The Magic Attic Admires, Vol.3: Vincent Price

Vincent Price with his art collection, 1940s

Yes, Vincent Price! And while I am A Halloween Girl and I've called him one of my "October boyfriends" for a while (I see a LOT of him, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee every October) that's not even why!

I mean, there's a lot there to admire. He had a classic, upwardly mobile Old Hollywood career throughout the '30s and '40s - Dragonwyck, Laura, etc. - and was then graylisted during the McCarthy witch hunts. This altered the trajectory of his career, and led him down the road to the lower prestige horror movies that he ended up gleefully owning the entire genre of. (And he wasn't embarrassed by going down the horror road - far from it, he clearly enjoyed the hell out of himself and his new image).

But his resilience in bouncing back from the damage McCarthy inflicted and making his name synonymous with a whole genre aside - and I do admire him for that - I admire him for both having collected art from the time he was a young man and deciding to share art - and the love of art - with people who may not have ever really had the chance to interact with it.

He curated a collection for Sears Roebuck that debuted in 1962, right around the time his movie Tales Of Terror, one of the Corman/Poe movies, was out. He was given carte blanche by Sears - go where you need to, choose whatever you want - and he traveled the world looking for the art he wanted in his collection.

It started slow, in just a few stores, but the art sold so well that eventually, they rolled it out to every store in the country.

Now, Sears was not exactly a high-end store, it was definitely more for the common working man and woman, but that was the point. His passion for art was such that he took it as a mission to get art in front of that common working man and woman in such a way that it was accessible and affordable. He wasn't high-handed or condescending about it, he was excited and all in.

The collection for Sears lasted for almost a decade and was very successful.

How many people today love art - and maybe even have pretty decent collections - because of Vince?

And that's why The Magic Attic Admires Vincent Price.