Tracker Pixel for Entry

​The Price is right

Writer's Block | October 16th, 2019

Victoria Price with her father Vincent Price

Vincent Price was a man of many hats. Known to many for his film and television career best known for portraying an array of villains. Along with that, he was an art collector and advocate, a gourmet chef and most importantly a father. His daughter Victoria Price has followed in his footsteps as a woman of many talents, she’s a speaker, lover of the roads less travelled, an interior designer, and writer, and part of her mission is to share her father’s legacy with both HPR and Valleycon 45.

High Plains Reader: You wrote a biography on your father, how difficult was it to curate and cultivate that information--where does one even start?

VP: It began because he and I had talked about and worked on a book about his life in the visual arts--which was his passion and our shared passion. We worked on that for a long time and I was actually working on selling that book when he died. Afterward, people began approaching me about a biography, and I don’t really feel that kids should write their parent’s biographies because I don’t necessarily think we’re objective enough but people were interested and I began to realize that if I didn’t write what I knew--no one would ever know it. So I really ended up feeling like that was what I really wanted to do, like, here are the parts of him that I knew. I began to research. I interviewed about 250 people I went through the archives, I went to Yale I went to the Library of Congress, it was an amazing experience. Almost anybody knows his filmography better than I do but it was really about writing about him as a person.

HPR: He was an art collector--what kind of art captivated him and how were your tastes in art similar and how were they different?

VP: I would say that he was really interested in everything, there was almost nothing that he wasn’t interested in. Ancient art and super modern art. He really loved drawings, because the drawings he felt were a glimpse into the soul and the mind and the process of the artist. He loved graphic arts, he loved crafts--he was not a pretentious person at all. He had a great passion for Native American art and I do as well. I don’t know if he loved photography that much and I do--so that might be one place we differed. Our tastes were very similar otherwise.

Victoria Price

HPR: In various interviews you’ve mentioned Mr. Price’s love of language do you feel like that might have fueled your fire to write?

VP: He was writing all the time--he had a real love of language, my mother did too in a way… they were both very articulate, both very well read and witty--so was my stepmother. I grew up with three people with whom language wasn’t just an afterthought. My father always wrote in journals. Yes, I got that from all three of them, the love of language.

HPR: You contributed to the book accompanying Tim Burton’s exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art…

VP: Yes, that was a huge honor.

HPR: I also read that he has a documentary on Vincent Price but it’s come to somewhat of a standstill, is that true?

VP: He filmed it while my dad was still alive and I heard that he’s still aware that it exists but it’s too expensive to create it in the way that he would like to create it. I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day but I sure hope so.

HPR: Vincent Price often orated Edgar Allan Poe’s work and portrayed characters from his works on film, what do you think he found so attractive about Poe?

VP: I think that he thought Poe was the first great original American voice that was recognized by European writers and European readers. Particularly by the French, before Poe most American writers and artists were sort of second class citizens, great artists and writers were all known to be European--of the western world obviously, and we were just this frontier. Poe actually influenced people like Beaudelier and other French writers and artists--so my father felt that Poe needed to be recognized for the influence that he had. For my dad to be forever associated with Poe is an incredible honor. It was important to him and Roger Corman--how could an hour or hour and a half film capture a 10 page story? It was important to them that they captured the ethos of Poe.

HPR: I read in another interview that you often cite your favorite performance of your father’s was a one man show in which he portrayed Oscar Wilde.

VP: It was very meaningful to him because Oscar Wilde was a great wit and a great literary force but it was also a very poignant story being told at a time when it was risky to tell the story of a gay man. It began in 1977 I think.

HPR: In a 2015 interview with The Baltimore Post Examiner, you mentioned you had a tough time watching his horror films. Would you care to elaborate on that?

VP: First of all he was my dad! He was this lovely joy filled happy kind man and there he was killing people and doing these violent things and dying these violent deaths. I don’t know, he’s in the top five of violent deaths of people who died in film and television--I think he’s number three… I never wanted to see that but also I never liked violence.

HPR: What was Halloween like at the Price house?

VP: For all horror stars Halloween is the busy season and it always was. He was gone for most of October but he would take us trick or treating and it was always fun because you know, he liked to play tricks on the others and we didn’t mind tricks--we just wanted our candy. Whenever he was around he was an amazing dad.

Victoria Price with her father Vincent

HPR: What are some of your favorite memories of him?

VP: Well, we had a motorhome and he was on the Indian Arts and Crafts board which was part of the Department of the Interior, we traveled a lot to Native American reservations all over the country and we would go out in our motorhome out in the middle of nowhere and it was fantastic. We were out having these adventures and it was just us! My mom, my dad, me, whatever dog we had at the moment--it was so liberating, just being us on the road--seeing America. Maybe that’s why I love to drive so much.

