep.
So it's now at the Chicago Art Institute, where I've
been able to see it, and it's it's an amazing
thing to be able to go see the art that
that my dad collected. And I'm so grateful that he
believed that art was not something to be owned, but
rather something that you care take and that was that
(23:47):
was something he truly truly felt. And so I've been
able to continue to enjoy a lot of the art
that I grew up with because it's in institutions, and
I think that's a really wonderful way to live, to
not feel that you have to own something um forever,
(24:11):
or that you know you're sort of your stamp is
on it, but really that you are part of the
legacy of a piece. And I think that's that's just
a beautiful thing it is. I also like the part
of that story where he um allowed art students to
come and lie down under his kitchen table to also
enjoy enjoy that sweet it's very dear uh. And he
(24:36):
also championed the recognition and preservation of Native American art
and culture, which I met most people. He fell in
love with Native American art growing up in St. Louis
because they'd go out to Kohokio, which is one of
the great mound cultures and an incredible place to visit
if you're in the St. Louis area. It's actually on
the other side of the River Um. And then he
(25:00):
was sent to a summer camp where he was very
reluctant to go, but ended up discovering a Native American
burial ground and notified the authorities and had his picture
in the paper. And so this just enamored him with
learning more about Native American culture, and he began collecting
(25:21):
Native American art when he was in his thirties. And
in the nineteen fifties he was appointed to something called
the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, which is part of
the Department of the Interior, by President Eisenhower. And he
remained on that for fifteen years and he chaired it
the last five years. So, uh, it was something that
(25:45):
was very important to him, and it's a very important
part of his legacy. And again, you know, I think
a wonderful example of you know, he he was someone
who was very open to and interested in other cultures.
And so he himself recognized that the anti Semitic beliefs
that he was trained to believe weren't true to who
(26:09):
he was. And that's that's also part of the legacy
to to change his mind. You know, we forget that
we hear these words in the Bible or in in
spiritual traditions that seem like words we don't really understand,
and and they sound like they're beating us over the head,
(26:30):
like repent. You know, you see some Boddy fulmin at
the mouth and yelling on TV the word repent, repent,
But the word repent really just means change your mind,
rethink of something. And he was somebody who was willing
to look at what no longer served him in terms
of his thinking and change his mind. And I think
(26:53):
that that's that is an incredible legacy for me to
live with. Well, it takes a great deal of maturity.
I think that it is hard to engage with sometimes
as a human to acknowledge like, no, that was incorrect,
and I have to be better than that. It's hard
to let go of things at times. You mentioned you
(27:15):
mentioned his connection with the White House and he also
served on the White House Art Committee during the Kennedy administration.
Uh to actually bring art into the White House, which
is pretty cool. Yes, you know, it's a wonderful Speaking
of legacies, so um, Mrs Kennedy recognized that the White
(27:37):
House had been sort of treated like each president's own home.
They moved in, they fixed it up the way they wanted,
and she thought, well, that's crazy. This is a national monument,
this is a historic monument. We we shouldn't be treating
it like like you know, you're buying a home and
you're gonna change the fixtures and because you might like
the color blue. And so she put together a committee
(28:02):
of people to buy art that would be owned by
the United States government. Um, but it's art that then
each president can choose from. And one of the things
that was really really moving to my father was that
he donated a piece which was a watercolor of some
(28:24):
clouds by the Hudson Valley painter Albert Bierstadt. And that
was the piece that President Kennedy himself loved the most,
and he hung that on the end of his bed,
and UM, my dad really found that. Um, he just
(28:45):
loved knowing that somebody had such a personal relationship to
that piece that he had donated. I love that story
so much. And speaking of his love of art and
the Democrat to the san of art, I wanted to
talk to you some about the Sears Roebuck art program
because even when I mentioned this to people like oh, no,
(29:07):
Vincent Price was buying art for Sears Roebuck to then
sell to the masses. They think that what he was
doing was buying art and they were making prints. But no,
he was buying originals, and Sears Roebuck was cultivating those
in galleries and selling them. Yeah. An amazing thing. Yeah,
you could play a Picasso or a Dolly or a
we Ared or a whistler on your Sears credit card
(29:29):
with a money back guarantee. That crazy, dear, What that
is really quite funny, I know. Uh. Yeah, that program
really took up so much of his life and was
such a passion for him. Yes. Uh, you speak in
your book so much about both your father and mother
(29:50):
working on that sort of tirelessly and constantly traveling the
world and finding new pieces to add. Uh. It's one
of those things that still blows me away. I think
as people today would have some difficulty accepting this information
because it's so outside people. I say that and people laugh,
you know. But I can't tell you the number of
(30:12):
people who have come up to me and said, I
began buying art because I bought my first piece from
your dad at Sears Roebuck. It was it was a
serious and important thing, and it really really changed some
people's lives. I love it, um, and now I'm in
to shift gears though. I can talk about art and
your dad I think forever. But also one of my
(30:35):
great loves and your dad's is cooking, uh, which was
kind of in the blood. His grandfather invented cream of
tartar and went on to developing powder baking powder. It
was a cream of tartar baking powder, yeah uh, and
went on to develop a number of flavoring extracts and
other things. Um. And it's so I sort of associate
the kitchen as being in the price blood at that point. Um.
(30:58):
I have a copy of a Treasury of Great Recipes
that my husband got me quite a number of years ago,
and I think, I cry to me, I love it
so much. But will you talk a little bit about
his love of cooking and how he ended up writing cookbooks?
You bet uh? So uh. My pat answer is that
he loved to eat. My dad loved to eat, So
(31:21):
that's kind of how it all started. First while he
was six ft four and if his metabolism was anything
like mine, you know, he loved to eat, and he
ate a lot, and and he could, you know, more
easily than than other people. And so he um began eating.
He loved to learn anything, so he liked to learn
(31:43):
how to cook. My mother was an excellent cook, and
they spent a lot of time in the kitchen together.
And then when they traveled the world, that they really
began collecting recipes and design elements and doing all of
these very very cool things. And it was really Sears
Roebuck again that came up with this idea of creating
(32:07):
this cookbook, and so they collaborated with my dad too
and my mom, both of them to create this cookbook
that was a big, big deal. It's old three copies
when it first came out, and it became, after it
(32:28):
fell out of print, the eighth most popular outprint book
of any kind, and so we released a fiftieth anniversary
edition of it last year and it's still immensely popular.
Somebody just sent me an email. They're doing a blog
this month. Every day they're cooking a different recipe. The
(32:49):
New York Times just did a piece last week on
chicken tetrazini, including the recipe from from the cookbook. And
this week, uh, we are releasing the second cookbook from
that series, which was also in collaboration with Sears, which
is called Come into the Kitchen. And that was another
(33:10):
book that both my dad's dad and mom did and
it's a sort of a history of American cuisine, which
again was a very populous thing to do because everything
was all about Europe, Europe, Europe, and my dad was
very much uh an advocate of what was coming out
of this country. Now we think of ourselves as this
(33:33):
artistic and creative as well as financial and you know, global, military, whatever, superpower.
But when my dad was coming up, we were still
very much in the shadow of Europe, and we were
a very young, young country, and so cooking we weren't
thought of as having a culinary history, and and that
(33:56):
was something that was really important for him to promote
as well. Do you ever cook from either of the cookbooks? Yea,
I will say this, and I tell everyone this. I
like proselytize around the section in a Treasury of Great Recipes.
