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Vincent Price
(1911-1993) At the age of 23, Vincent Price played Prince Albert in the premiere
of Arthur Schnitzler 's
'Victoria Regina' and made such an impression on producer Gilbert Miller that he
launched the play on Broadway that same year (legendary actress Helen Hayes played the
title role). In early 1938, he was
invited to join Orson Welles's
Mercury Theatre on a five-play contract, beginning with 'The Shoemaker's
Holiday'. He gave what was described
as "a polished performance".
Thus established, Vincent continued to make sporadic forays to the
Great White Way, including as the Duke of Buckingham in Shakespeare's
'Richard III' (in which a reviewer for the New Yorker found him to be
"satisfactorily detestable") and as Oscar Wilde in his
award-winning one man show 'Diversions and Delights', which he took on a
hugely successful world-wide tour in 1978.
While based in California, Vincent was instrumental in the success of
the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, starring in several of their bigger
productions, including 'Billy Budd' and 'The Winslow Boy'. In 1952, Vincent joined the national
touring company of 'Don Juan in Hell' in which he was cast as the devil. Acting under the direction of Charles Laughton and
accompanied by noted thespians Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead, he later
recalled this as one of his "greatest theatrical excitements". As well as acting on stage, Vincent
regularly performed on radio network programs, including Lux Radio Theatre,
CBS Playhouse and shows for the BBC.
He narrated or hosted assorted programs ranging from history (If these
Walls Could Speak) to cuisine (Cooking Price-Wise). He wrote several best-selling books on his
favourite subjects: art collecting and
cookery. In 1962, he was approached by
Sears Roebuck to act as a buying consultant "selling quality pictures to
department store customers". As
if that were not enough, he lectured for 15 years on art, poetry and even the
history of villainy. He recorded
numerous readings of poems by Edgar Allan Poe (nobody
ever gave a better recital of "The Raven"!), Shelley and Whitman. He also served on the Arts Council of UCLA,
was a member of the Fine Arts Committee for the White House, a former
chairman of the Indian Arts & Crafts Board and on the board of trustees
of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
His first fling with the horror genre was Dragonwyck (1946), a
Gothic melodrama set in the Hudson Valley in the early 1800's. For the first time, Vincent played a part he
actually coveted and fought hard to win.
His character was in effect a precursor of those he would later make
his own while working for Roger Corman and
American-International. Vincent's association with the genial Roger
Corman began when he received a script for The Fall of the House of Usher,
beginning a projected cycle of cost-effective films based on short stories by
Edgar Allen Poe. As Roderick Usher,
Vincent was Corman's "first and only choice". Though he was to receive a salary of
$50,000 for the picture, it was his chance "to express the psychology of
Poe's characters" and to "imbue the movie versions with the spirit
of Poe" that clinched the deal for Vincent. He made another six films in this vein, all
of them box office winners. Not
Academy Award stuff, but nonetheless hugely enjoyable camp entertainment and
popular with all but highbrow audiences.
Who could forget Vincent at his scenery chewing best as the resurgent
inquisitor, luring Barbara Steele into
the crypt in Pit and the Pendulum (1961)? Or as pompous wine aficionado Fortunato
Luchresi in that deliriously funny wine tasting competition with Montresor
Herringbone (Peter Lorre) in Tales of Terror (1962)? Best still, the climactic battle of the
magicians pitting Vincent's Erasmus Craven against Boris Karloff's malevolent
Dr. Scarabus in The Raven (1963)
(arguably, the best offering in the Poe cycle). The Comedy of Terrors (1963)
was played strictly for laughs, with the inimitable combo of Price and Lorre
this time appearing as homicidal undertakers.
For the rest of the 60s, Vincent was content to remain in his niche,
playing variations on the same theme in City in the Sea (1965)
and Witchfinder General (1968)
(as Matthew Hopkins). He also spoofed
his screen personae as Dr. Goldfoot and as perennial villain Egghead in
the Batman (1966)
series. He rose once more to the
occasion in the cult black comedy The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
and its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)
commenting that he had to play Anton Phibes "very seriously so that it
would come out funny". The
tagline, a parody of the ad for Love Story (1970),
announced "love means never having to say you're ugly". During the 70s and 80s, Vincent restricted
himself mainly to voice-overs and TV guest appearances. His final role of note was as the inventor
in Edward Scissorhands (1990),
a role written specifically for him.
The embodiment of gleeful, suave screen villainy, Vincent Price died
in Los Angeles in October 1993 at the age of 82. People magazine eulogised him as "the
Gable of Gothic". Much earlier,
an English critic named Gilbert Adair spoke for many fans when he said
"Every man his Price--and mine is Vincent". The 2013 song “Vincent Price” by the hard
rock band Deep Purple is dedicated to him.
