Roger Corman, independent filmmaker and Hollywood mentor, dead at 98

Roger Corman, a man known as a trailblazer in independent filmmaking and a mentor to many who worked with him, has died. He was 98.

Corman died at his Santa Monica, Calif., home on Thursday, according to a statement released Saturday by his wife and daughters obtained by the Associated Press.

Corman, known as “King of the Bs” helped turn out low-budget classics “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Attack of the Crab Monsters.” He gave many Hollywood actors and producers their first breaks.

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

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Roger Corman addresses the audience during the awards ceremony of the 76th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Saturday, May 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

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

Corman’s B-movie directors were given minuscule budgets and often told to finish their films in as little as five days. 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 arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of “The Irishman,” Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019, at the TCL Chinese Theatre. (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 stayed with the company for biker, horror and action films, writing and producing some of them. Nicholson may be most well-known for acting in the 1980 horror film “The Shining.”

Corman was born in Detroit and raised in the not “affluent section” of Beverly Hills, he once said. He attended Stanford University, earning a degree in engineering, and arrived in Hollywood after three years in the Navy.

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

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Producer Roger Corman poses in his Los Angeles office, 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 children Catherine, Roger, Brian and Mary.

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“He was generous, open-hearted and kind to all those who knew him,” the family statement about his death said. “When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that.’”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.