It's very brief, but it's where your mother and father
talked about the way that they handle rue like a
(34:18):
rue base where they would do the prep and then
freeze it and then they would use a melon baller
to just get out however much they needed whenever. Pretty brilliant, right,
it is brilliant. I do it now and it works
like a charm. There are some incredible recipes in those cookbooks,
(34:40):
including probably my all time favorite lobster bisc recipe of
all time, which is super rich and very delicious, and
coming up, Victoria is going to speak about a recent
interview and which she talked about her father's very personal life.
But before we dive into that, we're going to take
a quick break for a word from one of our sponsors.
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(35:02):
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So now we are going to hear some really uh,
(36:07):
very frank and open discussion from Victoria about sharing information
about her father's sexuality and her mindset about protecting her
father's image. The next thing I want to talk about
is a little more modern and a thing that came
up with you in an interview last year, and when
(36:29):
you were promoting the reprint of the book, you chosen
an interview to address the rumors about your father's sexuality
and confirm that based on the knowledge you had, you
believed that he had indeed had sexual experiences with men
as well as women. And I know from reading both
your book and your blog that you are very thoughtful
about what you share of both yourself and your father's story.
(36:53):
So can you talk about what led you to make
the decision that this was something that you wanted to share.
And at that time, when I was writing his biography,
so many people asked me or assumed that he was bisexual,
and I felt that if I was going to just
say no, I don't think he was, well, what basis
(37:16):
did I have to say that? And I remember talking
to Ronny McDowell and saying, you know, Roddy, I've I've
talked to all these people. They've said to me, oh,
I have absolute proof that your dad was bisexual. And
then I would follow the bouncing ball to that line
of whatever the proof was, and there was nothing there.
You know, he winked at me. He was in a
gay bar, you know, But I mean, there was no
(37:38):
nothing that I would call proof. And I was really
relieved in a way not to find anything, because I
felt that there was all this focus on what what
happened versus who my dad was, which was one of
the most open minded, loving supportive people in UM towards
(38:01):
gays and lesbians, and at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic,
he did one of the first, if not the first,
public service announcements about not being afraid of AIDS at
a time where most of uh, sort of the bigger
people associated with Hollywood were, um, we're ignoring it. And
that's not to say all of them, certainly Elizabeth Taylor
(38:22):
was doing wonderful stuff. You know, there were many people
who were, but Ronald Reagan, who was certainly a peer
of my debts and was the President United States, was
obviously doing everything he could to ignore it. And that
is in part what created no support for the AIDS
epidemic in the public health sector. So, um, it was
(38:45):
really much more important for me to talk about that,
which is what I got to talk about. But as
time went on and people began giving me more information
which was unsolicited, I wasn't out there looking for it.
I realized that I had the feeling that I was
protecting something, and I was uncomfortable with that. I thought,
(39:06):
what am I protecting? And and I was brought up
to protect my dad's image all the time to be
really concerned that um, he he'd be seen in the
best light. And and so I thought, well, okay, so
who taught me that? My mom taught me that it
(39:27):
wasn't really something that my dad cared so much about.
It was really more how my mom believed that he
should be seen. So I really started feeling that I
was acting kind of from a childlike place of fear
(39:48):
instead of a grown up place of of love. And
I was on doing a radio interview one day and
a guy asked me the question, and I just said
something ing and and it was again that that what
was much more important to me than than whether my dad,
(40:10):
you know, had relationships with men and women or not.
And and although at this point, I'm, you know, fairly sure,
of course I wasn't there, thank god, UM, but you know, I, UM,
it's certainly something that has been affirmed by other people. UM,
So in so far as that's something that probably is true,
(40:35):
I still felt that the most important part of the
story was that my dad was somebody who went through
the world was an open heart and an open mind
and was supportive of everyone. And now I think there's
so much fluidity, much more fluidity around the idea of
gender and sexuality anyway. And frankly, I think you would
(40:58):
have been so much happier in this world. Not happy
about the political situation, but happier in a world in
which young people at least are leading the way to
have so much more open heartedness and how they connect
with other people, because that's who my dad was. And
(41:19):
that kind of leads beautifully into my my next question,
which maybe you've just answered, which is that people who
never met your father and only know him through his
films love him like deeply love him even now decades
after his death. And why do you think he even
when playing villains, people just fell so deeply in love
(41:39):
with him. It's an interesting thing, isn't it. And I
you know, this is a man who we started his
Facebook page less than three years ago and he has
two hundred and fifteen thousand Facebook likes and just growing.
That's incredible, right, And some people who were four are
(42:00):
far bigger stars than he was during his lifetime, are
more or less forgotten. And he who who had a
very long career but was by no means the biggest
of Hollywood stars, has been remembered. I think in part
it's because his fan base is the horror community. Who
gets him? Who got him? Who? Really? People are always like, well,
(42:24):
you know, do you think he regretted being type cast?
You know, that's giving the idea that horror fans, you know,
have no other interests outside of horror. That's not true.
So they got that he was a renaissance man. They
got his interest in the arts. They got because the
horror films are among the most artistic, not you know,
(42:47):
the slasher, blood spurting out ones necessarily, but the gothic
horror is incredibly artistic and beautiful. And and so here's
my dad coming out of um that genre and connecting
with people who of poetry, you know, Edgar Allan Poe
and um. So I think that it's it's in large
part due to the horror fans, to whom I will
(43:08):
always be grateful. But the other thing I think is
something that I thought might necessary, not necessarily serve him.
I thought, you know, it's too bad that he never
got to play one of those Dracula Branket Spein type parts,
a monster, a particular character. But because he really didn't,
what happened was that he came through all of his parts.
(43:31):
And I think that what makes people last is when
there's something beneath they're public persona, a kind of charisma
and and uh, something in which we are personally interested.
And I think that shines through his performances. So here's
this person playing scary people, right. And I think a
(43:55):
lot of people are drawn to the horror genre because
it's a way, it's a it's a form of catharsis,
it's a way of working your your stuff out by
going into the dark and facing the things you're most
scared of in handling it and coming out. And here's
this man who, no matter what he was doing, and
oh my god, you know, he did a lot of
horrible things. He made people eat their own poodles for
(44:15):
having's sake. So here is a man who was doing
these horrific things and you never could hate him, and
you always had this sense that he was okay, you know,
he was not scary. So for anyone who hasn't seen
any of your father's films, which is a shocking concept
(44:37):
to wrap my head around, but which do you think
is the best one for a new a newbie to
start with a horror um? Any of his films? Mm hmm,
that's a good question. Well, I think he'd have to
go with something like House of Whack or House on
(45:00):
Haunted Hill, um, one of those fifties ones, and then
probably from there maybe the Corman Poe films. Um. But
those fifties ones are so great and he's so lovely
evil it's really kind of fabulous. So I think I
(45:21):
think I've got to go with them. Okay. Uh. And
then my final question for you, is that your father,
as we've been talking about, has really become a larger
than life figure and an entertainment icon for a lot
of people. Is there anything that you wish people knew
about him that isn't usually mentioned when he has talked
about I think the thing that interests me most is
(45:44):
that he understood that celebrity is a currency in our society.
