Famous Cousins, Post #1
Today's Famous Cousin: Vincent Leonard Price Jr.
 |
| Master of Evil, Vincent Price? |
To see Elizabeth Alsop's relationship to Vincent Price, via Sir Richard FitzAlan and Elizabeth de Bohun, please see the link to "FamousKin" below.
Sir Richard FitzAlan and Elizabeth de Bohun are one pair of my 19th great-grandparents. These two were also Vincent Price's 17th great-grandparents. Therefore, Vincent Price is my 18th cousin, two times removed.
Holy cow!
It's a very distant relationship, but Vincent Price pretty much has his own section in the Horror division of my DVD collection, and he's one of my favorites. So I am going to rightly claim this family connection, and make Vincent Price the subject of my first Famous Cousins post.
Hooray!
As you all really ought to know, Vincent Price was a famous actor known mostly for his horror movies, many made in the fifties and sixties. One of my favorites is "The Last Man on Earth", in which Price plays the last human who has remained unmutated by a new strain of virus. The internet is telling me that unmutated is not a word, but I don't have to listen. I'll use 'unmutated' all I want. Anyway, in the movie, this virus has killed much of the population, and turned everybody else on the planet into a vampire, but they act like zombies. It turns out some people are left, but they are mutated in some way, leaving Vincent as the last unmutated man on Earth. Spoiler alert: They kill him in the end. The whole movie ends with his death, and a baby crying for some reason. It's weird.
 |
| Cousin Vinnie serves up some 'stake' in "The Last Man on Earth" |
Vincent Price was also in "The Fly", and some of the Edgar Allen Poe-Roger Corman movies. In "The Raven" he starred with Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre; all three in the same movie! Price appeared in an episode of "The Muppet Show", where he was bitten by a fanged Kermit the Frog. Vincent's final movie was "Edward Scissorhands", where he played the old professor who gave life to the titular golem-android-robot man thingie. What was Edward supposed to be, anyway? Good stuff, that movie. I remember watching it when I was a kid, probably very shortly after it came out. That and Batman Returns; you can probably blame these two for the sense of humor you may or may not encounter in these posts.
 |
| Cousin Vinnie serves up some 'steak'. I think it's steak. Meat, anyway. |
Mr. Price was also a fan of cooking and food. He and his wife were well known gourmets, and the two of them wrote a cookbook titled "A Treasury of Great Recipes". I leave a link to an NPR article, about this cookbook, below.
He did some voice-over work. He appeared in this capacity in "The Thief and the Cobbler", released after his death, and "The Great Mouse Detective" where he voiced the villainous Professor Ratigan. Given that Price had a distinctive voice, he is quite easy to spot when you hear him in various works. I remember first seeing "The Great Mouse Detective" at my Aunt and Uncle's house in Massachusetts. It was either that one or the first Batman. Probably both. Anyway, here's a picture of the guy. You should go watch it, it's one of Disney's lesser known movies. Spoiler alert: Walt Disney is also my cousin!
 |
| See, kids? Smoking is cool! ;( |
Well, Vincent Price died October 25th, 1993. You can read all about him in many places; that's not the point of these posts. These are just short posts, for me to say a few things off the top of my head, and to show how we're related. Looks like I've done that, so feel free to leave your comments, below!
No comments:
Post a Comment