Roger Corman, the Oscar-winning so-called “King of Bs” who helped create such low-budget classics as Little Shop of Horrors and gave many of Hollywood’s most famous actors and directors an early break, died at the age of 98.
Corman died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., his daughter, Kathryn Corman, said in a statement Saturday.
“He was generous, open and kind to all who knew him,” the statement said. “When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a director, that’s all.’
Beginning in 1955, Corman helped create hundreds of films as a producer and director, including Black Scorpion, A Bucket of Blood, and Bloody Momma.
A noted judge of talent, he recruited aspiring directors 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 that come with working on a low budget, but at the same time there are certain opportunities,” Corman said in a 2007 documentary about Val Lutton, director of “Cat People” and other 1940s underground classics.
“You can bet some more. You can experiment. You need 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 Corman’s 1958 film, The Cry Baby Killer, and remained in the company of biker, horror and action films, writing and producing some of them.
Other actors whose careers began in Corman’s films include Robert De Niro, Bruce Dern and Ellen Burstyn.
Corman’s directors were given paltry budgets and were often told to complete their films in just five days.
When Howard, who would go on to win a best director Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, asked for an extra half-day to reshoot a 1977 scene for Grand Theft Auto, Corman told him, “Ron, you can go back , if you want, but no one else will be there.
At first only disc and specialty theaters booked Corman films, but when the teens started dating, the national chains backed out.
Corman’s pictures were open about his time about sex and drugs, such as his 1967 The Trip, an explicit LSD story written by Nicholson and starring Jane Fonda and Dennis Hopper.
Meanwhile, he developed a lucrative sideline releasing prestigious foreign films in the United States, including Ingmar Bergman’s Shouts and Whispers, Federico Fellini’s Amarcord and Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum. The latter two won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Corman began as a courier for Twentieth Century-Fox, eventually graduating to a story analyst. After leaving the business briefly to study English literature for a semester at Oxford, he returned to Hollywood and began his career as a film producer and director.
Despite his miserliness, Corman maintained a good relationship with his directors, boasting that he had never fired a single one because “I wouldn’t want to do that humiliation.”
Some of his former subordinates repaid his kindness years later. Coppola cast him in The Godfather Part II, Jonathan Demme cast him in The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, and Howard cast him in Apollo 13.
Most of Corman’s films were quickly forgotten by all but die-hard fans. A rare exception was 1960’s Little Shop of Horrors, which featured a bloodthirsty, human-eating plant and Nicholson in a small but memorable role as a pained dentist.
It inspired a long-running stage musical and a 1986 musical adaptation starring Steve Martin, Bill Murray and John Candy.
In 1963, Corman initiated a series of films based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Most notable was The Raven, which reunited Nicholson with veteran horror stars Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone.
Directed by Corman in 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.
Roger William Corman was born in Detroit and grew up in Beverly Hills, but “not in the rich part,” he once said. He attended Stanford University, earned a degree in engineering, and arrived in Hollywood after three years in the Navy.
After his time at Oxford, he worked as a television stagehand and 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.
Speaking to the Guardian in 2011, Corman said, “I don’t know if I would say I’m an artist. I would say I’m a craftsman. I try to grow my trade in the best possible way. If sometimes something goes beyond craft, then that’s wonderful.