It is something that really matters in our society, for
better or for worse. But he understood that an actor's
public servant. That if you were an actor, you need
your audience to support you. Otherwise you're you're not getting
(46:06):
paid for your work. And so here is this man
who understands that, he understands how to keep himself in
the public eye, and yet what he does with that
is he uses that to help other people. He understood
(46:31):
how people regarded him and what they wanted from him,
and he used that to give back. And I think
that if we had more of that in our world now,
it would be an extraordinary thing. I am staying with
a friend right now, and I've never watched the Voice, uh,
(46:54):
and she loved the Voice, So I was watching it,
um and I was really cheered by how supportive and
excited all the the um the different celebrities singers are
who come on and work with these young people. And
(47:15):
that's what my dad did in a very quiet way
all the time, so he didn't necessarily have to be
on TV to do it. He would correspond with a
young person regularly. He would commission an original work of
art from a young artist. He would send a young
artist tickets to hear him speak if he was speaking
(47:39):
in a nearby area. He was constantly in touch with
young artists and supportive of them pursuing a career in
the arts. And I wish more people would see that
their celebrity can be used as a form of philanthropy. Um.
(48:02):
And I'm not saying people don't do that. I mean,
certainly we hear a lot about people like Angelina Jolie
and what she's done as a human umanitarian in the world.
So UM, I'm not saying he was unique in it.
But he did it because he loved people, and that
(48:23):
is the best reason to do anything. He did it
from a pure, open hearted place, and I that is
the thing I would like people to remember more about
him than oh he scared me to dad, Although that's
good too. Yeah, but it's a beautiful example to set
for the future. Um, Victoria, thank you so much for
(48:48):
sharing this time with me. I feel so spoiled. Oh
it was such a pleasure. And honestly, it was so
fun listening to your questions because I feel like you
know him as well as I you and that's been
one of the real gifts for me of what I do.
I if you had told me when I was younger
that I would be just, you know, going around talking
(49:11):
about my dad and I'm in my fifties, I would
have thought, oh my god, don't you have something better
to do. But the fact of the matter is that
I get this wonderful, wonderful, um opportunity to share someone
I love with other people who love him. I mean,
I love my dog, and you know, nobody's asking me
(49:34):
to be on their podcast to talk about how much
I love my dog. And so for me, I feel
like it's such a gift to love someone so much,
feel that he is so loved by other people, and
and to get to share that. And it's almost like
(49:57):
I am part of this big family. We're all out
of Vincent Price's family, and that you know, so I
feel like, oh, my god, there you are, and you
know who he was. You you know things about him
and and they matter to you, and I just that's
really really cool to me. It's cool to me too. Um,
where can people find you? Because I'm sure that they
(50:20):
will want to hear more of your your writing and
possibly your lectures as you travel around, So where can they?
Absolutely thank you for asking? So, for Vincent Price, we
have a website which is www. Vincent Price dot com.
And I have my website which is Victoria Price dot com.
I think the website that I'm keeping most up with
(50:41):
is my website, which is Daily Practice of Joy dot com.
I write a weekly blog about creating a practice of
joy that's very much inspired by my father, and I
do go all over the country in the world talking
about my dad and talking about joy. And I have
a new book out, Joy that will be coming out
(51:02):
in the beginning of which I'm I'm really excited about.
And so I try to keep up on social media
as well. And that's almost easier than keeping the website
up because I'm kind of a one man band and
you only have so many hands. So my my personal
social media for Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and all
(51:25):
those things. Is one brave life. And my dad very
appropriately is master of Menace and he's on everything as well, Facebook, Twitter, PINTERESTU, Instagram,
and I try to post regularly and have a lot
of fun doing it. Excellent. We will put all of
that in the show notes as well, so people have
(51:45):
a handy guide. Thank you, thank you, thank you so
much for being with us. I can't tell you how
much I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on
this show. And I can't wait to hear Pupil's response. Okay,
(52:05):
so I totally fangirled out during that interview, but Victoria
was incredibly gracious and wonderful, and I could have talked
with her forever. I am a fan of hers almost
as much as I am of her father's. I have
read her book, of course, but also her blog for
some time. She's just a really lovely writer, and she
examines the world in a way that is very enlightening.
(52:25):
I think, so if you're interested in learning more about
Vincent Price's life, her book is a very thorough and
very honest biography, and it weaves Vincent's own writing and
accounts from other people into the narrative, so it's really
quite rich. She originally wrote that in six years after
Vincent Price died, but a new edition of it came
out in His life was so full of unique experiences
(52:48):
that it's really easy to see how he truly lived
by one of his most famous quotes, which was a
man who limits his interests limits his life. So thank
you once again to Victoria Price for being so wonder
full and sharing so many stories about her father's life.
We will include all of those links that she mentioned
in the show notes. Uh. And now I will do
(53:08):
a very brief listener mail because this episode is running
super long. Um. This one is from our listener G. S. Denning,
who sent us a book. Uh and rites. Dear Holly
and Tracy. I have been a listener and fans since
twn and I just caught up to the Salt Lake
Comic Con historical fiction podcast. Oh it made me guilty.
(53:32):
Remember when the authors talked about what a rich vein
history podcasts were and how you were the underappreciated curators
of their content. Well, in twelve I started writing a
goofy nerdy Sherlock Holmes send off based in late Victorian London.
The whole time I was listening to your podcast, mining
you guys for inspiration and fun snippets from history that
I could incorporate and lampoon. I got a lot of them.
(53:54):
Things went well. I sold that book and it's out
in stores now. What I did not do is thank
you as you deserve and closed you will find a
copy of my book, Warlock Holmes, a Study in Brimstone,
and closed in that you will find a ton of
previous podcast topics from racial information mine from your episode
on Pablo Funk to the Gunpowder plot to cameos by
Elizabeth Blackwell and Emperor Norton. You guys have been with
(54:17):
me all the way. Hell Hound of the Baskervilles is
due out next May, and the year after that book three,
by which time I'll have recycled material from your episodes
on the Great Stink Boudica, Ned Kelly, Victorian Albert, the
Wedding Traditions episode. Thank you for setting me right on
that wretched take, the Potato Famine, the Luddites, the Opium Wars,
and accused by a ghost. At least it is a
(54:38):
lonely thing to write a book. Imagine yourself as a
die hard star Wars fan. Okay, that's done. I lived
that life. Uh. Now, imagine Star Wars was never released
to the public and you're the only person who knows
about it. That's what authorship is. But all through it,
all the ups and downs of getting an agent and
getting a publisher and agonizing and editing and worrying that
people won't like it, to rejoicing when it turns out
that they do. You've been my instant support and inspiration.
(55:01):
I bet there are dozens like me, maybe hundreds, people
with a well spring of gratitude and love for you
and the work that you do, who have never taken
the time to let you know what it means to them.
So I'm letting you know. Thank you, G. S. Denning. Uh.
And we got a book along with this, so I
will probably read it first because I'm selfish and it
looks very funny. Uh. So I will be reading Warlock Holmes,
(55:23):
and then I will hand it off to Tracy, because
again I am selfish. Thank you so much for sharing that.
That was such a sweet letter and it made me
chuckle and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Uh. If
you would like to write to us, you can do
so at History podcast at how stuff Works. We're also
available across all social media as missed in History, so
that's Twitter at mist in History, Facebook dot com, slash
(55:45):
mist in History, Pinterest dot com slash mist in History,
missed in History dot tumbler dot com, and Instagram at
miss in History. If you would like to visit our
parents site, which is how stuff works dot com, you
can do that. Go there, type in something interesting in
the search bar. You will churn up so much content
that you can enjoy and occupy yourself with. You can
come and visit Tracy and me at missed in History
(56:07):
dot com, where you can find a backlog of all
of the episodes of the show ever of all time,
as well as show notes for any of the ones
Tracy and I have worked on together. So we encourage
you come and visit us online at missed in history
dot com and how stuff Works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
(56:28):
works dot com.
