Roger William Corman
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Roger Corman shot The Little Shop of Horrors in two days in 1960, setting a world record for fastest feature film. Over his career, he directed 53 films and produced hundreds, most notably the Poe series starring Vincent Price. In 2009, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his lifetime contributions. He launched the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Jack Nicholson.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Roger Corman — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Roger Corman by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Roger Corman — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Roger William Corman was born April 5, 1926 in Detroit, Michigan to engineer William Corman and Ann Corman. After Beverly Hills High School, he studied engineering at Stanford University. Three days of work as an engineer killed his interest, so he quit and became a messenger at 20th Century Fox, eventually rising to story analyst. Modern English literature at Oxford University and travels in Europe preceded his return to the U.S. to write and produce films.
Corman’s directorial debut was Five Guns West in 1955, but he gained acclaim with his Poe series for American International Pictures, beginning with House of Usher in 1960. He shot The Little Shop of Horrors in just two days in 1960, setting a record. His serious film The Intruder 1962 won a Venice Film Festival prize but was his first commercial flop. After leaving AIP, he founded New World Pictures, distributing art films by Bergman and Kurosawa while producing low-budget exploitation films. Corman returned to directing once with Frankenstein Unbound in 1990.
Corman married Julie Corman, and they had a daughter, Catherine Corman. Producer Gene Corman was his only sibling. William and Ann Corman were his parents; his paternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants, his maternal grandparents Polish Catholic immigrants. He remained married to Julie until his death in 2024.
Corman’s influence on Hollywood is vast: he mentored directors including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, and Ron Howard, and gave early roles to actors like Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, and Sandra Bullock. In 2009, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his lifetime achievements. A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was placed in 1991. Remembered as the King of the B’s, he was a master of low-budget filmmaking who launched a generation of Hollywood talent.
The complete filmography of Roger Corman — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Roger Corman — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
A wall of memorable lines from Roger Corman — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
In Science-fiction Films, the Monster Should Always Be Bigger Than the Leading Lady.
All My Films Have Been Concerned Simply with Man as a Social Animal.
I’ve Never Made the Film I Wanted to Make. No Matter What Happens, It Never Turns Out Exactly as I Hoped.
Horror Films Always Do Well. but in Cycles. One Horror Film Will Do Well, and People Will Make Lots of Horror Films, Saturate the Market Until There Are Too Many Horror Films and People Will Slow Down Making Horror Films. and Then It’ll Start up Again.
I Felt Jack Nicholson Was Brilliant from the Time I Met Him. I Enrolled in a Method Acting Class, Not to Learn How to Act, but to Learn How to Relate to Actors. and That’s Where I Met Jack. the Thing That Surprised Me Is That It Took so Long for Him to Be Recognized.
The Myth That When I Was Directing That I Was Always Printing the First Take. I Would Generally Go Two, Three, Four Takes. First Take Is Generally Not Exactly What You’re Looking For.
The $100 and $200 Million Films Are Dominating the Box Office so Much That There Is No Space, or Very Little Space, for the Independent Films. Every Now and Then an Independent Film Will Come Through and Can Do Some Business at the Box Office. so the Genre Is Not Completely Dead, but It’s Been Heavily Damaged.
The Film Industry Will Always Exist, but It Will No Longer Be the Film Industry. It Will Be Digital or Possibly Virtual Reality, or Holograms. I Think of It as an Industry, a Business, and an Art Form. Today, the Business End of It Has Become More Powerful Than the Art Form. I Think What We Need to Save It – Although It’s Making Real Money and It’s Not in Real Trouble – to Reinvigorate It Is to Remember This Is an Art Form as Well as a Business. You Can’t Continually Spend $100 or $200 Million on a Superhero Picture. You’ve Got to at Least Let Some Films Come Through That Are Closer to Art.
I Started as a Writer and Then I Became a Writer-producer. I Produced Two Films and I Watched What the Directors Were Doing and I Simply Said: I Can Do That. So, I Just Took Over on the Third Film That I Produced and Started Directing. I Watched the Two Directors and Saw What They Were Doing. I Looked to Other Films and Studied Them, the Way the Shots Were Laid Out and so Forth, and Taught Myself to Direct.
Little-known facts about Roger Corman — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Corman could reportedly negotiate a film deal on a pay phone, shoot the movie inside the booth, and fund it with coins from the change slot, a running gag in Hollywood.
The Little Shop of Horrors 1960 holds the world record for the fastest shooting schedule of a feature film: just two days.
