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Roger Corman, Trailblazing B-Movie Director and Producer, Dead at 98

Roger Corman, the B-movie director and producer who launched the careers of Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Jack Nicholson, has died at age 98.

Roger Corman, who directed and produced countless B-movies and championed future industry stalwarts Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Jack Nicholson, died at his home in Santa Monica, California on May 9, Variety reports. Together, they worked on a series of horror films focusing on Edgar Allan Poe, including 1960’s The Fall of the House of Usher and several low budget hits like The Tomb of Legeia and The Masque of Red Death. It was around this time that he began to work with then-unknowns such as Ellen Burstyn, Nicholson, and De Niro, as well as screenwriters including Robert Towne, and directors who would eventually become household names, such as Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante, and Peter Bogdanovich.

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