I'm Matt, I'm no, I'm Ben, and we are Stuff
they Don't want you to know. Each week we cover
the latest and strangest in fringe, science, government cover ups,
allegations at the paranormal and more. New episodes come out
every Friday on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and anywhere else
you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff you missed in
(00:23):
History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson.
And in recent years, uh we have started this tradition
where we cover the life of a classic horror actor
each October as part of our sort of Halloween programming,
(00:46):
and this year is no different, but it's a little
bit different in terms of how we're doing it this time.
Vincent Price is perhaps the best known horror actor of
all time. His acting career started on the stage in
the Is when he was in his twenties, and he
eventually made the move to star in Hollywood films in
(01:06):
the nineteen fifties. Vincent's work in horror began with films
such as House of Wax and The Fly, and in
the nineteen sixties he worked with director Roger Corman on
a series of movies based on the works of Edgar
Allan Poe, beginning with my very very favorite House of Usher.
And this group of projects really made Vincent Price an
icon of Gothic cinema. But they were really just a
(01:27):
small part of a career which spanned more than five
decades and included literally hundreds of projects. So today, rather
than just telling you his life story, as we so
often do, we have the delight of welcoming his daughter,
Victoria Price to talk about her father. She wrote a
really fantastic biography of him, entitled Vincent Price, a Daughter's Biography. Yeah,
(01:50):
I highly recommend it. It is I don't think I
have ever read a deeper dive biography of anybody ever before.
It's quite amazing. In the interview actually does not go
into his acting career all that much, and that's because
Vincent Price was so much more than an actor. H
And even with my paired down list of questions, this
episode is going to run quite long because Victoria was
(02:11):
very gracious and let me just yap at her forever.
We're gonna jump right into that chat with Victoria Price,
and I hope that you will be surprised by what
an incredibly interesting life Mr Price led off screen. So
welcome to the podcast, Victoria Price. Thank you thanks for
having me on. But it is so exciting for me.
(02:34):
I can't even tell you. Regular listeners to our show
know that I am a huge fan of your father's
So this is like Halloween and Christmas and birthdays all
wrapped up together for me that uh. And I wanted
to just first talk about kind of one of the
most endearing things about your dad that you've written a
lot about and other people have too, and that was
(02:56):
the fact that he was incredibly cultured. Uh. And you know,
really had a great sense of aesthetics and was a
very smart man. But he was so disdainful of snobbery,
just a real person completely. Why do you think it
was always so important for him to stay so grounded,
even at the height of his fame. It's a really
(03:19):
good question. I don't think anybody's really asked me that
that way, But that's how he was raised, and I
think part of it came from being raised in the Midwest.
You know, he saw himself as a Midwestern boy. He
was raised in St. Louis in a wealthy family, um,
but not a family that saw itself as pretentious. Certainly,
(03:44):
his mother had aspirations of pretensions. She applied to be
a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. But
but it wasn't that sort of East Coast um kind
of sense of snobbery that might have been possible for him.
And so when he went to Yale, he was an
(04:09):
outsider in in a sense that most of the boys
came from the same schools as as one another, they've
known each other in high school, and then the Midwestern
and the West Coast boys were very different. So even
though his dad had gone to Yale and his older
brother had gone to Yale, he he felt very much
(04:31):
like a Midwesterner. I also think that he loved the arts,
and that made him kind of an odd ball growing
up as well, in the sense that he you know,
to love the arts, if you come out of a
business family, makes you kind of strange. And so I think,
and I say that, you know as as a good thing.
(04:55):
So I think that really made him somebody who saw
himself as an outsider, who didn't feel like he fit
the norm, And so he never was going to be
someone who viewed himself as better than anyone else. And
I think that really um made all the difference. And
(05:17):
you mentioned that he came from a wealthy family, and
there's a really interesting aspect of your father's life and
his sort of mentality regarding money that you talk about
a lot in your biography of him that he was
always convinced, due to the fact that his grandfather had
lost everything in the panic of that, he was ever
in danger of losing his money and his ability to
(05:39):
provide for the family. And I know that affected his career.
Can you talk a little bit about that. Yeah, I
think he was very fearful, uh, that that there wouldn't
be enough. Now, that's not how he lived his everyday
life like. He didn't walk around being paralyzed by fear.
But I do think that he may decisions that weren't
(06:02):
necessarily decisions based on I think I can say no
to this, I'm I'm okay. He always said yes. Not
only was he interested in everything, but he he also
wanted to say yes to a job coming into, money
coming in and I think that that's in part because
(06:26):
he did have fear that the next job might be
his last. And and certainly there are many actors who
who have that sense you know that it's not a
it's not a profession with assurances. But but I think
that was very strong for him, and in his early career.
(06:48):
I think a lot of people that maybe know him
from his his later gothic and horror films don't realize
that he really started on Broadway and even before that
on the London stage playing Albert in Victoria Regina, which
is near and dear to my heart as well, um,
And I think it's interesting that one he started on
the stage, but two he was so lauded for that
(07:09):
performance early on that he pretty quickly started getting offers
to do films, but he initially turned a lot of
them down and was reluctant to take romantic leads. Can
you talk about the way he wanted to be a
character actor? He really did, and I think that he
was so handsome that nobody really saw that as a possibility.
(07:32):
And for him, it was not interesting to be kind
of a fluffy actor, a lightweight actor, somebody who was
just going to be in in comedy rules or in
leading man roles. It really wasn't what he wanted to do.
And so when he got the movie contract, was a
(07:55):
million dollar movie contract in the middle of the depression,
and he asked his co stars advice. And his co
star was Helen Hayes, the first lady of the American Theater,
and she had had a long and storied career, and
he asked her advice what to do, and she said,
(08:16):
do you want to just be, you know, a flash
in the pan, And he said, of course not. And
so that was really the impetus for him to do
something different. She said, if you don't learn your craft,
then you're just going to fade out. You need to
learn how to become an actor. And so he stayed
(08:39):
on Broadway, but he also did summerstock because in those days,
Broadway stay closed in the summer because there was no
air conditioning. So that was really his impetus to learn
how to become an actor, and that's what he wanted,
and that's what he did. And you mentioned that he
was so terribly handsome that of course they were offering
(09:01):
him those rules, which makes me have to ask about
his multiple nose breaks with he would reset on his
own in most cases, and he seemed really reluctant to
actually have a doctor fix his nose for a long time.
Why do you think he was so trepidacious about it.
(09:21):
I think they he thought they might pretty em up,
And you know, he liked having having a nose that
had some distinction to it. I love it. And there's
some interesting political stuff that you wrote a lot about
with your father, and I know, unfortunately, I know I've
seen online like people will cherry pick parts of of
your father's politics when he was very young and sort
(09:42):
of impressionable and making kind of not the best choices,
um are not the best assessments of situations. Will you
talk a little bit about one, why you shared kind
of those parts of his political journey, and also you
know how you see him going from those kind foolish
writings that he did when he was very young and
traveling through Europe up through when he became really very
(10:05):
liberal later in life. Yeah, I included them. So in
doing research, I found my father writing things that really
surprised me, but particularly anti Semitic things, which was completely
shocking to me because it seemed so unlike the man
I knew he was the least racist or um discriminatory
(10:29):
person you know, you could possibly meet. And so I thought,
who was this person and what I realized was that
he came from a certain class background, UM, where that
was the norm. I mean, Roosevelt turned away Jewish refugees
(10:51):
in boats on our shores. Uh. And you know, we
think of Roosevelt as being this incredible liberal president, which
he was, but that was there was a great deal
of anti semitism in this country. And of course, now,
given everything that's going on politically in our country, that's
(11:11):
probably not so surprising. But when I wrote the book
in and we were in a seemingly much more open
minded and liberal um. And I don't mean that politically liberal,
I mean just liberally open minded um phase than we
are now. To talk about someone's um anti semitism or
(11:33):
discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity seems, you know,
it seems like, wow, they must have been a freak.
