The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (335 page)

Past fifty, his life grew harder and he often had to go overseas, to Jess or Jesus Franco, for dire horror projects:
Doctor in Distress
(63, Thomas);
A Jolly Bad Fellow
(64, Don Chaffey);
Murder Most Foul
(64, George Pollock);
The Earth Dies Screaming
(64, Fisher). He did play Jeeves in the TV series
The World of Wooster
, but he was tired:
A High Wind in Jamaica
(65, Alexander Mackendrick);
Ten Little Indians
(65, Pollock);
Curse of Simba
(65, Lindsay Shonteff);
Rocket to the Moon
(67, Don Sharp);
Paroxismus
(69, Franco);
Horror House
(69, Michael Armstrong);
The Horror of Frankenstein
(70, Jimmy Sangster);
Las Vampiras
(71, Franco):
Drácula contra Frankenstein
(72, Franco); the King of Hearts in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
(72, William Sterling);
That’s Your Funeral
(72, John Robins);
Pulp
(72, Mike Hodges);
Horror of Snape Island
(72, Jim O’Connolly);
Go for a Take
(72, Harry Booth);
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie
(72, Bruce Beresford);
Theatre of Blood
(73, Douglas Hickox)—supporting another Price, Vincent;
Horror Hospital
(73, Anthony Balch);
Son of Dracula
(74, Freddie Francis);
Quartier des Femmes
(74, Franco).

Vincent Price
(1911–93), b. St. Louis, Missouri
To the head of the house of Price, himself ruler of the National Candy Company, was born a son, Vincent—a tall youth, of striking nobility, a boy brought up to be obeyed and respected, but mysteriously flawed by the family’s sweet tooth. As a young man he made exceptional progress as a student of art history. All things beautiful he loved and the knowledge of them that Yale, the Courtauld Institute, and the University of Vienna provided. Alas, fatal sweetness beckoned. Rather than follow Michelangelo or Bernard Berenson, because he chewed gum so stylishly he was cast on the London stage as a gangster.

From this he was raised to play Albert in
Victoria Regina
, a success in London and on Broadway. He was for a time a compatriot of a darkly influential young man of magic power, Orson Welles, and appeared for his Mercury Theater in
The Shoemaker’s Holiday
and
Heartbreak House
. Then, in 1938, the good Vincent was lured westwards to the land of haunted romance where the sun shines so fraudulently bright. The desperate moguls at the house of Fox chewed on their cold cigars, immediately discerned all the hollows behind his actorly handsomeness, and picked out decayed teeth like dentists.

Thus he was required to be effete, caddish, insolent, malicious, or weak:
Service de Luxe
(38, Rowland V. Lee); as Raleigh in
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
(39, Michael Curtiz);
Green Hell
(40, James Whale);
Tower of London
(40, Lee); as Joseph Smith in
Brigham Young
(40, Henry Hathaway);
The Song of Bernadette
(43, Henry King); as a worldly prelate in
The Keys of the Kingdom
(44, John M. Stahl);
Buffalo Bill
(44, William Wellman);
The Eve of St. Mark
(44, Stahl);
Wilson
(44, King); as the spineless fiancé to
Laura
(44, Otto Preminger);
A Royal Scandal
(45, Preminger);
Leave Her to Heaven
(46, Stahl); anticipating Poe in
Dragonwyck
(46, Joseph L. Mankiewicz); and
The Long Night
(47, Anatole Litvak).

“He’s not mean enough,” said the desperate men. “He doesn’t mean to be mean.” For they had seen that Vincent was a good-natured man; a fruit drop melted slowly in his mouth. Thus his career became listless for several years and slighter films: as Richelieu in
The Three Musketeers
(48, George Sidney);
The Bribe
(49, Robert Z. Leonard);
Champagne for Caesar
(49, Richard Whorf);
The Baron of Arizona
(50, Samuel Fuller); as a ham movie actor, Mark Cardigan, in
His Kind of Woman
(51, John Farrow);
Las Vegas Story
(52, Robert Stevenson);
Casanova’s Big Night
(54, Norman Z. McLeod); and
Son of Sinbad
(55, Ted Tetzlaff).

