Oscar-winning “King of the Bs” Roger Corman passed away. He helped produce low-budget hits like “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Attack of the Crab Monsters” and provided early opportunities for many of Hollywood’s most well-known performers and filmmakers. He was ninety-eight.
According to a statement released by his daughter Catherine Corman on Saturday, Corman passed away at his Santa Monica, California, home on Thursday.
According to the statement, “He was generous, open-hearted, and kind to all those who knew him.” “When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that.'”
Corman began his career as a producer and director in 1955, contributing to the creation of hundreds of pictures, including “Black Scorpion,” “Bucket of Blood,” and “Bloody Mama.” Renowned talent scout Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, James Cameron, and Martin Scorsese were among the budding directors he hired. Corman was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 2009.
“Directing on a low budget has many limitations, but it also presents certain opportunities,” Corman stated in a 2007 documentary on Val Lewton, the legendary underground filmmaker of “Cat People” and other films from the 1940s.
“You have a little more room to bet. You are free to try new things. You need to come up with more inventive ways to convey ideas or solve problems.”
The 1970s golden age of Hollywood came from Corman’s films. In the 1958 Corman quickie “The Cry Baby Killer,” Jack Nicholson made his screen debut in the title role. He stayed on staff to continue working on action, horror, and biker pictures; he even wrote and produced a couple of them.
Corman films also gave actresses like Ellen Burstyn, Bruce Dern, and Robert De Niro their break. “The Wild Angels” was a precursor to Peter Fonda’s groundbreaking motorcycle movie “Easy Rider,” in which he costarred alongside Nicholson and Dennis Hopper, another former Corman employee. “Boxcar Bertha,” starring David Carradine and Barbara Hershey, was one of Scorsese’s early motion pictures.
Corman frequently ordered his directors to complete their films in as short as five days, and he gave them pitiful budgets. “Ron, you can come back if you want, but nobody else will be there,” Corman warned Howard, who would go on to win a best director Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind,” when he begged for an additional half day to reshoot a sequence for “Grand Theft Auto” in 1977.
At first, Corman pictures were exclusively available at drive-ins and specialty theaters; but, when teens started attending, major chains eventually gave in. Pictures by Corman, including the 1967 movie “The Trip,” which starred Fonda and Hopper and told an intimate story about LSD written by Nicholson, were candid for their day on drugs and sex.
In the meantime, he found a successful side business importing high-profile foreign films into the US, including Volker Schlondorff’s “The Tin Drum,” Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord,” and Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers.” The Oscars for best foreign language picture went to the latter two.
At Twentieth Century-Fox, Corman began his career as a messenger boy before moving up to plot analyst. He briefly left the industry to spend a time at Oxford studying English literature, then he returned to Hollywood to begin a career as a producer and director of motion pictures.
Corman maintained solid relationships with his directors despite his frugal tendencies, saying that he never dismissed one because “I wouldn’t want to inflict that humiliation.”
Years later, a few of his former subordinates returned the favor. In addition to Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Philadelphia,” Coppola cast him in “The Godfather, Part II,” and Howard cast him in “Apollo 13.”
All but the most ardent admirers swiftly forgot about Corman’s films. A rare exception was “Little Shop of Horrors,” from 1960, which starred Nicholson in a brief but memorable role as a pain-loving dental patient and included a violent plant that feasted on humans. It served as the basis for a popular theater production as well as a 1986 musical featuring Steve Martin, Bill Murray, and John Candy.
Edgar Allan Poe was the inspiration for a string of movies that director Roger Corman started in 1963. The most well-known was “The Raven,” in which Nicholson appeared with seasoned horror performers Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, and Boris Karloff. The horror parody, which Corman directed over an unusual three weeks, received favorable reviews—a rarity for his productions. An additional Poe adaption, “House of Usher,” was deemed worthy of preservation by the Library of Congress.
Karloff appeared in another Corman-backed film at the end of his life: Peter Bogdanovich’s 1968 thriller “Targets,” which was directed by Karloff.
Major studios made proposals to Corman as a result of his success, and he directed “Von Richthofen and Brown” and “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” on regular budgets. But they were both a letdown, and he attributed their lack of success to influence from the front office.
Raised in Beverly Hills, although “not in the affluent section,” Roger William Corman was born in Detroit. He spent three years in the Navy before attending Stanford University and graduating with a degree in engineering. He then moved to Hollywood.
He worked as a literary agent and a television stagehand after his time at Oxford before he discovered his calling.
In 1964, he tied the knot with Julie Halloran, a producer and UCLA alumna. Roger, Brian, and Catherine were their three children.
His daughter stated in the statement that he is survived by Julie, Catherine, and Mary.