Now we're seeing all sorts of things in our country
about how all of those undercurrents continue to exist and um.
And I wrote what I wrote because I wanted to
(11:54):
show that someone can change their mind, and someone can
recognize the air of their way. Someone can look at
how they grew up or what they were taught by
the world in which they lived, and choose to think differently,
choose to recognize that we don't need to discriminate against
(12:14):
other people based on anything. And that's what happened to
my dad, And that's why I included in the book.
I'm so glad you did, because it is a really
sort of beautiful story of how he shifted his mindset
and also talking about politics. You found out really after
his death that he had been on the Gray List
(12:35):
during the McCarthy era, and I know he had talked
about it somewhat when you were when he was still alive,
but you didn't really know the depth of his involvement
in that whole uh dramatic proceedings. Will you talk about
that a little bit? Yeah, I knew that he had
been gray listed because he and I did talk about that,
because I became very interested in that in high school.
(12:58):
I was studying the McCarthy era and I remember talking
to him about it. And in my high school history
book there was a photograph of McCarthy with his two
right hand men, and one was of course Roy Khne,
who we've all heard about, but the other's last name
was Shine, and it was an unusual spelling of the
name Shine, and it sort of rung a bell, and
(13:21):
I went and did some research on it, and I
found out that that man was the father of our
student body president in my school, and she was I
was on the student council. She was somebody I saw
at every student council meeting. And so it, you know,
here was this period that I found so despicable and
(13:46):
just perfectly normal. Nice girl's father had been responsible for
ruining the lives of so many people and spewing all
this Vitriolso it brought it home to me, and I
asked my dad then when I was in high school, fifteen,
in that class, about that period of time, and so
(14:06):
he told me his story, and then towards the end
of his life, he elaborated a little bit more about
how his name was cleared, and my mom told me
a little bit more. But what I didn't really know
um was what he had to do to clear his name.
And when I was cleaning out his house towards the
very end of all of that, I found a a
(14:31):
Manila envelope hidden behind the air conditioner in his house.
Now that house was a house he moved into in
the late eighties, and he had moved many times since
the nineteen fifties. So he had carried that piece of
paper with him and saved it. And that was the
(14:53):
really interesting thing to me because it showed me how
afraid he was. And it was the document that he
signed is the FBI to clear his name, and in
it he said many things that I know he did
not believe, and things like anyone who pleads the fifth
is an American. And so knowing that, Um, I was
(15:16):
really kind of blown away by by what he had
to do to clear his name. I had some judgment
about it, and I remember UM going and telling um
my uncle Eddie, who was Eddie Albert, that I had
(15:37):
just found this and he was just about the nicest,
most easy going human being on the planet. And he
ripped my head off. He said, you know, how dare
you judge somebody you don't know what it was like then,
And he proceeded to tell me that his wife, my
beloved aunt Marco Um had been black did and never
(16:01):
worked again during that era. And so I really um understood,
and I've understood even more as I've gone through my life, UM,
what my dad went through and what he felt he
(16:21):
needed to do to get his life back and he
made a little bit of a deal with the devil,
and yet may remain so afraid throughout his life that
it could still come back to bite him. And I
think that's really been for me um a real lesson
in humility and understanding that we can never judge another person.
(16:48):
So it's kind of sobering, I think, to realize that
even decades after McCarthy is m someone as prominent as
Vincent Price still harbored very real fear about it. And
I think there's a perception that once that raw was over,
people were like, WHOA, They're glad that's done with and
then not that it's still continued to be such a
presence in people's minds. Yeah. So next up things are
(17:12):
going to take a little bit of a lighter turn.
We're going to talk about Vincent Price's love of animals,
but first we will have a quick sponsor break. You
and I constantly look forward to learning It is one
of the fun things about working on this show, constantly
getting to learn new stuff, which is why we really
really enjoy having subscriptions to the Great Courses. Plus there's
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is that there are some communities that survived that first
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your free month today. Go to the Great Courses Plus
dot com slash stuff. Remember the Great Courses Plus dot
com slash stuff as parromise. There is some animal talk
up next, and Holly is going to ask Victoria a
(19:26):
million questions about a topic that's almost as central to
Vincent Price's life as his acting career, which is his
deep love of art. I think most people probably don't
know unless they have read biographies about your father that
he was a huge animal lover, uh and even wrote
(19:48):
a book about one of his dogs. He did. He
wrote a wonderful book called The Book of Joe, which
we've just re released this year, and it's it's a
I think, one of his sweetest books. I did the
audiobook recording of it last year, and and when I
did it it, of course I'd read the book many times,
(20:11):
but reading it in his voice, um, I mean I
wasn't trying to sound like him. Who can found like him?
But reading you know what he sounded like. Writing it
first of all reminded me of who he was and
how much I loved that. But just the sweetness and
the humor that he had was incredibly endearing. And it's
(20:32):
a wonderful, wonderful book book of Joe about a dog
and his man. It's so sweet, um it is. It's
I mean, I'm an animal person, so it's always so endearing,
especially when you consider that too many people your dad
was such an icon of like villainy. To just picture
him like so completely enamored of his pets is very
(20:54):
very sweet. I feel like we really cannot talk about
your father without talking about art. That it would be
supremely weird not to talk about art. Um. One of
the things that you mentioned in your book that was
to me revelatory the first time I read it was
the fact that he bought his first piece of art
with his allowance when he was eleven. I know, it's
(21:17):
not unbelievable. Yeah, he was walking by a an art
gallery in St. Louis, Missouri, where he grew up, and
he fell in love with this piece of art in
the window. It was a first state rembrandt etching, and
so he decided to go in and talk to the
gallery owner. And you know, to this day, I blessed
that gallery owner who didn't have to do this, who
(21:39):
could have just laughed at this kid, but instead instead
saw a kid who was so earnest and interested in art,
and he made a payment plan with him. And so
my dad spent the next three years saving up all
of his money and he would go in and make payments.
And when he finally paid that piece off and took
(22:00):
possession of his first work of art, he was just
absolutely um so blown away by owning his first piece
of art. And uh, it changed his life. It gave
his life a focus. At the end of his life,
someone gave him a little pin and it said art
saves lives. And really that is how he felt, without hyperbole,
(22:24):
that art had saved his life because it gave him
a whole sense of purpose and focus in the world. Well,
and he was in fact planning to teach art history
and did teach for a year. M hmm, and I
think he would have made the most wonderful professor. Well,
and he did, I mean, he did continue to teach
(22:45):
the masses in many ways about art. Um. One of
the other art stories that I wanted to mention that
you also have in your book is the piece that
he purchased when he was living in New York. Uh,
the Zapata painting, which was so massive it took up
an entire wall and you couldn't really look at it
(23:07):
properly unless you laid down unto the kitchen table. Yeah,
it was meant to be seen from below. And he
got at home and he realized that and he was
he was like, oh, and so he would lie down
under the kitchen table, you know, to really see it,
which is so cute. And he he felt that it
(23:27):
was too important of a painting for him to keep.
