HAPPY BIRTHDAY EGG HEAD!
Vincent Price was born on this day in 1911 in St. Louis, and when he died on October 25, 1993, just before Halloween, the timing felt almost too appropriate for a man whose entire career had been spent in the company of ghosts, sorcerers, and elaborate Gothic menace.
He would have been 114 today. And he still sounds like no one else who ever lived.
The Man Behind the SCreen
Price graduated from Yale University in 1933 and spent a year as a schoolteacher before enrolling at the University of London to pursue a master's degree in fine arts. His burgeoning interest in theatre soon led him to an acting career, and he first appeared onstage in London productions in 1935.
By the time he got to Hollywood in 1938, he was already a trained stage actor with a classical education, a bone-deep passion for art history, and an accent that sounded faintly British despite being a Missouri native. He landed roles in prestigious productions like Laura (1944) and The Three Musketeers (1948), playing romantic leads and classical characters.
The pivot came with House of Wax in 1953 — a 3D thriller in which Price played a disfigured sculptor who turns his victims into wax figures. It was a hit, and it set the template for everything that followeD. includIng Classics like House on haunted Hill, the fly & of course the Dr. Phibes Series.
The Comics Connection: He Literally Inspired Doctor Strange
In January 1963, Vincent Price starred in Corman's The Raven — a horror-comedy in which he played Dr. Erasmus Craven, a sorcerer who retires after losing his wife. In the film, Price's Craven has long, elegant fingers that shoot mystical bolts of energy and form shields.
Five months later, in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963), Steve Ditko debuted a new character: Doctor Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme.
Steve Ditko modeled Doctor Strange's appearance after Vincent Price — and paid tribute through the character's full name, which is Stephen Vincent Strange. Stan Lee, over the years, acknowledged the character's similarity to Price.The debonair mustache, the imperious bearing, the hands crackling with mystical energy.
Price later returned the favor, in a roundabout way. He voiced Vincent Van Ghoul, a sorcerer who learned his craft in the Himalayas, on The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo — with several direct references to Doctor Strange's lore woven into the character.
The horror king of Hollywood and one of Marvel's greatest characters were quietly in conversation with each other for decades. That's the kind of pop culture connection that makes deep-diving into this era so endlessly rewarding.
Egghead: The Other Comics Tie
Horror wasn't the only place Price intersected with the world of four-color adventure. He appeared as the villainous Egghead on the Batman television series in the late 1960s — one of the most memorable of the show's rotating roster of guest-villain turns.
The Final Chapter: Tim Burton and Michael Jackson
In his later years, Price found a new generation of admirers through two very different collaborators.
In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, Tim Burton's six-minute stop-motion film about a young boy who fantasizes about being Vincent Price. It was the beginning of a genuine friendship between the old master and the young director. Much like Ed Wood & Bela Lugosi
Then came Thriller. In 1983, Price delivered the spoken-word monologue at the end of Michael Jackson's landmark music video — fourteen months' worth of cackle and menace packed into a few paragraphs. It introduced him to a generation that had grown up after the Poe films, and it remains one of the most recognizable pieces of voice work in pop culture history.
His final film appearance was in Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990), playing the inventor who creates the film's gentle, tragic hero. It was a characteristically perfect casting choice: a man who had spent decades playing monsters given the chance to play the one who, with the best intentions, made one.
