Vincent Price

Actor who played Simon Templar, alias The Saint, on Radio

The Saint on Old-Time Radio

The Saint was first brought to life on the radio in 1940 by Terence De Marney (aka Terrance De Marney) on Radio Athlone. It was then a five-year wait before NBC picked up the option, and featured Edgar Barrier as Simon Templar, alias The Saint. Later in 1945, Brian Aherne took over the role when the show switched over to CBS. Then in 1947, probably the most famous Radio Saint of all-time, Vincent Price, added his golden voice to the role. Vincent Price was once quoted as saying the most difficult thing about the show was coming up with new and unique ways to get conked on the head. After a large number of episodes, Price finally left and his replacement Barry Sullivan only lasted a few episodes before the show was cancelled. It was resurrected due to public demand, with Vincent Price returning to save the day. In 1951, Tom Conway (George Sanders' brother), of The Falcon fame, played The Saint for the last few episodes, with Lawrence Dobkin stepping in for a single episode when Conway was unavailable. Between 1953 and 1957, Tom Meehan starred as The Saint on Springbok Radio in South Africa (in English) with fresh adaptations of the original Charteris stories. It wasn't until 1995 that the Saint returned to radio with new episodes, with Paul Rhys portraying The Saint in three scripts taken directly from the orginal Charteris stories.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Lester A Dinerstein

Actor, writer, and gourmet, Vincent Price was born in St Louis, Missouri. He traveled through Europe, studied at Yale and became an actor. He made his screen debut in 1938, and after many minor roles, he began to perform in low-budget horror movies such as House of Wax (1953), achieving his first major success with House of Usher (1960). Known for his distinctive, low-pitched, creaky, atmospheric voice and his quizzical, mock-serious facial expressions, he went on to star in a series of acclaimed Gothic horror movies, such as Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971).

He abandoned films in the mid-1970s, going on to present cooking programs for television - he wrote "A Treasury of Great Recipes" (1965) with his second wife, Mary Grant - but had two final roles in The Whales of August (1987) and Edward Scissorhands (1990). He also recorded many Gothic horror short stories for the spoken-word label Caedmon Records.

Vincent Price as The Saint on Radio

In an early 1970s interview about his work on radio, Vincent Price had this to say about portraying The Saint, "Each week I had to come up with a new way to sound when I would inevitably be hit on the head."

Wikipedia on Early Career

He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself as a competent actor, notably in Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith, Jr. in the movie Brigham Young (1940). During the 1940s, he appeared in a wide variety of films from straight-forward drama to comedy to horror (he provided the voice of The Invisible Man at the end of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948). In 1946 he reunited with Gene Tierney in two notable films Dragonwyck and Leave Her to Heaven. He was also active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar, aka. The Saint, in a popular series that ran from 1947 to 1951.

In the 1950s, he moved into horror films, enjoying a role in the successful curiosity House of Wax (1953), the first 3-D film to land in the year's top ten at the North American box office, and then the classic monster movie The Fly (1958).

Price also starred in the original House on Haunted Hill (1959) as the eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren. (Geoffrey Rush, playing the same character in the 1999 remake, was not only made to resemble Price, but was also renamed Steven Price.)

Selected Filmography of Vincent Price