So it's now at the Chicago Art Institute, where I've
been able to see it, and it's it's an amazing
thing to be able to go see the art that
that my dad collected. And I'm so grateful that he
believed that art was not something to be owned, but
rather something that you care take and that was that
(23:47):
was something he truly truly felt. And so I've been
able to continue to enjoy a lot of the art
that I grew up with because it's in institutions, and
I think that's a really wonderful way to live, to
not feel that you have to own something um forever,
(24:11):
or that you know you're sort of your stamp is
on it, but really that you are part of the
legacy of a piece. And I think that's that's just
a beautiful thing it is. I also like the part
of that story where he um allowed art students to
come and lie down under his kitchen table to also
enjoy enjoy that sweet it's very dear uh. And he
(24:36):
also championed the recognition and preservation of Native American art
and culture, which I met most people. He fell in
love with Native American art growing up in St. Louis
because they'd go out to Kohokio, which is one of
the great mound cultures and an incredible place to visit
if you're in the St. Louis area. It's actually on
the other side of the River Um. And then he
(25:00):
was sent to a summer camp where he was very
reluctant to go, but ended up discovering a Native American
burial ground and notified the authorities and had his picture
in the paper. And so this just enamored him with
learning more about Native American culture, and he began collecting
(25:21):
Native American art when he was in his thirties. And
in the nineteen fifties he was appointed to something called
the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, which is part of
the Department of the Interior, by President Eisenhower. And he
remained on that for fifteen years and he chaired it
the last five years. So, uh, it was something that
(25:45):
was very important to him, and it's a very important
part of his legacy. And again, you know, I think
a wonderful example of you know, he he was someone
who was very open to and interested in other cultures.
And so he himself recognized that the anti Semitic beliefs
that he was trained to believe weren't true to who
(26:09):
he was. And that's that's also part of the legacy
to to change his mind. You know, we forget that
we hear these words in the Bible or in in
spiritual traditions that seem like words we don't really understand,
and and they sound like they're beating us over the head,
(26:30):
like repent. You know, you see some Boddy fulmin at
the mouth and yelling on TV the word repent, repent,
But the word repent really just means change your mind,
rethink of something. And he was somebody who was willing
to look at what no longer served him in terms
of his thinking and change his mind. And I think
(26:53):
that that's that is an incredible legacy for me to
live with. Well, it takes a great deal of maturity.
I think that it is hard to engage with sometimes
as a human to acknowledge like, no, that was incorrect,
and I have to be better than that. It's hard
to let go of things at times. You mentioned you
(27:15):
mentioned his connection with the White House and he also
served on the White House Art Committee during the Kennedy administration.
Uh to actually bring art into the White House, which
is pretty cool. Yes, you know, it's a wonderful Speaking
of legacies, so um, Mrs Kennedy recognized that the White
(27:37):
House had been sort of treated like each president's own home.
They moved in, they fixed it up the way they wanted,
and she thought, well, that's crazy. This is a national monument,
this is a historic monument. We we shouldn't be treating
it like like you know, you're buying a home and
you're gonna change the fixtures and because you might like
the color blue. And so she put together a committee
(28:02):
of people to buy art that would be owned by
the United States government. Um, but it's art that then
each president can choose from. And one of the things
that was really really moving to my father was that
he donated a piece which was a watercolor of some
(28:24):
clouds by the Hudson Valley painter Albert Bierstadt. And that
was the piece that President Kennedy himself loved the most,
and he hung that on the end of his bed,
and UM, my dad really found that. Um, he just
(28:45):
loved knowing that somebody had such a personal relationship to
that piece that he had donated. I love that story
so much. And speaking of his love of art and
the Democrat to the san of art, I wanted to
talk to you some about the Sears Roebuck art program
because even when I mentioned this to people like oh, no,
(29:07):
Vincent Price was buying art for Sears Roebuck to then
sell to the masses. They think that what he was
doing was buying art and they were making prints. But no,
he was buying originals, and Sears Roebuck was cultivating those
in galleries and selling them. Yeah. An amazing thing. Yeah,
you could play a Picasso or a Dolly or a
we Ared or a whistler on your Sears credit card
(29:29):
with a money back guarantee. That crazy, dear, What that
is really quite funny, I know. Uh. Yeah, that program
really took up so much of his life and was
such a passion for him. Yes. Uh, you speak in
your book so much about both your father and mother
(29:50):
working on that sort of tirelessly and constantly traveling the
world and finding new pieces to add. Uh. It's one
of those things that still blows me away. I think
as people today would have some difficulty accepting this information
because it's so outside people. I say that and people laugh,
you know. But I can't tell you the number of
(30:12):
people who have come up to me and said, I
began buying art because I bought my first piece from
your dad at Sears Roebuck. It was it was a
serious and important thing, and it really really changed some
people's lives. I love it, um, and now I'm in
to shift gears though. I can talk about art and
your dad I think forever. But also one of my
(30:35):
great loves and your dad's is cooking, uh, which was
kind of in the blood. His grandfather invented cream of
tartar and went on to developing powder baking powder. It
was a cream of tartar baking powder, yeah uh, and
went on to develop a number of flavoring extracts and
other things. Um. And it's so I sort of associate
the kitchen as being in the price blood at that point. Um.
(30:58):
I have a copy of a Treasury of Great Recipes
that my husband got me quite a number of years ago,
and I think, I cry to me, I love it
so much. But will you talk a little bit about
his love of cooking and how he ended up writing cookbooks?
You bet uh? So uh. My pat answer is that
he loved to eat. My dad loved to eat, So
(31:21):
that's kind of how it all started. First while he
was six ft four and if his metabolism was anything
like mine, you know, he loved to eat, and he
ate a lot, and and he could, you know, more
easily than than other people. And so he um began eating.
He loved to learn anything, so he liked to learn
(31:43):
how to cook. My mother was an excellent cook, and
they spent a lot of time in the kitchen together.
And then when they traveled the world, that they really
began collecting recipes and design elements and doing all of
these very very cool things. And it was really Sears
Roebuck again that came up with this idea of creating
(32:07):
this cookbook, and so they collaborated with my dad too
and my mom, both of them to create this cookbook
that was a big, big deal. It's old three copies
when it first came out, and it became, after it
(32:28):
fell out of print, the eighth most popular outprint book
of any kind, and so we released a fiftieth anniversary
edition of it last year and it's still immensely popular.
Somebody just sent me an email. They're doing a blog
this month. Every day they're cooking a different recipe. The
(32:49):
New York Times just did a piece last week on
chicken tetrazini, including the recipe from from the cookbook. And
this week, uh, we are releasing the second cookbook from
that series, which was also in collaboration with Sears, which
is called Come into the Kitchen. And that was another
(33:10):
book that both my dad's dad and mom did and
it's a sort of a history of American cuisine, which
again was a very populous thing to do because everything
was all about Europe, Europe, Europe, and my dad was
very much uh an advocate of what was coming out
of this country. Now we think of ourselves as this
(33:33):
artistic and creative as well as financial and you know, global, military, whatever, superpower.
But when my dad was coming up, we were still
very much in the shadow of Europe, and we were
a very young, young country, and so cooking we weren't
thought of as having a culinary history, and and that
(33:56):
was something that was really important for him to promote
as well. Do you ever cook from either of the cookbooks? Yea,
I will say this, and I tell everyone this. I
like proselytize around the section in a Treasury of Great Recipes.
