No, but seriously, do you know how amazing Vincent Price is?
Not just as an actor, although he was a blast to watch in everything he did. He’s one of those actors who’s just clearly having a whale of a time, no matter how bad the film is. He’s just genuinely happy to be there (it makes his villains a particular delight, and he played a LOT of them).
But did you know that he was also on the PFLAG board after his daughter came out to him? And that he was one of the earliest celebrities to speak out against the silence surrounding the AIDS epidemic?
Did you know that when his daughter came out to him, he admitted to her that it had been difficult for him during his first two marriages, because his wives had not been pleased to find out that their husband was just as interested in men as they were?
That’s right, kids, Vincent Price was BISEXUAL AS FUCK, and it was one of those open Hollywood secrets. And his wife Coral Browne? The one he grew old with and wrote cookbooks with and was basically ridiculously sweet with?
Also bisexual as fuck. They were the queer power couple of Hollywood in the 70s. His daughter, Victoria, grew up around Rock Hudson and members of the LGBT community. When she came out, Vincent Price became a board member of PFLAG and was just about the most accepting and awesome dad.
Did you know that Vincent Price played Oscar Wilde in a one-man play, and when it was denounced by anti-gay activist Anita Bryant, he dismissed her right back, saying that Oscar Wilde had already come up with a term for her: a Woman of No Importance? Because Vincent Price was deliciously witty and an awesome person.
Let me conclude with a quote from his daughter (from this article, where I got a lot of this information):
‘“In a funny way, and I think I’m going to cry, he understood me at 22 better than I understood myself then,” Price concluded. “Of course, he was in his 70s and lived a hell of a lot longer than I had, and he understood that at the end of the day it’s about who and what and how we love. And I have not been a person who has been very successful at conventional relationships, but loving well and loving deeply has been the most important thing to me.”’
Happy birthday, Vincent Price. You were a gem of an actor, and an even greater human being.