Price was friends with the band, and, in 1975, appeared on Roger
Glover’s live version of “The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper Feast” as a
narrator. I.S. Mowis https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001637/bio
Pan-Crisped Deviled Eggs
on French Lettuces by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift
We revisit a classic recipe from Lynne and Sally's book How to Eat Supper, one born of necessity
and inspired by none other than Jacques Pépin. His recipe for Pan-Crisped Deviled Eggs on French Lettuces is
from his mother, who came up with it during the scarcity of World War
II. In classic deviled egg style,
hard-boiled eggs are re-stuffed with their yolks, which are seasoned with
mustard, milk and salt and pepper.
Feel free to add what you like as seasoning here, some spice would be
delicious, as would minced fresh green herbs of any sort, or we could imagine
going rogue and adding Chinese Five Spice powder. Dream! Once stuffed, the eggs are pan fried,
cut-side down until lovely and browned, and served on a bed of fresh
greens. We
owe the idea to Jacques Pépin and his memoir, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen. https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/pan-crisped-deviled-eggs-on-french-lettuces serves 4 as a main dish, 6 as a first course
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August 27, 2015 The television series MacGyver ran from 1987
to 1992 before settling into an afterlife on repeats channels such as
Bravo. There has been talk of rebooting it with a female lead. But its influence persisted in the popular
imagination, with the hero as a sort of be-mulleted Heath Robinson. A robot capable of creating tools was
christened the "MacGyver Bot". A competition to celebrate the ingenuity of
female engineers was called "The Next MacGyver." The top definition for "MacGyver"
on Urban Dictionary, originally posted in 2003, runs thus: "Someone who can jump-start a truck with
a cactus." The Oxford Dictionaries state that
to "MacGyver" is to make or repair something "in an improvised or
inventive way, making use of whatever items are at hand", for instance
"he MacGyvered a makeshift jack with a log". https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34075407
John
McPhee quotes
from Annals of the Former World, Book 2:
In Suspect Terrain “The whole saddle between midtown and Wall Street
would be underwater,
were it not filled with many tens of fathoms of glacial till.” “The structure of Manhattan is one of
those paradoxes in
spatial relations which give geologists especial delight and are about as intelligible to everyone
else as punch lines
delivered in Latin.” “If geologic time
could somehow be seen in the perspective of human time . . . lakes would go
away like puddles after rain, and volcanoes would light the earth as if it were
a garden full of fireflies.” “The
Silurian countryside must have been lovely—its river valleys velvet
green.” “Not by accident is geology
called geology. It’s named for Gaea, the
daughter of Chaos.” “A graduate student
once remarked to me that old hypotheses never really die. He said they’re like dormant volcanoes.” “Peat that remains near the surface will
never become coal. Buried three-quarters
of a mile, it becomes bituminous.”
DOW, verb (obsolete) To be
worth.
DOW, verb (obsolete) To be
of use, have value.
DOW, verb To have the
strength for, to be able to.
DOW, verb To thrive,
prosper.
DOW, verb To furnish with
a dower; to endow.
DOW, noun Alternative form
of dhow
DOW, proper noun A
surname.
DOW, proper noun Dow Jones
Average
Bole noun a soft oily clay used as a pigment (especially a
reddish brown pigment); trunk, tree
trunk, the main stem of a tree; usually covered with bark; the bole is
usually the part that is commercially useful for lumber. Bole,
Bolanci a
Chadic language spoken in northern Nigeria and closely related to Hausa. Princeton’s WordNet https://www.definitions.net/definition/BOLE
May 15, 2020 Bryan Washington on Ocean Vuong, Sarah Broom,
and And Tango Makes Three 15
RAPID-FIRE BOOK RECS FROM THE AUTHOR OF LOT
https://bookmarks.reviews/bryan-washington-on-ocean-vuong-sarah-broom-and-and-tango-makes-three/
Bruce Springsteen wrote
his 1984 song “Glory Days” about a speedball pitcher from his New Jersey Babe
Ruth Little League in the 1960s. *
Thriller novelist Harlan Coben and New Jersey governor Chris Christie played
for the same team in the mid-1970s, the Livingston American Little League
Senators in Livingston, NJ. * In the early 1990s, The Office co-stars John
Krasinski and B.J. Novak played on the same Little League team in Newton, MA
where Novak was “Home Run King.” Parade
Magazine May 17-24, 2020
CinemaSins
Takes a Swing at the Biggest Flaws in 5 of Our Favorite Baseball Movies
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2269
May 18, 2020
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