It's very brief, but it's where your mother and father
talked about the way that they handle rue like a
(34:18):
rue base where they would do the prep and then
freeze it and then they would use a melon baller
to just get out however much they needed whenever. Pretty brilliant, right,
it is brilliant. I do it now and it works
like a charm. There are some incredible recipes in those cookbooks,
(34:40):
including probably my all time favorite lobster bisc recipe of
all time, which is super rich and very delicious, and
coming up, Victoria is going to speak about a recent
interview and which she talked about her father's very personal life.
But before we dive into that, we're going to take
a quick break for a word from one of our sponsors.
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(35:02):
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So now we are going to hear some really uh,
(36:07):
very frank and open discussion from Victoria about sharing information
about her father's sexuality and her mindset about protecting her
father's image. The next thing I want to talk about
is a little more modern and a thing that came
up with you in an interview last year, and when
(36:29):
you were promoting the reprint of the book, you chosen
an interview to address the rumors about your father's sexuality
and confirm that based on the knowledge you had, you
believed that he had indeed had sexual experiences with men
as well as women. And I know from reading both
your book and your blog that you are very thoughtful
about what you share of both yourself and your father's story.
(36:53):
So can you talk about what led you to make
the decision that this was something that you wanted to share.
And at that time, when I was writing his biography,
so many people asked me or assumed that he was bisexual,
and I felt that if I was going to just
say no, I don't think he was, well, what basis
(37:16):
did I have to say that? And I remember talking
to Ronny McDowell and saying, you know, Roddy, I've I've
talked to all these people. They've said to me, oh,
I have absolute proof that your dad was bisexual. And
then I would follow the bouncing ball to that line
of whatever the proof was, and there was nothing there.
You know, he winked at me. He was in a
gay bar, you know, But I mean, there was no
(37:38):
nothing that I would call proof. And I was really
relieved in a way not to find anything, because I
felt that there was all this focus on what what
happened versus who my dad was, which was one of
the most open minded, loving supportive people in UM towards
(38:01):
gays and lesbians, and at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic,
he did one of the first, if not the first,
public service announcements about not being afraid of AIDS at
a time where most of uh, sort of the bigger
people associated with Hollywood were, um, we're ignoring it. And
that's not to say all of them, certainly Elizabeth Taylor
(38:22):
was doing wonderful stuff. You know, there were many people
who were, but Ronald Reagan, who was certainly a peer
of my debts and was the President United States, was
obviously doing everything he could to ignore it. And that
is in part what created no support for the AIDS
epidemic in the public health sector. So, um, it was
(38:45):
really much more important for me to talk about that,
which is what I got to talk about. But as
time went on and people began giving me more information
which was unsolicited, I wasn't out there looking for it.
I realized that I had the feeling that I was
protecting something, and I was uncomfortable with that. I thought,
(39:06):
what am I protecting? And and I was brought up
to protect my dad's image all the time to be
really concerned that um, he he'd be seen in the
best light. And and so I thought, well, okay, so
who taught me that? My mom taught me that it
(39:27):
wasn't really something that my dad cared so much about.
It was really more how my mom believed that he
should be seen. So I really started feeling that I
was acting kind of from a childlike place of fear
(39:48):
instead of a grown up place of of love. And
I was on doing a radio interview one day and
a guy asked me the question, and I just said
something ing and and it was again that that what
was much more important to me than than whether my dad,
(40:10):
you know, had relationships with men and women or not.
And and although at this point, I'm, you know, fairly sure,
of course I wasn't there, thank god, UM, but you know, I, UM,
it's certainly something that has been affirmed by other people. UM,
So in so far as that's something that probably is true,
(40:35):
I still felt that the most important part of the
story was that my dad was somebody who went through
the world was an open heart and an open mind
and was supportive of everyone. And now I think there's
so much fluidity, much more fluidity around the idea of
gender and sexuality anyway. And frankly, I think you would
(40:58):
have been so much happier in this world. Not happy
about the political situation, but happier in a world in
which young people at least are leading the way to
have so much more open heartedness and how they connect
with other people, because that's who my dad was. And
(41:19):
that kind of leads beautifully into my my next question,
which maybe you've just answered, which is that people who
never met your father and only know him through his
films love him like deeply love him even now decades
after his death. And why do you think he even
when playing villains, people just fell so deeply in love
(41:39):
with him. It's an interesting thing, isn't it. And I
you know, this is a man who we started his
Facebook page less than three years ago and he has
two hundred and fifteen thousand Facebook likes and just growing.
That's incredible, right, And some people who were four are
(42:00):
far bigger stars than he was during his lifetime, are
more or less forgotten. And he who who had a
very long career but was by no means the biggest
of Hollywood stars, has been remembered. I think in part
it's because his fan base is the horror community. Who
gets him? Who got him? Who? Really? People are always like, well,
(42:24):
you know, do you think he regretted being type cast?
You know, that's giving the idea that horror fans, you know,
have no other interests outside of horror. That's not true.
So they got that he was a renaissance man. They
got his interest in the arts. They got because the
horror films are among the most artistic, not you know,
(42:47):
the slasher, blood spurting out ones necessarily, but the gothic
horror is incredibly artistic and beautiful. And and so here's
my dad coming out of um that genre and connecting
with people who of poetry, you know, Edgar Allan Poe
and um. So I think that it's it's in large
part due to the horror fans, to whom I will
(43:08):
always be grateful. But the other thing I think is
something that I thought might necessary, not necessarily serve him.
I thought, you know, it's too bad that he never
got to play one of those Dracula Branket Spein type parts,
a monster, a particular character. But because he really didn't,
what happened was that he came through all of his parts.
(43:31):
And I think that what makes people last is when
there's something beneath they're public persona, a kind of charisma
and and uh, something in which we are personally interested.
And I think that shines through his performances. So here's
this person playing scary people, right. And I think a
(43:55):
lot of people are drawn to the horror genre because
it's a way, it's a it's a form of catharsis,
it's a way of working your your stuff out by
going into the dark and facing the things you're most
scared of in handling it and coming out. And here's
this man who, no matter what he was doing, and
oh my god, you know, he did a lot of
horrible things. He made people eat their own poodles for
(44:15):
having's sake. So here is a man who was doing
these horrific things and you never could hate him, and
you always had this sense that he was okay, you know,
he was not scary. So for anyone who hasn't seen
any of your father's films, which is a shocking concept
(44:37):
to wrap my head around, but which do you think
is the best one for a new a newbie to
start with a horror um? Any of his films? Mm hmm,
that's a good question. Well, I think he'd have to
go with something like House of Whack or House on
(45:00):
Haunted Hill, um, one of those fifties ones, and then
probably from there maybe the Corman Poe films. Um. But
those fifties ones are so great and he's so lovely
evil it's really kind of fabulous. So I think I
(45:21):
think I've got to go with them. Okay. Uh. And
then my final question for you, is that your father,
as we've been talking about, has really become a larger
than life figure and an entertainment icon for a lot
of people. Is there anything that you wish people knew
about him that isn't usually mentioned when he has talked
about I think the thing that interests me most is
(45:44):
that he understood that celebrity is a currency in our society.
