Vincent Price Estate LP: Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia, 1972

$

66

Vincent Price was justly famous for his mellifluous voice--and he frequently made recordings in all genres.

But he was most famous for his readings of Edgar Allan Poe.

This is Ligeia, recorded in 1972. It is Price's personal copy and it is still shrink wrapped.

About Edgar Allan Poe's Ligeia:

In "Ligeia," Edgar Allen Poe has written a love story with a bizarre twist. His unnamed narrator is married to a beautiful, dark-haired woman, with whom he is passionately in love. Poe spends pages describing how their two souls seemed almost like one.

However, after some years together Ligeia falls ill, and it becomes clear her illness is terminal. On her deathbed she confesses her love in so passionate a fashion that her husband is shaken: "For long hours, detaining my hand, would she pour out before me the overflowing of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to idolatry." Although she realizes that she has very little time to live, she cannot resign herself to it, asking God "Are we not part and parcel in thee?" She refuses to believe that she can die, for that would separate her from her beloved, and nothing in heaven and earth could do that.

But she does die. Our narrator mourns her, deeply, but eventually in his loneliness he takes a new bride, Rowena. However, he clearly has not forgotten Ligeia, and shortly comes to loathe his new wife, simply because he still grieves for the old one.

When Rowena too falls ill, our narrator suspects that her sickness is not due to natural causes, but he does his duty by attending her bedside until her death. True, he really isn't too broken up about it. But he has her wrapped in burial cloths and laid out on the bed, as was common in those days, and he dozes off in a chair in a drug-induced sleep. He is sharply awakened to see the supposedly dead body tottering toward him, still covered by the shroud. As parts of the cloth trail away, however, he discovers to his horror that the shrouded body is not Rowena at all, but Ligeia, who has returned to him as she promised.
 
Poe was fascinated with the theme of the doppleganger, or double, and in this story there are actually two sets of them. Ligeia, as the narrator's soulmate, is also his doppelganger; but in death she subsumes the body and the identity of Rowena, actually erasing her as if she'd never existed at all. Her love is, indeed, more powerful than death, which was a central theme for Poe. Poe's mother died when he was a small child; his best friend's mother, whom he considered a second mother in his heart, died when Poe was in his teens; and Poe's wife Virginia was always sickly and died young. Poe's biographers contend that his obsession with the undead was grounded in the loss of so many people he'd loved. Poe seems to have derived a sort of macabre comfort from the sense that these people were still there, a vital part of his life, separated from him only by the veil of death, and we see this in "Ligeia."

Death, Poe believed, didn't really make a person go away; it could always be vanquished by the power of the human soul.

About Vincent Price:

Vincent Price
born: 27-05-1911
birth place: St. Louis, USA
died: 25-10-1993

American horror actor, Vincent Price, was born in Missouri, and, after graduating from Yale, studied fine arts in London.

Making his stage debut in ‘Chicago’ at the Gate Theater, in 1935, he worked on Broadway, and with Orson Welles’ legendary Mercury Theater.

He debuted on the screen with ‘Service de Luxe’ in 1938, as part of a Universal contract, under which he was offered only supporting roles. Leaving for Twentieth Century Fox, Price starred in ‘Brigham Young Frontiersman’ and ‘Hudson Bay’.

After returning to Broadway with ‘Angel Street’, Price co-starred in ‘The Song of Bernadette’ in 1943. Happy to be typecast as a villain, he began making his name in such work as ‘Wilson and Laura’ (1944) and ‘Leave Her To Heaven’ (1946), before finally starring in ‘Shock!’, and ‘Dragonwick’ (1947).

More stage work followed his departure from Fox in the early fifties, with performances in ‘The Cocktail Party’ and ‘Don Juan in Hell’.

In 1953, Price starred in the 3-D ‘The House of Wax’, which became one of the most successful horror films ever produced. This was followed by the equally 3-D ‘Dangerous Mission’.

Triumphant in a return to the stage with ‘Richard III’, Price was now, essentially, a horror film star. Hits such as 1958’s ‘The Fly’ led to his involvement with producer Roger Corman, for whom Price performed in many Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, such as ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (1960) and ‘The Raven’ (1963).

Notable appearances over the years included the teen movie ‘Beach Party’ (1963) and the Elvis film, ‘The Trouble With Girls’ (1969).

In the 1970s Price devoted himself mainly to art history, lecturing and publishing books on art history. He re-appeared for a last role in Tim Burton’s ‘Edward Scissorhands’ in 1990, and died in Los Angeles three years later.