Let me start by saying I was not trying to be either condescending or, certainly, offensive in any of my remarks. But the tone of your comments about the films made "before your time" itself struck me as condescending -- or maybe "dismissive" would be more accurate. To me, those remarks came off very negatively, as though you were implying that older films were somehow unimportant, not worth "younger" people's time, ancient stuff of no value or quality. Such attitudes aren't uncommon on IMDb. Now, I'll assume you didn't mean them that way either, but just as you took offense at some of what I wrote, understand that some of what I said was because I took offense at what many of your remarks seemed to imply.
So with that out of the way, some observations:
No, I never saw him in any of those serious roles in the 40's and 50's. I only came to "know" him when I was a young kid in the 70's. At that point, he was only in horror films and campy films. Nothing serious at all. That is how I grew up with him.
Frankly I'm surprised you were a young kid in the 70s, because that means you have to be around 50, give or take a couple of years -- which also makes you only about 10 years younger than me. To be honest, the tone of your earlier posts made it seem that you were much younger -- mid-20s or something. This was reinforced by your second reply below, where you list some of Price's 70s and 80s roles in movies and TV as the kind of un-serious stuff (as they certainly were) you're familiar with. Yet if you're old enough to have grown up with such contemporary Price roles in the 70s and 80s, you're also old enough to have been able to see the movies he made in the 40s and 50s (and 60s, for that matter), all of which turned up on TV back then (and still do).
The fact that, in response to the list of earlier Price films I mentioned, you replied,
I pretty much never heard of any of these
is surprising given your age and, again, the availability of these films on TV and, for the past 35 years, on home video. Certainly there's no particular reason you should have seen all, or even most of them, but quite honestly it's surprising that you never even heard of any of them -- even if, as you say, movies, old or new, are not high on your priority list. Fair enough; we all have our own tastes. But that's different from giving as an excuse that some movies were "before your time", as if this somehow rendered them inaccessible (or, worse, irrelevant). That's the strong implication of what you've written, especially since you take such umbrage at my comment about there being many great films made before you were born.
In other words, saying you don't know anything about Price's earlier films because movies aren't a priority of yours is one thing; but saying that you don't know anything about them simply because they were made before you were born is a pretty lame statement, as if you had no means of seeing anything made before your birth. Okay, they were made before your time. So what? You had and have every opportunity to see many of them. If you have no interest in doing so, that's fine. But their being made before you were born is really irrelevant.
Yes, it is of course the same 1956 version of
The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston. Price plays Baka, the evil master builder, whom Moses eventually strangles in order to free Lilia from his clutches.
Anyway, no offense was intended in anything I wrote, but I do have trouble buying into the excuse that you didn't see all these movies because they were before your time. Normally that's the reason given by people who disparage anything made before their lifetime, who believe that the only good movies (or music, or books, or whatever) have been made since they were born and older stuff is worthless, which is why I reacted so strongly to your statement. If movies new or old aren't a priority for you I'm surprised you even know as much about Price's later work as you seem to. But there are so many thousands of great films made before you (or I) were born that you're cheating yourself by lumping them all together and dismissing, or remaining ignorant about, them, simply on the hollow premise that they were "before your time".
And that's also true of the varied career of Vincent Price.
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JosephASpadaro
8 years ago
So, in a nut shell, the only exposure that I ever had to Vincent Price while growing up as a kid in the 1970's was all that "fluff" that I posted from his Wikipedia filmography.
Things like: The Brady Bunch, The Love Boat, The Muppet Show, Batman, etc.
That is how I came to know him and his work. So, certainly, I never saw him (back then) as a "serious" actor. He was always in sit-com fluff roles. And I vaguely remembered him in some B-movies and "campy" type of horror films.
And, quite frankly, I never gave him any more thought after that.
Now, fast forward to 2015 or 2016. That (above) was still the way that I had pictured and envisioned Vincent Price. Because I had no other experiences to indicate otherwise.
As a kid, I certainly did not watch films from the 1940's or 50's. And as a kid, I certainly was not about to watch any black-and-white films.
So, in 2015 or 2016, I watched The Song of Bernadette. I was quite surprised to see Price in the film (given my pre-conceived notions about him). And this conversation was the first that I had ever heard that he was a serious actor before he started engaging in the "fluff" acting roles. In fact, this is the very thing that prompted me to ask my original question about Price! I was quite curious to see how/why anyone would call him a "serious actor", given what I personally knew about him.
As far as the "before my time" comment:
You certainly read far more into it than necessary. You seemed very defensive and upset by that comment. So, you had a bias to be "offended" by it.
Nonetheless, mine is a valid point.
Certainly, all people (and especially kids) are exposed on a daily basis to contemporary material. They are not often exposed to material (films, TV shows, etc.) that pre-dated them.
So, for example, while I may have "heard of" Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best, I certainly never watched them. Nor did I really have any opportunity to watch them. But, contemporary shows -- The Brady Bunch, The Muppets, The Love Boat, etc. -- they were all around at all times, and you couldn't help but to be exposed to them.
Also, you have to remember:
Watching TV in the 1970's was very different than today.
There was no such thing as DVR or DVD or videotape. You could not "tape" a show and watch it later. You either saw the show when it was aired, or you never saw it at all. Those were the only two options back then.
So, if I wanted to watch a show, I had to physically be at home, sitting in front of the TV, at the exact day and hour that the show aired.
Also, back then, they only had three major TV stations, not the 1,000+ stations that they have today.
