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Name: Jonathan Haze
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Date of Birth:
April 01, 1929
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Place of Birth:
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Mini-bio:
Jonathan Haze was, for most of a decade, one of the most recognizable faces in the films of Roger Corman, as well as one of the most beloved members of Corman's stock company of players. Born in Pitts... read moreburgh, PA, in 1929, he was living in California and working at a gas station when, in 1954, a friend and customer, Wyott Ordung -- who was directing a picture called Monster From the Ocean Floor, the first movie produced by Corman -- offered him a small role in the movie, as a Mexican laborer. Billed as "Jack Hayes," he was as good as any of the more experienced players in the hastily shot sci-fi thriller, and while Corman and Ordung parted company as soon as the film wrapped, the producer liked Haze's work sufficiently to offer him more; Haze, in turn, brought an aspiring writer friend of his, Dick Miller, into Corman's orbit. Haze's next screen appearance was as an outlaw sent on a dangerous mission in the closing days of the Civil War, in Five Guns West (1955), which Corman directed as well as produced. Haze went on to appear in most (if not all) of Corman's movies over the next ten years, often playing wild and eccentric characters. A radiation-scarred victim of atomic attack in The Day the World Ended, a hapless soldier in It Conquered the World (1956), and a suspicious and libidinous chauffeur in Not of This Earth (1957) were some of his more visible parts. But it was in 1960 that he achieved stardom in Corman's Little Shop of Horrors. Well-meaning, not-too-bright flower shop assistant Seymour Krelboin, who breeds a man-eating plant, was the role of a lifetime, and Haze ran with it -- he brought to bear his best comedic instincts and carried the movie in tandem with Mel Welles as Seymour's employer, Gravis Mushnik, and Jackie Joseph as Seymour's would-be girlfriend, Audrey. Following Little Shop, Haze started moving into other areas of filmmaking. In 1961, he wrote the screenplay for the American International Pictures sci-fi spoof Invasion of the Star Creatures, and he later worked Corman's The Born Losers (1967) -- the movie that introduced Tom Laughlin's character Billy Jack. The following year, however, Haze moved into a whole different stratum of filmmaking with work on Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (1969), among other films. In 1982, Jonathan Haze was seen fleetingly as the "Dapper Man" in the slapdash action flick Vice Squad. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
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).
