The voice behind Michael Jackson's Thriller was also a Yale-educated art historian, the heir to a baking powder fortune, and a man who once poached a whole fish in a dishwasher on national television. This episode explores how Vincent Price, born into St. Louis wealth in 1911, stumbled into acting in a 1935 London production of Chicago, rose to Broadway stardom opposite Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina, and then deliberately leaned into horror after the 3D sensation House of Wax in 1953 showed him the genre offered fame and freedom that serious supporting roles could not.

We look at his work with showman William Castle and Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe cycle, his ubiquity on Batman and Hollywood Squares, and his acclaimed 1977 one-man show as Oscar Wilde. Off screen, he donated 90 artworks to East Los Angeles College to create the first comm ...