Roger Corman, the Oscar-winning “King of the Bs” who helped produce low-budget classics like “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Attack of the Crab Monsters” and gave many actors and directors a break Hollywood's most famous, has died. He was 98 years old.
Corman died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, California, his daughter Catherine Corman said in a statement Saturday.
“He was generous, open-hearted and kind to all who knew him,” the statement said. “When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, 'I was a filmmaker, that's all.'”
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Beginning in 1955, Corman helped create hundreds of films as a producer and director, including “Black Scorpion,” “Bucket of Blood” and “Bloody Mama.” A remarkable judge of talent, he hired aspiring filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, James Cameron and Martin Scorsese. In 2009, Corman received an honorary Academy Award.
“There are a lot of limitations associated with working on a low budget, but at the same time there are certain opportunities,” Corman said in a 2007 documentary about Val Lewton, the 1940s director of “Cat People” and other underground classics.
“You can play a little more. You can experiment. You have to find a more creative way to solve a problem or present a concept.”
The roots of Hollywood's golden age in the 1970s can be found in Corman's films. Jack Nicholson made his film debut as the title character in a 1958 Corman thriller, The Cry Baby Killer, and stayed with the company for biker, horror and action films, writing and producing some of them
Other actors whose careers began in Corman's films included Robert De Niro, Bruce Dern and Ellen Burstyn. Peter Fonda's appearance in “The Wild Angels” was a precursor to his own iconic biker film “Easy Rider,” starring Nicholson and his former Corman student Dennis Hopper. “Boxcar Bertha,” starring Barbara Hershey and David Carradine, was one of Scorsese's first films.
Corman's directors were given minuscule budgets and were often told to finish their films in as little as five days. When Howard, who would win the Oscar for best director for “A Beautiful Mind,” asked for an extra half day to reshoot a scene in 1977 for “Grand Theft Auto,” Corman told him, “Ron, you can go back. yes you want, but no one else will be there.”
Initially, only drive-in theaters and specialty theaters booked Corman films, but as teenagers started coming out, national chains relented. story about LSD written by Nicholson and starring Fonda and Hopper.
Meanwhile, he discovered a lucrative sideline releasing prestigious foreign films in the United States, including Ingmar Bergman's “Cries and Whispers,” Federico Fellini's “Amarcord” and Volker Schlondorff's “The Tin Drum.” The latter two won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
Corman started out as a messenger boy for Twentieth Century-Fox, eventually graduating to story analyst. After briefly leaving the business to study English literature for a period at Oxford, he returned to Hollywood and began his career as a film producer and director.
Despite his penny-pinching ways, Corman maintained good relations with his directors, boasting that he never fired one because he “wouldn't want to inflict that humiliation.”
Some of his former underlings repaid his kindness years later. Coppola cast him in The Godfather Part II, Jonathan Demme included him in The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, and Howard gave him a role in Apollo 13.
Most of Corman's films were quickly forgotten by all but the fans. A rare exception was 1960's “Little Shop of Horrors,” which starred a bloodthirsty plant that feasted on humans and featured Nicholson in a small but memorable role as a pain-loving dental patient. It inspired a full-length stage musical and a 1986 musical adaptation starring Steve Martin, Bill Murray and John Candy.
In 1963, Corman began a series of films based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Most notable was “The Raven,” which paired Nicholson with veteran horror stars Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone. Directed by Corman with a rare three-week schedule, the horror spoof earned good reviews, a rarity for his films. Another Poe adaptation, “House of Usher,” was deemed worthy of preservation by the Library of Congress.
Near the end of his life, Karloff starred in another Corman-backed effort, the 1968 thriller “Targets,” which marked Peter Bogdanovich's directorial debut.
Corman's success led to offers from major studios, and he directed “The St. Valentine's Day Massacre” and “Von Richthofen and Brown” on modest budgets. Both were disappointments, however, and he blamed their failure on management interference.
Roger William Corman was born in Detroit and raised in Beverly Hills, but “not in the affluent section,” he once said. He attended Stanford University, earning a degree in engineering, and came to Hollywood after three years in the Navy.
After his time at Oxford, he worked as a TV agent and a literary agent before finding his life's work.
In 1964, he married Julie Halloran, a UCLA graduate who also became a producer. They had three children: Catherine, Roger and Brian.
He is survived by Julie, Catherine and Mary, his daughter said in the statement.
