Getting Accurate Measurements From Public Figures
Vincent Price was listed at 6'2" on most bio sites, but that number keeps bouncing around depending on where you look. I spent time tracking down actual frame references from his film performances, press photos with other actors, and medical/immigration records when they're available. The standard approach here involves cross-referencing multiple visual sources and comparing him against co-stars whose heights are documented. Start by pulling high-resolution stills from his films during the period you're researching. Early Universal productions in the late 1940s through the 1950s give you the most usable material because the camera setups were relatively straightforward. Look for full-body shots where his feet and shoes are visible. Shoes matter a lot here. Price wore elevated dress shoes regularly, and they added roughly an inch to his standing height in most of these frames. Find scenes where he's standing next to someone tall and well-documented. Peter Lorre is a solid reference point—Lorre was approximately 5'7". In The Black Cat (1941), Price towers noticeably over Lorre, and the visual gap is consistent with around 5-6 inches of difference. That puts Price closer to 6'0" to 6'1" barefoot rather than the commonly cited 6'2".
The real problem comes with promotional stills and studio portraits. Those images were often staged on risers, angled with trick camera positions, or retouched to exaggerate stature. Studios liked their horror leads looking imposing. I ran into this specifically when I was working on a comparison chart for Price's later Hammer films. The publicity photos showed him as a full head taller than Christopher Lee in several promotional shots, which is physically impossible unless Lee was slouching significantly or Price was on blocks. The workaround was ignoring the promotional material entirely and focusing only on candid behind-the-scenes set photography where the actors weren't being positioned for effect. Another angle is examining his clothing records and custom tailoring. Price had bespoke suits made throughout his career, and the garment tags from his wardrobe department sometimes list measurements. These aren't always public, but when you track down costume shop inventories or estate sale documentation, the measurements can give you his actual chest, inseam, and shoulder width. Inseam length in particular correlates reliably with overall height. An inseam in the 34 to 35 inch range for a man of his build typically indicates someone between 6'0" and 6'2". One counter-intuitive thing I learned through this process is that newer sources tend to inflate height figures. Every fan site and celebrity database from the 2000s onward seems to have copied the 6'2" number from a single unreliable source and then reused it. The older trade publications and press books from the 1940s and 50s are actually more conservative and often more accurate. Go to primary sources before secondary ones.
There are limitations to this approach. You can never get a truly definitive answer because Price never had an official height measured on camera like athletes do. The best you can do is triangulate from visual evidence and known-reference comparisons. If a source claims an exact number without showing their work, it's likely pulled from another unsourced site. I recommend treating 6'1" as the most defensible estimate based on available evidence, with 6'0" as a lower bound if you account for his footwear consistently adding height in photos. For anyone doing this kind of research, keep a folder of your reference images with timestamps and scene identifiers. It makes it easier to verify your work later and spot when different sources contradict each other. The pattern will usually become obvious if you lay enough frames out together.
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