- Name: Jonathan Haze
- Date of Birth: April 01, 1929
- Place of Birth: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Mini-bio:
Quirky Pittsburgh-born actor Jonathan Haze became an (almost) exclusive player for legendary lowbudget producer/director Roger Corman for nearly a decade before leaving the limelight in favor of behin...( read more)
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Jonathan Haze mini-bio: Quirky Pittsburgh-born actor Jonathan Haze became an (almost) exclusive player for legendary lowbudget producer/director Roger Corman for nearly a decade before leaving the limelight in favor of behind-the-scenes work. The slight-framed, curly-haired, gawky-looking lad made his inauspicious debut in Corman's Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954), but managed to continue on on a steady scale in minor weird roles for Corman. He played a pickpocket in Swamp Women (1955), an ex-convict in Five Guns West (1955) and a man contaminated by radioactive fallout in Day the World Ended (1955), which was Corman's first foray into the sci-fi genre. Corman must have admired Haze's chutzpah for Haze received subsequent better billing in the cheapjack productions Gunslinger (1956), It Conquered the World (1956), Naked Paradise (1957), Carnival Rock (1957), Not of This Earth (1957), and Bayou (1957) (better known as "Poor White Trash").
Following work as a Viking in the incredulous The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957), Corman catapulted Haze into cult stardom by handing him the nebbish-looking lead in The Little Shop of Horrors (1960). As slow-witted sad sack Seymour Krelboyne, Haze plays the unassuming Skid Row flower shop assistant who nourishes a seemingly harmless seedling, then falls prey to its grotesque, bloodthirsty plant while having to kill and serve up human beings as plant food. The comedy, filmed in two days with a budget of $27,000, was dismissed in its early release as lowgrade Corman claptrap, but grew overwhelmingly in status over the years thanks to midnight TV. Haze shared cult honors with the pretty buxom Jackie Joseph as his airhead girlfriend Audrey; good friend and Corman regular Dick Miller as one of the plant's victims; and a pre-star Jack Nicholson as a masochistic dental patient. The movie spawned a hit Broadway musical and resulting musical film. Haze was featured alongside Miller and Nicholson again in Corman's Edgar Allan Poe-like The Terror (1963) which starred Boris Karloff.
Instead of moving ahead in his acting career at this juncture, Haze veered away from it and found work behind the scenes. He wrote the script for the sci-fi comedy Invasion of the Star Creatures (1963) (with a working title of "Monsters from Nicholson Mesa"), and worked in production for such films as _Premature Burial, The (1962)_, Medium Cool (1969) Another Nice Mess (1972), and Corman's own The Born Losers (1967). In 1982, he had a cameo as "The Dapper Man" in the action movie Vice Squad (1982) and at age 70 came back on screen for a Corman cameo in his "The Phantom Eye" (1999) (mini).Comments
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