As a director and producer, Corman launched the careers of many now-famous filmmakers, including Jonathan Demme, Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, John Sayles, James Cameron, Joe Dante, and Martin Scorsese, and writers such as Robert Towne and John Sayles. He also gave early roles to actors like Jack Nicholson, Charles Bronson, Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Diane Ladd, and Sandra Bullock.
At the 1974 Academy Awards, no Corman-produced films were nominated, but nearly every major category featured winners or nominees who had started with or been mentored by Corman.
Corman often made cameo appearances in films directed by protégés like Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante, and Francis Ford Coppola.
If shooting on location, he would always try to shoot a second film at the same location to spread costs.
He turned down the opportunity to direct Easy Rider 1969.
He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7013 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on June 12, 1991.
In 1960, he convinced American International Pictures to let him use their budget for a single color CinemaScope feature instead of two black-and-white films, resulting in House of Usher 1960, a box-office hit and critical success that launched his Poe series.
In the early years of American Releasing Corporation later AIP, Corman was a major source of product: he would receive a budget and an ad campaign or just a title and had to produce the films.
Corman initially did not want to shoot his Poe films in Panavision, but AIP insisted, believing the widescreen lens would make the pictures seem bigger in advertisements.
He attended Stanford University and Oxford University.
Corman appeared in four films selected for the National Film Registry: The Godfather Part II 1974, The Silence of the Lambs 1991, Philadelphia 1993, and Apollo 13 1995. He also directed one film in the Registry: House of Usher 1960.
He hosted AMC’s Monsterfest during the last week of October 1999.
James Cameron began his film career as a set dresser and production designer on Corman’s low-budget films before directing expensive blockbusters like Titanic 1997 and Avatar 2009.
In Attack of the Bat Monsters 1999, the character Francis Gordon, played by Fred Ballard, is noticeably patterned after Corman.
He made The Terror 1963 over one weekend using actors and sets from The Raven 1963, which wrapped ahead of schedule.
Corman was the son of Ann and William Corman. His paternal grandparents Jacob Corman and Bessie Arst were Russian Jewish immigrants; his maternal grandparents Jozef High and Clara Dolny were Polish Catholic immigrants.
He appeared in three Best Picture Oscar nominees: The Godfather Part II 1974, winner, The Silence of the Lambs 1991, winner, and Apollo 13 1995, nominated.
In 1998, he won the first Producer’s Award ever given by the Cannes Film Festival.
Tribute in the Memory of Film section at the Flanders International Film Festival in Ghent, Belgium.
Known under monikers such as The King of the B’s, The Pope of Pop Cinema, The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood, and The King of Cult, he was a trailblazer in independent film.
In 1964, Corman became the youngest filmmaker to have a retrospective at the Cinémathèque française, as well as at the British Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art.
He received the Society of Operating Cameramen SOC Governors Award CAMMY in 2004.
He discussed his film House of Usher 1960 in the book A Sci-Fi Swarm and Horror Horde by Tom Weaver 2010.
He attended and graduated from Beverly Hills High School.
Father of Catherine Corman and uncle of Todd Corman.
Brother of producer Gene Corman.
He produced four sci-fi films with Starfield Independent Studios: Falling Fire 1997, Future Fear 1997, Shepherd 1998, and Shepherd II 1999.
Biography in John Wakeman’s World Film Directors Volume Two 1945-1985, pages 234-242.
Many of Corman’s protégés paid homage by giving him cameos in their films, such as The Godfather Part II 1974, The Silence of the Lambs 1991, Apollo 13 1995, and Jonathan Demme’s 2008 film Rachel Getting Married.
In 2009, Corman was sued by his children, who claimed they had been unfairly fired from the family production business after raising questions about the family trust.
Mark Damon, co-star of Corman’s House of Usher 1960, died three days after Corman.
He wrote film reviews for The Stanford Daily while attending Stanford University.
In a 2022 interview with Sight & Sound, he named his ten greatest films of all time: Chinatown 1974, Citizen Kane 1941, Dr. Strangelove 1964, The Godfather 1972, La dolce vita 1960, Lawrence of Arabia 1962, Rashomon 1950, The Seventh Seal 1957, The Tin Drum 1979, and War and Peace 1967.
He talks extensively about producing his first movie, Monster from the Ocean Floor 1954, in Tom Weaver’s book Creature Feature Creators 2025.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Roger Corman.
Celebrities similar to Roger Corman — same craft, ranked by reach.
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