LOS ANGELES ( AP ) — Roger Corman, the” King of the Bs” who helped turn out such low- budget classics as” Little Shop of Horrors” and” Attack of the Crab Monsters” and gave many of Hollywood’s most famous actors and directors early breaks, has died. He was 98.
Corman died Thursday at his apartment in Santa Monica, California, according to a statement released Saturday by his wife and daughters.
” He was good, available- loving and style to all those who knew him”, the declaration said. ” When asked how he would like to become remembered, he said,’ I was a director, only that.'”
Starting in 1955, Corman helped make lots of B- shows as a producer and director, among them” Black Scorpion”,” Bucket of Body” and” Bloody Mama”. A extraordinary judge of expertise, he hired for aspiring artists as Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, James Cameron and Martin Scorsese. In 2009, Corman received an honorary Academy Award.
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” There are many considerations connected with working on a small budget, but at the same moment there are certain options”, Corman said in a 2007 film about Val Lewton, the 1940s producer of” Cat People” and other underwater masterpieces.
You have a much more room to gamble. You may study. You must get a more inventive way to present a concept or fix a problem, he said.
The origins of Hollywood’s golden era in the 1970s can be found in Corman’s pictures.
Jack Nicholson made his film debut as the name figure in a 1958 Corman tryst,” The Cry Baby Killer”, and stayed with the business for cyclist, horror and action movies, writing and producing some of them. Robert De Niro, Bruce Dern, and Ellen Burstyn were other celebrities whose jobs began in Corman shows.
Peter Fonda’s look in” The Crazy Angels” was a prelude to his own landmark biker film,” Easy Rider”, co- starring Nicholson and other Corman alumnus Dennis Hopper. ” Boxcar Bertha”, starring Barbara Hershey and David Carradine, was an early picture by Bruno.
Directors of Corman’s B-film films were frequently told to end their movies in as little as five times and were given minute budgets. When Howard, who would go on to win a best director Oscar for” A Beautiful Mind”, pleaded for an extra half day to reshoot a scene in 1977 for” Grand Theft Auto”, Corman told him,” Ron, you can come back if you want, but nobody else will be there”.
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” Roger Corman was my first director, my coach for the rest of my life, and my warrior.” Roger was one of the greatest thinkers in the background of cinema”, Gale Ann Hurd, whose distinctive producing credits include the” Terminator” video franchise,” The Nothingness” and” The Walking Dead” television series, said in a post on X, previously Online.
National chains eventually gave in as teenagers began showing up, but initially only drive-ins and specialty theaters would book Corman movies. In addition to his 1967 film” The Trip,” an explicit story about LSD written by Nicholson and starring Fonda and Hopper, Corman’s pictures were available for their time about sex and drugs.
Meanwhile, he discovered a lucrative sideline releasing prestige foreign films in the United States, among them Ingmar Bergman’s” Cries and Whispers”, Federico Fellini’s” Amarcord” and Volker Schlondorff’s” The Tin Drum”. The latter two won the Oscars for best foreign film.
Corman began his career with Twentieth Century-Fox as a messenger boy before becoming a story analyst. He returned to Hollywood and began his career as a producer and director after briefly leaving the business to pursue a term of study in English literature at Oxford University.
Despite his penny- pinching ways, Corman retained good relations with his directors, boasting that he never fired one because” I would n’t want to inflict that humiliation”.
Years later, some of his former enemies paid back his kindness. 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 part in” Apollo 13″.
Most of Corman’s films were quickly forgotten by only devoted fans. The 1960 film” Little Shop of Horrors” made a rare exception by featuring Nicholson in a small but memorable role as a pain-loving dental patient and a bloodthirsty plant that ate humans. It served as the inspiration for a enduring stage production and a musical adaptation starring Steve Martin, Bill Murray, and John Candy from 1986.
A film series based on Edgar Allan Poe’s writings was released in 1963 by Corman. The most notable was” The Raven”, which teamed Nicholson with veteran horror stars Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone. Directed by Corman on a rare three- week schedule, the horror spoof won good reviews, a rarity for his films. Another Poe adaptation,” House of Usher”, was deemed worthy of preservation by the Library of Congress.
” It was a privilege to get to know him. He was a great friend. He shaped my childhood with science fiction movies and Edgar Allen Poe epics”, John Carpenter, director of” Halloween”,” The Thing” and other classic horror and action films, said on X. ” I’ll miss you, Roger”.
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 prompted offers from major studios, and he directed” The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” and” Von Richthofen and Brown” on normal budgets. Both were disappointments, however, and he blamed their failure on front- office 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 arrived in Hollywood after three years in the Navy.
Before finding his true calling, he spent time working as a stagehand for television and literary agent after graduating from Oxford.
In 1964 he married Julie Halloran, a UCLA graduate who also became a producer.
He is survived by his wife, Julie, and children Catherine, Roger, Brian and Mary.