Disenchantment and sweetness together made Vincent incredulous at his own nightmare and so he found himself as the hideously scarred owner of
House of Wax
(53, André de Toth). He surveyed the horror genre as if it were a tray of eclairs. Nothing then distracted him from the feast, no matter that the delicacies never satisfied him. It is a paradox that he should be the king of that genre, for he knew that no one was really frightened by such an old humbug—the softie who was also art advisor for Sears Roebuck and the author of several cookbooks. He always smiled happily on ovens and butchers’ tools:
The Mad Magician
(54, John Brahm);
The Ten Commandments
(56, Cecil B. De Mille);
While the City Sleeps
(56, Fritz Lang);
The Fly
(58, Kurt Neumann);
The House on Haunted Hill
(58, William Castle);
The Return of the Fly
(59, Edward L. Bernds);
The Tingler
(59, Castle);
Confessions of an Opium Eater
(62, Albert Zugsmith); and
Diary of a Madman
(65, Reginald le Borg).

But it was Roger Corman, American International Pictures, and cheapskate adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe that fully displayed Price’s dilettante menace: this was a brotherhood of camp terror, a veritable Theleme of heightened apprehension, all in lollipop colors:
The House of Usher
(60);
The Pit and the Pendulum
(61);
Tales of Terror
(61);
The Raven
(62);
A Comedy of Terrors
(63, Jacques Tourneur);
The Masque of the Red Death
(64); and
The Tomb of Ligeia
(64).

Alas, Roger departed for more serious fields and Vincent was left, an aging but still charming frightener. Working largely in England, he found himself involved in some vulgar confections
—Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine
(65, Norman Taurog);
The Oblong Box
(69, Gordon Hessler);
Scream and Scream Again
(69, Hessler); some more acid than he had reckoned with—
Witchfinder General
(68, Michael Reeves); and a character who promised the same sort of implausible and demented longevity that Vincent had shown:
The Abominable Dr. Phibes
(71, Robert Fuest) and
Dr. Phibes Rises Again
(72, Fuest). Most richly extravagant was his Edward Lionheart in
Theatre of Blood
(73, Douglas Hickox), a Shakespearean actor who murders harsh drama critics by reprising some gruesome deaths from the work of the bard. (The cast also included Price’s wife, Coral Browne.) He was in
Madhouse
(74, Jim Clark);
Percy’s Progress
(74, Ralph Thomas);
Journey Into Fear
(75, Daniel Mann);
Scavenger Hunt
(79, Michael Schultz);
The Monster Club
(80, Roy Ward Baker);
House of the Long Shadows
(83, Pete Walker);
Escapes
(85, David Steensland);
The Offspring
(86, Jeff Burr);
The Whales of August
(87, Lindsay Anderson);
Dead Heat
(88, Mark Goldblatt);
Backtrack
(89, Dennis Hopper);
Edward Scissorhands
(90, Tim Burton). And for several years he was host of the PBS series
Mystery
.

Jonathan Pryce
, b. Holywell, Wales, 1947
Past sixty now, Jonathan Pryce strikes most observers as a better actor than he has had the chance to demonstrate. He is familiar, yet versatile, prepared to do modest roles in promising pictures. On the other hand, he may be best known for a very stylish series of Lexus commercials that played off his cool authority. Not long after that, he acquitted himself just as ably as a James Bond villain—further evidence of his stature and of how often he is wasted. Whereas his superb Lytton Strachey in the little-seen
Carrington
(95, Christopher Hampton) is unmistakably the work of a great actor.

After studying at RADA, he began stage work—notably in Trevor Griffith’s
Comedians
. He has never given up the stage, and he earned unusual attention for his Eurasian pimp in
Miss Saigon
and for the way his presence prompted union opposition when that show transferred from London to New York.

