‘One of the greatest visionaries’ in cinema
• 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 at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., according to a statement by his wife and daughters.
“He was generous, openhearted and kind to all those who knew him,” the statement said. “When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that.’ ”
Starting in 1955, Corman helped create hundreds of B-movies as a producer and director, among them Black Scorpion, Bucket of Blood and Bloody Mama. A remarkable judge of talent, he hired such aspiring filmmakers as Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, James Cameron and Martin Scorsese. In 2009, Corman received an honorary Academy Award.
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 quickie, 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 movies included Robert De Niro, Bruce Dern and Ellen Burstyn.
Peter Fonda’s appearance in The Wild Angels was a precursor to his own landmark biker movie, Easy Rider, co-starring Nicholson and fellow Corman alumnus Dennis Hopper. Boxcar Bertha, starring Barbara Hershey and David Carradine, was an early film by Scorsese.
“Roger Corman was my very first boss, my lifetime mentor and my hero. Roger was one of the greatest visionaries in the history of cinema,” Gale Anne Hurd, whose notable producing credits include the Terminator film franchise, The Abyss and TV’S The Walking Dead, said in a post on X.
Corman got his start as a messenger boy for Twentieth Century-fox, graduating to story analyst. After quitting to study English literature for a term at Oxford University, he returned to Hollywood. He retained good relations with his directors, boasting he never fired one because “I wouldn’t want to inflict that humiliation.”
Most of Corman’s movies were quickly forgotten. A rare exception was 1960’s Little Shop of Horrors, which starred a bloodthirsty plant that feasted on humans.