It is something that really matters in our society, for
better or for worse. But he understood that an actor's
public servant. That if you were an actor, you need
your audience to support you. Otherwise you're you're not getting
(46:06):
paid for your work. And so here is this man
who understands that, he understands how to keep himself in
the public eye, and yet what he does with that
is he uses that to help other people. He understood
(46:31):
how people regarded him and what they wanted from him,
and he used that to give back. And I think
that if we had more of that in our world now,
it would be an extraordinary thing. I am staying with
a friend right now, and I've never watched the Voice, uh,
(46:54):
and she loved the Voice, So I was watching it,
um and I was really cheered by how supportive and
excited all the the um the different celebrities singers are
who come on and work with these young people. And
(47:15):
that's what my dad did in a very quiet way
all the time, so he didn't necessarily have to be
on TV to do it. He would correspond with a
young person regularly. He would commission an original work of
art from a young artist. He would send a young
artist tickets to hear him speak if he was speaking
(47:39):
in a nearby area. He was constantly in touch with
young artists and supportive of them pursuing a career in
the arts. And I wish more people would see that
their celebrity can be used as a form of philanthropy. Um.
(48:02):
And I'm not saying people don't do that. I mean,
certainly we hear a lot about people like Angelina Jolie
and what she's done as a human umanitarian in the world.
So UM, I'm not saying he was unique in it.
But he did it because he loved people, and that
(48:23):
is the best reason to do anything. He did it
from a pure, open hearted place, and I that is
the thing I would like people to remember more about
him than oh he scared me to dad, Although that's
good too. Yeah, but it's a beautiful example to set
for the future. Um, Victoria, thank you so much for
(48:48):
sharing this time with me. I feel so spoiled. Oh
it was such a pleasure. And honestly, it was so
fun listening to your questions because I feel like you
know him as well as I you and that's been
one of the real gifts for me of what I do.
I if you had told me when I was younger
that I would be just, you know, going around talking
(49:11):
about my dad and I'm in my fifties, I would
have thought, oh my god, don't you have something better
to do. But the fact of the matter is that
I get this wonderful, wonderful, um opportunity to share someone
I love with other people who love him. I mean,
I love my dog, and you know, nobody's asking me
(49:34):
to be on their podcast to talk about how much
I love my dog. And so for me, I feel
like it's such a gift to love someone so much,
feel that he is so loved by other people, and
and to get to share that. And it's almost like
(49:57):
I am part of this big family. We're all out
of Vincent Price's family, and that you know, so I
feel like, oh, my god, there you are, and you
know who he was. You you know things about him
and and they matter to you, and I just that's
really really cool to me. It's cool to me too. Um,
where can people find you? Because I'm sure that they
(50:20):
will want to hear more of your your writing and
possibly your lectures as you travel around, So where can they?
Absolutely thank you for asking? So, for Vincent Price, we
have a website which is www. Vincent Price dot com.
And I have my website which is Victoria Price dot com.
I think the website that I'm keeping most up with
(50:41):
is my website, which is Daily Practice of Joy dot com.
I write a weekly blog about creating a practice of
joy that's very much inspired by my father, and I
do go all over the country in the world talking
about my dad and talking about joy. And I have
a new book out, Joy that will be coming out
(51:02):
in the beginning of which I'm I'm really excited about.
And so I try to keep up on social media
as well. And that's almost easier than keeping the website
up because I'm kind of a one man band and
you only have so many hands. So my my personal
social media for Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and all
(51:25):
those things. Is one brave life. And my dad very
appropriately is master of Menace and he's on everything as well, Facebook, Twitter, PINTERESTU, Instagram,
and I try to post regularly and have a lot
of fun doing it. Excellent. We will put all of
that in the show notes as well, so people have
(51:45):
a handy guide. Thank you, thank you, thank you so
much for being with us. I can't tell you how
much I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on
this show. And I can't wait to hear Pupil's response. Okay,
(52:05):
so I totally fangirled out during that interview, but Victoria
was incredibly gracious and wonderful, and I could have talked
with her forever. I am a fan of hers almost
as much as I am of her father's. I have
read her book, of course, but also her blog for
some time. She's just a really lovely writer, and she
examines the world in a way that is very enlightening.
(52:25):
I think, so if you're interested in learning more about
Vincent Price's life, her book is a very thorough and
very honest biography, and it weaves Vincent's own writing and
accounts from other people into the narrative, so it's really
quite rich. She originally wrote that in six years after
Vincent Price died, but a new edition of it came
out in His life was so full of unique experiences
(52:48):
that it's really easy to see how he truly lived
by one of his most famous quotes, which was a
man who limits his interests limits his life. So thank
you once again to Victoria Price for being so wonder
full and sharing so many stories about her father's life.
We will include all of those links that she mentioned
in the show notes. Uh. And now I will do
(53:08):
a very brief listener mail because this episode is running
super long. Um. This one is from our listener G. S. Denning,
who sent us a book. Uh and rites. Dear Holly
and Tracy. I have been a listener and fans since
twn and I just caught up to the Salt Lake
Comic Con historical fiction podcast. Oh it made me guilty.
(53:32):
Remember when the authors talked about what a rich vein
history podcasts were and how you were the underappreciated curators
of their content. Well, in twelve I started writing a
goofy nerdy Sherlock Holmes send off based in late Victorian London.
The whole time I was listening to your podcast, mining
you guys for inspiration and fun snippets from history that
I could incorporate and lampoon. I got a lot of them.
(53:54):
Things went well. I sold that book and it's out
in stores now. What I did not do is thank
you as you deserve and closed you will find a
copy of my book, Warlock Holmes, a Study in Brimstone,
and closed in that you will find a ton of
previous podcast topics from racial information mine from your episode
on Pablo Funk to the Gunpowder plot to cameos by
Elizabeth Blackwell and Emperor Norton. You guys have been with
(54:17):
me all the way. Hell Hound of the Baskervilles is
due out next May, and the year after that book three,
by which time I'll have recycled material from your episodes
on the Great Stink Boudica, Ned Kelly, Victorian Albert, the
Wedding Traditions episode. Thank you for setting me right on
that wretched take, the Potato Famine, the Luddites, the Opium Wars,
and accused by a ghost. At least it is a
(54:38):
lonely thing to write a book. Imagine yourself as a
die hard star Wars fan. Okay, that's done. I lived
that life. Uh. Now, imagine Star Wars was never released
to the public and you're the only person who knows
about it. That's what authorship is. But all through it,
all the ups and downs of getting an agent and
getting a publisher and agonizing and editing and worrying that
people won't like it, to rejoicing when it turns out
that they do. You've been my instant support and inspiration.
(55:01):
I bet there are dozens like me, maybe hundreds, people
with a well spring of gratitude and love for you
and the work that you do, who have never taken
the time to let you know what it means to them.
So I'm letting you know. Thank you, G. S. Denning. Uh.
And we got a book along with this, so I
will probably read it first because I'm selfish and it
looks very funny. Uh. So I will be reading Warlock Holmes,
(55:23):
and then I will hand it off to Tracy, because
again I am selfish. Thank you so much for sharing that.
That was such a sweet letter and it made me
chuckle and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Uh. If
you would like to write to us, you can do
so at History podcast at how stuff Works. We're also
available across all social media as missed in History, so
that's Twitter at mist in History, Facebook dot com, slash
(55:45):
mist in History, Pinterest dot com slash mist in History,
missed in History dot tumbler dot com, and Instagram at
miss in History. If you would like to visit our
parents site, which is how stuff works dot com, you
can do that. Go there, type in something interesting in
the search bar. You will churn up so much content
that you can enjoy and occupy yourself with. You can
come and visit Tracy and me at missed in History
(56:07):
dot com, where you can find a backlog of all
of the episodes of the show ever of all time,
as well as show notes for any of the ones
Tracy and I have worked on together. So we encourage
you come and visit us online at missed in history
dot com and how stuff Works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
(56:28):
works dot com.
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Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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