Dennistoun John Franklyn Rose Price (23 June 1915 – 6 October 1973) was an English actor. He played Louis Mazzini in the Ealing Studios film Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and the omnicompetent valet Jeeves in 1960s television adaptations of P. G. Wodehouse's stories.
Biography
Early life
Price was born in Ruscombe in Berkshire. He had distant Welsh family connections, and was the son of Brigadier-General Thomas Rose Caradoc Price (1875–1949), CMG, DSO (who was a great-grandson of Sir Rose Price, 1st Baronet, and, through his mother, a descendant of the Baillie baronets of Polkemmet, near Whitburn, West Lothian),
He was given a support role in A Place of One's Own (1945) starring James Mason. British National borrowed him for The Echo Murders (1946), a Sexton Blake film; he was then fourth-billed as the villain in a Gainsborough melodrama, Caravan (1946) with Stewart Granger and Jean Kent, playing the type of villainous part that had made James Mason a star (and that Mason was no longer interested in playing). It was a huge success.
Price was a villain again in Gainsborough's The Magic Bow (1946) with Granger and Kent. Two Cities Films used him in one of its melodramas, Hungry Hill (1947). Gainsborough used him in villainous roles in Dear Murderer, Holiday Camp, Jassy and Master of Bankdam (all 1947).
He made two films for Bernard Knowles, supporting Margaret Lockwood in The White Unicorn and a comedy, Easy Money (both 1948). He followed this with a thriller, Snowbound, and a crime melodrama Good-Time Girl (both 1948). In 1948, British exhibitors voted Price the tenth-most popular British actor at the box office.
Stardom
He was promoted to starring roles. He was given the title role in The Bad Lord Byron (1949); this was a huge flop at the box-office, and helped kill off the Gainsborough melodrama. Much more successful, both at the box-office and among critics, was Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), for Ealing Films; he played the suave serial murderer Louis Mazzini with Alec Guinness playing his eight relatives.
Price was in a wartime drama, The Lost People (1949). In the same year, he was a guest judge on a BBC radio broadcast of the Piddingtons show. His role was to represent the eyes of listeners as the Piddingtons performed their telepathy act in the Piccadilly studios, and in the Tower of London. He was ensuring that no cheating was going on and overseeing the telepathy tests as a witness.
He was loaned to Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) to make two films: the musical The Dancing Years (1950), a sizeable hit; and the thriller Murder Without Crime (1950), was less successful.
Back at Rank, Price was a villain in The Adventurers, and was borrowed by 20th Century Fox for I'll Never Forget You (both 1951).
He played the lead in Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951), and after a cameo in The Magic Box (1951) he had top billing in a comedy, Song of Paris (1952).
Supporting actor
Price supported in The Tall Headlines (1952) and had the lead in some B-films: Noose for a Lady (1953), Murder at 3am (1953) and Time Is My Enemy (1954). In "A" pictures he was now a supporting actor, with his films including The Intruder (1953), For Better, for Worse (1954), That Lady (1955), Oh... Rosalinda!! (1955), Private's Progress (1956), Charley Moon (1956) with Max Bygraves, Port Afrique (1956), A Touch of the Sun (1956), Fortune Is a Woman (1957), The Naked Truth (1957), Danger Within (1959), I'm All Right Jack (1959), and School for Scoundrels (1960). He was top billed in Don't Panic Chaps! (1959), a minor comedy made by Hammer Films.
In the 1950s, Price appeared in London and New York City in new plays and revivals of classics. It has been suggested that he was the first name actor on television to play a "more or less overtly gay role" in Crime on Our Hands (1954). In 1957, he made his debut in South Africa in lead roles in Separate Tables. was based on the novels and short stories of P. G. Wodehouse. On television, he had recurring roles in the ITC series Jason King (1971) and The Adventurer (1972).
Price died of heart failure, complicated by a hip fracture, in Guernsey in 1973, at the age of 58. He was cremated at the Foulon Vale Crematorium, Guernsey, and his ashes were buried outside St. Peter's Anglican Church on Sark, next to the traditional burial plot of the Seigneurs of Sark.
In the book British Film Character Actors (1982), Terence Pettigrew wrote that Price's most successful screen characterisations were "refined, self-centred, caddish and contemptuous of a world inhabited by inferiors. Everything about him was deceptive. He could be penniless and still manage to look as if he owned the bank. But behind all that grand talk and lordly ways, there skulked, in his characters, the most ordinary of shabby, grasping souls."
Personal life
Price was married to the actress Joan Schofield from 1939 to 1950. They had two daughters. Decades after his death, it was claimed that Price was bisexual.
In April 1954, he tried to commit suicide by gas in a London guest house. Public sympathy led to a revival of his career and the offer of film roles.
Filmography
References
Further reading
- Gaye, Freda (ed). Who's Who in the Theatre, Fourteenth edition. Pitman Publishing, London, 1967
- Huntley, Elliot J. Dennis Price – A Tribute: The Life and Death of Dennis Price. Pickard Communication, 2008
- Parker, Elaine & Owen, Gareth 'The Price of Fame'. Fonthill books, 2018.