He began on screen in
Voyage of the Damned
(76, Stuart Rosenberg); playing the saxophone in
Breaking Glass
(80, Brian Gibson);
Loophole
(80, John Quested);
Something Wicked This Way Comes
(83, Jack Clayton); the lead in
The Ploughman’s Lunch
(83, Richard Eyre); the central clerk in
Brazil
(85, Terry Gilliam);
The Doctor and the Devils
(85, Freddie Francis);
Haunted Honeymoon
(86, Gene Wilder);
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
(86, Penny Marshall); in the very strange
Man on Fire
(87, Elie Chouraqui);
Consuming Passions
(88, Giles Foster);
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
(89, Gilliam);
The Rachel Papers
(89, Damian Harris), from a Martin Amis novel; as the client in
Glengarry Glen Ross
(92, James Foley);
The Age of Innocence
(93, Martin Scorsese);
Shades of Fear
(93, Beeban Kidron); Juan Perón in
Evita
(96, Alan Parker);
Behind the Lines
(97, Gillies MacKinnon);
Tomorrow Never Dies
(97, Roger Spottiswoode);
Ronin
(98, John Frankenheimer);
Stigmata
(99, Rupert Wainwright);
The Testimony of Taliesin Jones
(00, Martin Duffy);
The Suicide Club
(00, Rachel Samuels);
Il Gioco
(01, Claudia Florio);
Very Annie Mary
(01, Sara Sugarman); Mahler in
Bride of the Wind
(01, Bruce Beresford); King Leopold in
Victoria & Albert
(01, John Erman);
The Affair of the Necklace
(01, Charles Shyer).

He was in
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
(02, Gavin Millar);
Unconditional Love
(02, P. J. Hogan);
What a Girl Wants
(03, Dennie Gordon);
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
(03, Gore Verbinski);
De-Lovely
(04, Irwin Winkler);
The Brothers Grimm
(04, Gilliam); King James in
The New World
(05, Terrence Malick); as the governor in two
Pirates of the Caribbean
pictures (06–07, Gore Verbinski); as Sherlock Holmes in
Baker Street Irregulars
(07, John Kemp); doing David Hare in
My Zinc Bed
(08, Anthony Page);
Bedtime Stories
(09, Adam Shankman);
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
(09, Stephen Sommers).

Richard Pryor
(1940–2005), b. Peoria, Illinois
It’s easy to imagine the harrowed face of Richard Pryor gazing out at us through his own wreckage. This life seems far more his “work” or “art” than all the individual films or comedy routines. Grant that Pryor is a victim of racism, of family troubles, of drugs, fame, and illness, still he impresses as someone who might have found a way of liberating self-destructiveness even if his circumstances had stayed tidy and nurturing. There is a raw wildness in Pryor that is close to genius, more in his live, improvisational work than in any “set” movie. Once upon a time, Pryor talked of playing Charlie Parker. That he did not is our loss, for he has that strung-out frenzy for dangerous lines of invention that is vital to Parker. Pryor is the jazziest of comics.

From club work and performances on TV, Pryor made his way into movies:
The Busy Body
(67, William Castle);
Wild in the Streets
(68, Barry Shear);
The Phynx
(70, Lee H. Katzin);
You’ve Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You’ll Lose That Beat
(71, Peter Locke);
Dynamite Chicken
(71, Ernie Pintoff); in a straight role in
Lady Sings the Blues
(72, Sidney J. Furie);
Wattstax
(73, Mel Stuart);
Hit!
(73, Furie);
The Mack
(73, Michael Campus); and
Some Call It Loving
(73, James B. Harris).

So much of these films had been black exploitation as made by white men. But slowly Pryor got into the American mainstream: he helped write
Blazing Saddles
(74, Mel Brooks); and he acted in
Adios Amigo
(75, Fred Williamson),
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings
(76, John Badham), and the very lively
Car Wash
(76, Michael Schultz). In
Silver Streak
(76, Arthur Hiller), he started an onscreen partnership with Gene Wilder. He played race-car driver Wendell Scott in
Greased Lightning
(77, Schultz), and
Which Way Is Up?
(77, Schultz) was an attempt to redo Lina Wertmuller for black America.

Blue Collar
(78, Paul Schrader) was his best role as an actor. He played with Bill Cosby in
California Suite
(78, Herbert Ross), and he was the title role in
The Wiz
(78, Sidney Lumet).
Richard Pryor—Live in Concert
(79, Jeff Margolis) was the first of four concert films, and the best (others were
Back Live in Concert, Live on Sunset Strip
, and
Here and Now
). He was God in
In God We Trust
(80, Marty Feldman), and with Wilder again in
Stir Crazy
(80, Sidney Poitier).