The Price of Fame

Charming, erudite and the very personification of the English gentleman, Dennis Price was without doubt one of the most promising and talented newcomers to the world of theater and film in the late 1930s, and he arguably reached his screen best in the classic Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Huge praise was lavished upon him and he was compared alongside theatrical contemporaries such as Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson as being destined for great things. Scene-stealing performances followed over the next few decades in such differing films as The Dancing Years, The Intruder, Private’s Progress, The Naked Truth, Tunes of Glory, Tamahine and Theatre of Blood to name but a few.

Though while his career was blossoming, Price’s private life was going through turmoil when, after one of his several affairs was discovered by his wife, he faced the shame of divorce, separation from his two children, and when coupled with significant tax bills, it all proved too much, and he attempted suicide.

Eventually bouncing back, he reinvented himself as a character actor and appeared in scores of notable films and was often the best thing in them.

The Price of Fame: The Biography of Dennis Price is a beautifully researched work with many unpublished interviews and photographs on what should have been the country’s finest actor.