So, TV programming was very limited. There were only so many hours in a day (or week) that the TV stations had to fill. And they would fill it with contemporary stuff. Not old stuff from the 1940's and 1950's.
So, the comment distinguishing material that is contemporary versus material that was "before my time" is highly relevant and highly valid.
After having transitioned from a kid into an adult, watching TV was far less of a concern and/or priority. It was/is way down low on my "to do" list.
So, bottom line: I never had exposure to Vincent Price as a serious actor and I never had exposure to his early work from the 1940's and 50's. Nor did I seek out any such exposure.
Thanks.
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hobnob53
8 years ago
Hello Joseph,
After reading your post an obvious thought struck me that I should have thought of before.
You say that you didn't see older TV programs or old movies on TV growing up in the 70s. I did see a lot of each growing up in the 60s. Both of us grew up in the pre-cable, pre--1000-channel era, relying only on broadcast channels.
Now, one factor is that, ten years later, there was simply more stuff around, while (obviously) the amount of time in which anything could be broadcast was the same, so many older shows or films may have been pushed aside by or seen less frequently than more recent programs.
But the main factor would likely be where you were living. I lived in New York City, the media capital of the US (yay!), with seven broadcast stations (including the network flagship stations), and relatively long broadcast days. With four independent channels besides the nets, there was a lot of air time to fill up, so we were lucky enough not only to see repeats of older shows but also lots and lots of old movies (though they weren't so old then!). I grew up seeing all these films and knowing all these stars. So a guy like Vincent Price wasn't only the actor hamming it up on Batman or later TV shows, but also an actor in many different kinds of films dating back to the late 30s.
Now, you wrote that you "never really had an opportunity" to see older shows and movies. You also wrote that there were "only three major TV stations". That was true in much of the country -- but hardly everywhere. (I lived in mid-Missouri in the mid-70s and they had only the three nets even then.)
So, when you said,
Certainly, all people (and especially kids) are exposed on a daily basis to contemporary material. They are not often exposed to material (films, TV shows, etc.) that pre-dated them.
you're only half right. The first sentence is obviously true. But the second one really depends on where you lived and how much television was available to you. (Again, I'm talking about pre-cable days.) If you grew up in an area with a relatively limited number of stations (three or four), these would have been confined to the networks and allowed little opportunity for more varied, "non-contemporary" programming. But if you grew up in an area with a great deal of TV, as I did, you would invariably be exposed to a lot of older programming as well as the new, because so many stations needed a lot of programming to fill up their air time.
Of course, I don't know where you grew up, but from what you've said it sounds to me that you were raised in an area with few TV stations and therefore were naturally exposed to mostly contemporary TV, since there was little time available for anything else, old movies and TV shows in particular. That was not the case with me, so I had the benefit of seeing all these older shows and films and knowing about all these stars' earlier careers because I did indeed grow up on them -- as well as on contemporary programming. (Clearly, personal preferences also came into play in what I watched, but I was fortunate to have so much to choose from, and my own preferences leaned toward older movies -- which included many that were fairly new then but are definitely older now!)
Does this sound like a plausible explanation for our different TV experiences?
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JosephASpadaro
8 years ago
Also:
I think that when you read my comments, you had a pre-conceived notion of me and of who I am.
You "pre-judged me" (unjustly so) as being some young, snot-nosed, know-it-all millennial kid. One who thinks that the world revolves around him. One who thinks the only things of importance are the things that occur nowadays. And anything (such as a film, a TV show, etc.) older than 5 or 10 years old is irrelevant, meaningless, and worthless.
No, I am hardly such a millennial, with such a millennial mind-set.
In fact, some of my "most favorite" films are certainly very old and certainly "before my time".
Just off the top of my head:
* The Wizard of Oz - was from 1939.
* It's a Wonderful Life - was from 1946.
* The Song of Bernadette - was from 1943.
* Sunset Boulevard - was from 1950.
* Double Indemnity - was from 1944.
And so forth.
(And, might I mention, all of the above films are indeed black-and-white!) (Except for the color parts of Oz.)
There are a million great films that were "before my time".
Yes, I am old enough and wise enough to appreciate that fact.
In fact, most (probably all?) of the best films are "before my time":
Casablanca; Citizen Kane, all of the Alfred Hitchcock stuff, etc., etc., etc.
Most of the contemporary stuff is either trash; vapid; or a remake of the "good" stuff from the old days.
So, when you argue that the old stuff is good and probably much better than the new stuff, you are preaching to the choir.
I am no fan of Justin Bieber, the Kardashians, and/or what purports to be good film or good TV of the contemporary age.
Bottom line: You and I are (more or less) of the same generation and of the same mind-set. And we agree more than we disagree on the topic at hand.
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hobnob53
8 years ago
You are correct, Joseph; I did misjudge you and your background initially, because some of what you wrote did sound similar to the kind of thing I and others have occasionally run across on IMDb: millennials who know nothing of the world before they came along and dismiss anything before their time as stupid stuff of no value or interest. My apologies for jumping to conclusions.
But as I said in subsequent posts I realized from your later comments that you were indeed not such a person and that you're probably only about ten years younger than me. Your comment above,
Bottom line: You and I are (more or less) of the same generation and of the same mind-set. And we agree more than we disagree on the topic at hand.
is exactly correct.
I'm catching up with and answering your most recent posts of a few days ago in order, and reading them only one at a time, so I address some aspects of your points in my prior reply.
I did see your even earlier post of June 12, at the end of this thread, listing the Vincent Price stuff you were familiar with. It goes to the main point I made in my reply prior to this one, about where we grew up and how much TV was available to each of us.
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