HPR: I was looking at your website reading about your interior design work and I really enjoyed your wildflower anecdote. “Wildflowers always grow in amazing profusion by the side of the road. . . so much so that often there are more flowers there, than in the fields. I was so struck by this that I talked about it all the time–and finally someone explained this phenomenon to me. Wildflowers love to grow where the soil has been disturbed–so, that spot where the tarmac meets the dirt is exactly what wildflowers need to manifest their wild beauty.”

VP: That’s in my book too, “The way of being lost.” It really became sort of a metaphor for me, I think that the place between places is a challenging place to be when you’re in between two theoretically known things but that place where two different ideas and two different realities push up against each other--that’s where all the fertile ground is and that’s where the beauty and the growth happens.

HPR: I do have to ask you-- Is it ever weird to have complete strangers ask all of these questions about your dad?

VP: There’s two things that are interesting about it, first of all I think it’s amazing 26 years after he’s passed, people are still interested and care about him and that feels wonderful because I get to talk about somebody I love so much. He’s gone but that keeps him alive! That part I love. The other part that I think is interesting is we’re talking about something that transcends the fact that he was a material person that lived this material life and is gone. What we’re talking about are the feelings that people have when they connect to him. To me, that’s a deeply spiritual idea it reminds me that. That’s all that any of us care about anyway--we don’t care about what happened at 4pm 22 years ago, we actually care about something larger than the concrete details of our lives ad that to me, means that what my dad has become--is that he’s become a conduit to deeply meaningful conversations about things that we all care about like life and love and joy and creativity and connection and I think he would love that, and I love that.

IF YOU GO:

Valleycon 45

October 18-20

Ramada Fargo, 3333 13 Ave. S, Fargo

www.victoriaprice.com

https://www.vincentprice.com/

Recently in:

By Alicia Underlee Nelsonalicia@hpr1.comNorth Dakotans will take part in a nationwide civil rights rally on Thursday, July 17. Protests, marches, rallies and acts of service are scheduled in Bismarck, Bottineau, Devils Lake,…

Back-to-school season is on the horizon, but there's still plenty of summer left. Check out our favorite August attractions and events in North Dakota and western Minnesota. And if if you missed them, here are a few excellent May…

July 18-19, 25-26 and August 2-3North Dakota Horse Park, 5180 19th Ave. N., FargoLadies and gentlemen, prepare to place your bets — racing season is upon us! Not just horses will be racing this year; word on the street suggests…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.com On July fourth, Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest took place at Coney Island. The winners, Joey Chestnut and Miki Sudo, reigned victorious. Chestnut earned his 17th title by…

By Ed Raymondfargogadfly@gmail.comWhy doesn’t the world require politicians to leave office at 60?Most of the leaders of countries, whether gods, fascists, democrats or socialists, are not doing very well these days. David Van…

By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com Holiday wine shopping shouldn’t have to be complicated. But unfortunately it can cause unneeded anxiety due to an overabundance of choices. Don’t fret my friends, we once again have you covered…

By Rick Gion and Simone Wairickgion@gmail.com The Red River Market returned to downtown Fargo on Saturday, July 12. The event will take place every Saturday except July 19. (That date will be moved to Sunday, July 20, due to the…

By Alicia Underlee Nelsonalicia@hpr1.comThe Moorhead Public Library will offer three free, all-ages outdoor concerts featuring regional bands this summer. The series begins on June 12 with the Meat Rabbits, a group that blends…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comPhoto by Sabrina Hornung Wing, North Dakota is a town of 132 located about an hour northwest of Bismarck on Highway 36. There’s a shiny new Cenex on the intersection of the highway and the high…

By Deb Wallworkdwallwork@icloud.comI first met Catherine Mulligan at a party at her house. It was a small gathering, spontaneous, just a few people over for dinner. Directed toward a stack of plates and bowls and a big pot warming…

By John Showalterjohn.d.showalter@gmail.comPhoto by Yvonne Denault There is something intimate and personal about plays. Even in our age of multimillion dollar Hollywood productions and droves of streaming services, watching actors…

By Annie Prafckeannieprafcke@gmail.com AUSTIN, Texas – As a Chinese-American, connecting to my culture through food is essential, and no dish brings me back to my mother’s kitchen quite like hotdish. Yes, you heard me right –…

By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comNew Jamestown Brewery Serves up Local FlavorThere’s something delicious brewing out here on the prairie and it just so happens to be the newest brewery west of the Red River and east of the…

The drug that keeps re-purposing itselfBy Ellie Liveranieli.liverani.ra@gmail.com There is a drug that is getting a lot of attention nowadays all over the world. It has various commercial names (Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus), but…

By Alicia Underlee NelsonProtests against President Trump’s policies and the cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planned across North Dakota and western Minnesota Friday, April 4 and…

By Vern Thompsonvern.thompson@rocketmail.com Working in the Bakken oil fields of the Williston Basin is so different from my home in Fargo. I'm not judging, because the people working and living in western North Dakota are very…