The King of Horror! Bah! Vincent Leonard Price was still wearing shorts when his family moved from Washington Avenue to 6320 Forsyth. Vincent Clarence Price was his grandfather. He was a New York pharmacist and homeopath, but he couldn’t grow beards. He was not trusted by patients so he made the first cream of tartar baking paste to help his mother, a loving woman but a terrible cook, make new leaden biscuits. He then went out west to sell the stuff. He soon began to make the best vanilla and lemon extracts, which he used as a breakfast cereal. Sage was even a fan of dog food.
The stock market crashed. Vincent Leonard Price, his youngest son, was attending Yale at the time. Vincent Clarence pulled him out of school to save at least one family business, the National Candy Company. Vincent Leonard, realizing that St. Louis was soon to be the center of the Olympics and the World’s Fairs, moved here in 1902. His candy company was soon one of the largest in the country. Vincent Leonard Jr. was christened the Candy Kid by the National Candymakers Association in May 1911.
He went to Country Day School, then to Yale where he was studying art history when the stock market crashed. Vincent did not have to go to school because his father was a specialist in penny candy, which was all that anyone could afford at the moment. He graduated from high school and went to London to study art. However, he ended up performing on the London stage.
The Candy Kid was eager to become a character actor and came home determined. He was 6’4″ tall and had patrician features. His refined elegance made it impossible to play a Jimmy Cagney gangster. So he instead found roles as sultry, often likable Gothic villains. Then he slipped into the growing genre of horror movies.
He said it about 100 times later, “I sometimes feel like I’m impersonating a dark unconscious of all humankind.” But all that fear, horror, and evil were offset by lots of joy. He was an art collector, having bought a Rembrandt engraving at 12 years old. He also wrote cookbooks, perhaps under Granddad’s influence. Victoria learned how to make pancakes from scratch, and how to wait for bubbles before flipping them. She once confided that he was “like a big child.” “He was always curious, always interested, and had such a generous spirit. He was a great believer in gratitude. He was an optimist at heart. He felt that we must face our fears and go into the darkness.”
He was a great grandfather and knew how to get the best out of us.
