Roger Corman, the king of B-movies who worked quickly and cheaply, has died

Roger Corman, the legendary independent Hollywood producer and director whose long string of profitable low-budget films such as “Attack of the Crab Monsters,” “The Little Shop of Horrors” and “The Wild Angels” earned him the reputation of “The King.” B’s,” died.

Corman, who helped launch the careers of filmmakers, writers and actors in Hollywood and beyond, died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, according to a statement from Corman’s family reported by Variety and the Associated Press. He was 98.

“His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic and captured the spirit of an era,” Corman’s family said. “When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that.'”

In a career spanning nearly seven decades, Corman made more than 50 films, most of which he also produced. In total he produced more than 350 films, most of them for his own production and distribution companies New World Pictures and its successor Concorde-New Horizons.

After founding New World Pictures in 1970, Corman spent the decade producing or overseeing films such as “Private Duty Nurses” and “Eat My Dust!” He also distributed major foreign films in America such as “Cries and Whispers” by Ingmar Bergman and “Amarcord” by Federico Fellini.

But many consider Corman’s greatest Hollywood legacy to be his nurturing of young talent and in-house training of young filmmakers who went on to become Hollywood heavyweights.

Impressive Corman “alumni” include Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme, John Sayles and James Cameron.

“I can’t think of anyone who, quote unquote, has discovered more of Hollywood’s most talented filmmakers,” said Gale Anne Hurd, a former Corman aide who went on to produce films such as “The Terminator,” “Aliens” and “Aliens.” . The abyss.”

As a producer and director, Corman provided opportunities to many top actors early in their careers, including Jack Nicholson, Charles Bronson, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, Sally Kirkland, Talia Shire, Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone.

“I was a nobody and I am eternally grateful that Roger Corman stayed with me because I had no other choice,” Nicholson once said. He made his feature film debut in The Cry Baby Killer, a 1958 crime thriller produced by Corman, and appeared frequently in Corman films.

Corman, a Stanford University engineering graduate who once worked as a delivery boy at 20th Century Fox, turned to the sea for his first film as a producer, “Monster From the Ocean Floor.”

The 64-minute black-and-white film about a giant one-eyed octopus terrorizing Mexican villagers was shot in six days for $12,000, with Malibu beach substituting the Yucatan Peninsula.

“The Fast and the Furious,” a 1955 race car drama produced by Corman and shot in nine days on a budget of $50,000, came next and earned him a three-picture distribution deal with a new company soon known as American International Pictures became known.

Corman’s deal with AIP, which became known as the largest and most influential independent company in Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s, marked the beginning of a lucrative 15-year, 30-film relationship between Corman and AIP founders James Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff .

Corman made his directorial debut with “Five Guns West,” a 1955 Civil War-era Western starring John Lund and Dorothy Malone that was shot in nine days on a budget of $60,000.

A flood of similarly low-budget Corman quickies followed – “Swamp Women,” “The Beast with a Million Eyes,” “Attack of the Crab Monsters,” “Rock All Night,” “Sorority Girl,” “Teenage Doll” and many more , much more.

In fact, nine Corman-directed productions were released in theaters in 1957 alone.

“The whole idea was to tell an interesting, visually entertaining story that would attract young people to drive-in and hardtop theaters while not taking itself too seriously,” Corman wrote in his 1990 autobiography.

As a filmmaker, Corman’s trademark was to work quickly and inexpensively. His early films were all made for less than $100,000 and shot in less than two weeks.

As producer of The Fast and the Furious, Corman persuaded established actor John Ireland to play the lead role for well below his regular rate by letting him co-direct the film, a nine-day shoot on a budget of $50,000 .

Corman cut costs by striking a deal to get a set of Jaguar racing cars for free, and saved money on a stuntman by driving one of the cars himself in the key sequence.

To reduce transportation costs to distant locations, Corman famously shot two films at the same time.

And when a studio executive told him that he still had a large office set from a picture he had just wrapped, Corman said he would rent the set for two days of filming and three days of rehearsal – only then did he use his lead writer, Charles Griffith, to work on a script to work.

The result was “The Little Shop of Horrors,” the 1960 black comedy about a dim-witted flower shop apprentice who creates a giant, man-eating plant that talks (“Feed me!”).

Later in the decade, he joined the burgeoning counterculture movement with “The Wild Angels,” a 1966 film about a motorcycle gang starring Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra, and “The Trip,” an LSD-inspired scripted drama by Nicholson and Fonda in the lead role and Susan Strasberg. Despite popping LSD in preparation for filming the film, Corman often described himself as “the most honest guy in a hip group.”

In the mid-1960s, Corman tried working in the big studio system – first at Columbia Pictures, then at 20th Century Fox – but he found the experience frustrating and slow and returned to AIP. He continued producing films into his 90s.

“Retirement,” he mused in a 2020 tweet. “I’m too young for that.”

Corman was born in Detroit on April 5, 1926, the son of a successful civil engineer and a former legal secretary. His younger brother Gene also became a film producer. When Corman was a teenager, the family moved to Beverly Hills.

After graduating from Beverly Hills High School, Corman spent a year at Stanford University before volunteering for a Navy officer training program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He returned to Stanford for his senior year on the GI Bill in 1946 and graduated a year later with a degree in industrial engineering.

But by then his desire to become an engineer had been superseded by another goal: to pursue films.

In 1948, after six months of unemployment, Corman got his first break in Hollywood: Through a friend’s father, who knew someone at 20th Century Fox, he got a job as a delivery boy for $32.50 a week. Six months later, he was promoted to story analyst at twice his salary.

But he soon became frustrated with the job and left Hollywood for England to study modern English literature on the GI Bill at Oxford University. After completing one term, he moved to Paris.

After a year abroad, Corman returned home and got a job at a literary agency. He also worked as a busboy at a television station before selling a script he co-wrote to Allied Artists for $3,500. The script became Highway Dragnet, a low-budget 1954 crime film starring Richard Conte and Joan Bennett.

Over the years, many of the directors who first worked with Corman paid homage to their mentor by having him make cameo appearances in their films.

His many cameo roles included a U.S. senator in Coppola’s The Godfather II, a congressman in Howard’s Apollo 13 and the FBI chief in Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs.

But perhaps his most fitting cameo came in Dante’s horror film The Howling: a scene in which Corman mocks his legendary penny-pinching and examines a payphone’s coin return slot for loose change.

In 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic all but shutting down Hollywood, Corman took to social media to call on high-profile filmmakers to make short films — such as two minutes or less — and include them in “The First (And Hopefully).” Last) Corman Quarantine Film Festival.” Numerous filmmakers have submitted entries.