Roger Corman, Independent Filmmaker and Hollywood Mentor, Dies at 98

Roger Corman, a man known as a pioneer of independent cinema and a mentor to many who worked with him, has died. He was 98 years old.

Corman died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, California, according to a statement released Saturday by his wife and daughters obtained by The Associated Press.

Corman, known as the “King of the Bs,” helped direct the low-budget classics “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Attack of the Crab Monsters.” He gave his first chances to many Hollywood actors and producers.

While acknowledging the “many constraints” of working on low-budget films during a 2007 documentary about Val Lewton, the 1940s director of “Cat People” and other underground classics, he said that they also allowed for more creativity and experimentation.

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Corman’s career as a producer and director began in 1955, where he directed the B-movies “Black Scorpion”, “Bucket of Blood” and “Bloody Mama”. He hired the now well-known filmmakers Ron Howard, James Cameron and Martin Scorsese.

Corman’s B-movie directors had tiny budgets and were often asked to complete their films in just five days. When Howard, who would go on to win the best director Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind,” pleaded for an extra half day to shoot a 1977 scene for “Grand Theft Auto,” Corman told him, “Ron, can you come back if you want, but no one else will be there.

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Roger Corman arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of “The Irishman” on Thursday, October 24, 2019, at the TCL Chinese Theater. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

A-list actor Jack Nicholson made his film debut as the title character in a 1958 Corman quickie, “The Cry Baby Killer,” and remained with the company for biker, horror and of action, by writing and producing some of them. Nicholson is perhaps best known for starring in the 1980 horror film “The Shining.”

Corman was born in Detroit and raised in a less than “affluent” part of Beverly Hills, he once said. He attended Stanford University, where he earned an engineering degree, and came to Hollywood after three years in the Navy.

Corman got his start as a messenger for Twentieth Century-Fox, before graduating as a story analyst. After briefly leaving the business to study English literature for a term at Oxford University, he returned to Hollywood and launched his career as a film producer and director.

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Producer Roger Corman poses in his office in Los Angeles on May 8, 2013. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, file)

In 1964, he married Julie Halloran, a UCLA graduate who also became a producer.

He is survived by his wife Julie and his children Catherine, Roger, Brian and Mary.

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“He was generous, open-minded and kind to all who knew him,” the family’s statement regarding his death said. “When asked how he would like to be remembered, he replied: ‘I was a filmmaker, no less.'”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.