Vincent Price

On the set of the film Gods and Monsters, gayness was the subject of lunch discussion among the cast and crew. "Was Vincent Price gay?" someone asked, to which Sir Ian McKellen loudly replied, "Well, he was married to Coral Browne, wasn't he?!"

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (1911-1993) was married three times, the last a lavender marriage to lesbian actress Coral Browne. Upon their engagement, the Australian born Browne told critic Bernard Drew: "We've both decided to give up boys". In order to marry, Price converted to Catholicism, and Coral Browne became a U.S. citizen.

Vincent Price was an accomplished art critic and collector, a gourmand, a generous benefactor to those in need, a concerned and active political man, a devoted father – and a celebrated actor (who had a drinking problem). His bisexuality was an open secret to Hollywood insiders, and Scotty Bowers’s recent Hollywood tell-all book, Full Service, mentions that Price used his services to procure men, and Browne to procure women, for sexual gratification. But Price’s sexual predilection was surely the least interesting thing about him.

Price had a “grey” listing by the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings during the McCarthy era, and he made a somewhat shocking deal with them. He was a noted art lecturer in London. Price was involved in the 1959 rigged TV quiz-show hearings for his part in The $64,000 Question. He witnessed the Nazi regime first-hand while living overseas, even attending one of Adolph Hitler's many rallies. He played a young parasitic playboy from Kentucky in the Oscar-winning film Laura (1944, with Clifton Webb and Gene Tierney). Price graduated from Yale, plied the London stage, wrote a cookbook (A Treasury of Great Recipes, 1965), bore a son and a daughter (Victoria, a lesbian who wrote a book about her father), and developed a fine art sales division (1962-1971) for Sears-Roebuck (!). In the late 1960s he played the villain Egghead on ABC’s Batman television series. Back in the 1940s and 50s he was a popular radio actor (The Saint), while decades later Price provided a Sprechstimme “rap” contribution to Michael Jackson’s 1983 Thriller song track and video. He hosted BBC radio and PBS television series. In 1976 he was a featured guest on The Muppet Show. And that’s not the half.

Somewhere in there I forgot to mention the horror movies, his greatest legacy. Price's first venture into the horror genre was the 1939 Boris Karloff film Tower of London. There followed House of Wax (1953), The Fly (1958) and a string of movies based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe: House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Raven (1963) chief among them.

Not bad for the son of a candy company president from St. Louis (Vincent Leonard Price Sr.). A lifelong smoker, Price died of lung cancer in 1993 at the age of 82, by which time he had packed in enough activity for three or four lifetimes. If you find yourself in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterrey Park, stop by the East Los Angeles College campus to visit the Vincent and Mary Price Gallery and the Vincent Price Art Museum, the repository of Price’s art collection, comprising some 9,000 items valued at more than $5 million.

Felix d'Eon

Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, artist Felix d'Eon had a Mexican mother and a French father. Upon his father’s death while Felix was still a boy, the family moved to Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. Felix demonstrated an early aptitude for art and began drawing students, boyfriends, and other members of his swim team while he was in high school.

At age 15, his mother enrolled him in figure drawing courses at a local community college, but shortly thereafter Felix and his brother ran away from home and spent nearly a year living on a beach in Mexico, then working as models in Mexico City, drawing sidewalk portraits and at times being “kept boys.” Upon returning to Pacific Palisades and graduating from high school, Felix went to live in San Francisco, where he graduated with honors from the Academy of Art University.

From his web site:
“Felix has spent time since college in various cities around the world, such as New Orleans (where the brothers were strippers at The Corner Pocket), New York (a job as an erotic cake decorator), Milan, Italy (a kept boy), Tennessee (a gentleman farmer) and Buenos Aires (a man of leisure). His permanent home is in Mexico City, where he lives with two lesbian roommates, a charming houseboy, an erstwhile boyfriend, occasional lovers, and two cats.”

Much of D’Eon’s art is evocative of a Victorian style, although far more explicit than would have been allowed in those times. Your blogger first became aware of d’Eon when a reader sent an image of a vintage sheet music cover with an R-rated illustration incorporated into the design. Rather startling, because it looked authentic. He has also completed portfolios of super-hero comics, book covers and the like. His web site is NSFW, and accordingly, most examples of his art cannot be shown on this blog.

Do yourself a favor and amble on over to d’Eon’s Instagram site to have a look at his singular illustrations.

https://www.instagram.com/felixdeon/?hl=en