Roger William Corman (April 5, 1926 – May 9, 2024) was an American film director and producer. Known under various monikers such as "The Pope of Pop Cinema", “King of the Beatnik Movies”, "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood", and "The King of Cult", he was known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film.
Many of the more than 500 features directed or produced by Corman were low-budget films that later attracted a cult following, such as A Bucket of Blood (1959), The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), The Intruder (1962), X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963), and the counterculture films The Wild Angels (1966) and The Trip (1967). House of Usher (1960) became the first of eight films directed by Corman that were adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and which collectively came to be known as the "Poe Cycle".
In 1964, Corman became the youngest filmmaker to have a retrospective at the Cinémathèque française, as well as in the British Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art. He was the co-founder of New World Pictures, the founder of New Concorde and was a longtime member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2009, he was awarded an Academy Honorary Award "for his rich engendering of films and filmmakers".
Corman was also famous for handling the American distribution of many films by noted foreign directors, including Federico Fellini (Italy), Ingmar Bergman (Sweden), François Truffaut (France) and Akira Kurosawa (Japan). He mentored and gave a start to many young film directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, John Sayles, and James Cameron, and was highly influential in the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He also helped to launch the careers of actors including Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, and William Shatner.
Corman occasionally acted in films by directors who started with him, including The Godfather Part II (1974), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Philadelphia (1993), Apollo 13 (1995), and The Manchurian Candidate (2004). A documentary about Corman's life and career titled Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, directed by Alex Stapleton, premiered at Sundance and also screened at Cannes in 2011; the film's TV rights were picked up by A&E IndieFilms.
Corman was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Anne (née High) and William Corman, a civil engineer of Russian Jewish descent. His younger brother, Gene, produced numerous films, sometimes in collaboration with Roger. Corman was raised in his mother's Catholic faith.
Corman went to Beverly Hills High School and then to Stanford University to study industrial engineering. While at Stanford, Corman realized he did not want to be an engineer. He enlisted in the V-12 Navy College Training Program when he still had six months of study to complete. After serving in the United States Navy from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Stanford to finish his degree, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering in 1947. While at Stanford University, Corman was initiated in the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon.
In 1948, he worked briefly at U.S. Electrical Motors on Slauson Avenue in Los Angeles, but his career in engineering lasted only four days; he began work on Monday and quit on Thursday, telling his boss "I've made a terrible mistake." Soon after that he found work at 20th Century Fox as a messenger in the mailroom, earning $32.50 per week, following his brother, who worked in the mailroom, at MCA Inc..
Corman worked his way up to a story reader. The one property that he liked the most and provided ideas for was filmed as The Gunfighter with Gregory Peck. When Corman received no credit at all, he left Fox and decided he would work in film by himself. Under the G.I. Bill, Corman studied English literature at the University of Oxford and lived in Paris for a time.
Corman then returned to Los Angeles and tried to re-establish himself in the film industry. He took various jobs, including television stagehand at KLAC-TV and a messenger at Fox. He worked as an assistant to literary agent Dick Hyland.
Corman wrote a script in his spare time and sold it to William F. Broidy at Allied Artists for US$2,000 (equivalent to $23,978 in 2025). "Dick thought it was funny and let me pay myself a commission," said Corman. Originally called House in the Sea, it was retitled Highway Dragnet (1954) and starred Richard Conte and Joan Bennett. Corman also worked without pay as associate producer on the film, to gain experience.
Corman used his script fee and personal contacts to raise US$12,000 (equivalent to $143,866 in 2025) to produce his first feature, a science-fiction film, Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954). It was produced by Corman's own company, Palo Alto, and released by Robert L. Lippert.
The film did well enough to encourage Corman to produce another film, the racing-car thriller The Fast and the Furious (1954), directed by its star, John Ireland, and co-starring Dorothy Malone. (Decades later, the title would be licensed from Corman for a blockbuster film of the same name.) Corman sold the movie to a new independent company, the American Releasing Company (ARC), run by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff. Although Corman had a number of offers for the film from Republic and Columbia, he elected to go with ARC because they offered him a monetary advance which would enable him to produce two more movies.
Corman's second film for ARC was one he decided to direct, Five Guns West (1955), a Western, made in color for around $60,000, with Malone and John Lund. The script was written by Robert Wright Campbell, who worked with Corman on several more occasions. Corman announced he would make four more projects for ARC: High Steel, Cobra, Fortress Beneath the Sea, and an untitled film from Campbell. Instead, Corman did some uncredited directing on The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), then made another Western, Apache Woman (1955), starring Lloyd Bridges, written by Lou Rusoff. Rusoff and Corman reunited on Day the World Ended (1955), a postapocalyptic science-fiction film, which was popular.
Corman was to make The Devil on Horseback by Charles B. Griffith about the Brownsville Raid, but it was too expensive. The Woolner Brothers, Louisiana drive-in owners, financed Corman's Swamp Women (1956), a girls-on-the-lam saga. He returned to ARC for two Westerns, The Oklahoma Woman (1956) and Gunslinger (1956) (with Ireland); Gunslinger was co-written by Griffith, who became a crucial collaborator with Corman over the next five years. He bought a script from Curtis Harrington, The Girl from Beneath the Sea, which Harrington made for Corman years later, as Night Tide (1961).
Beverly Garland, one of Corman's early regular stock players, recalled working with him:
Roger made us work hard and long, I remember that! He was always fascinating to me, a fascinating man – and a good businessman! He had such incredible energy, it was tremendous – he was a dynamo to be around. I always knew he was going to be a huge success because there was no stopping him. He just made up his mind that he was going to be a success and that was it.
ARC changed its name to American International Pictures. Corman was established as their leading filmmaker. They financed Corman's next film as director, the science-fiction story It Conquered the World (1956). Co-written by Griffith, it was a follow-up to The Day the World Ended and became a big hit.