This includes a still photo of Haze with Dorothy Malone!
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/jonathan-haze-little-shop-of-horrors-1236053569/A onetime stage manager for Josephine Baker, he did two dozen pictures
with Roger Corman, also including 'Stakeout on Dope Street,' 'Not of
This Earth' and 'The Terror.'
By Mike Barnes November 4, 2024
First half:
Jonathan Haze, who starred for Roger Corman as the flower shop
assistant Seymour Krelborn in the original The Little Shop of Horrors,
just one of two dozen films he made with the B-movie legend, has died.
He was 95.
Haze died Saturday at his home in Los Angeles, his daughter, Rebecca
Haze, told The Hollywood Reporter.
A cousin of drummer Buddy Rich, Haze was a valuable and versatile member
of Corman’s repertory company from 1954 — when he acted in The Fast and
the Furious and Monster From the Ocean Floor — until 1967, when he
appeared in The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and served as an assistant
director on The Born Losers.
In one of his more noteworthy turns, Haze portrayed one of the three
teenagers who stumble upon $250,000 worth of heroin and become dealers
in Warner Bros. drama Stakeout on Dope Street (1958), the first feature
directed by Irvin Kershner.
The Pittsburgh native also played a contaminated man in Day the World
Ended (1955), an outlaw in Five Guns West (1955), a dimwitted bartender
in Gunslinger (1956), a pickpocket in Swamp Women (1956) — he trained
the actresses how to fight in that one, too — a Latino soldier in It
Conquered the World (1956), a manservant working for an alien in Not of
This Earth (1957) and a diminutive Viking in The Saga of the Viking
Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957).
In Little Shop of Horrors (1960), produced and directed by Corman,
Haze’s clumsy Seymour comes to realize that the sickly potted plant he
grew from seeds procured from a Japanese gardener needs blood and human
flesh to survive. (The film was originally titled The Passionate People
Eater.)
In a memorable moment, he extracts a tooth or two from the mouth of
undertaker Wilbur Force (Jack Nicholson).
“All the interior scenes in the movie were done in two days, they were
like 20-hour days, and then we went out on the streets and did three
nights with a second unit, with a totally different crew. It was
insane,” Haze, who said he was paid $400 for the job, recalled in 2001.
“We were shooting actually on Skid Row, using real bums as extras. We
would pay them 10 cents a walk-through.”
In a 2011 post on Tumblr, Haze was described as “a small, slight man
with boyish good looks, and it was a virtual certainty that he would
never be a leading man, even in Corman’s universe. Instead, he devoted
himself to playing an assortment of oddballs and losers.
“He maintained an overwhelming enthusiasm for whatever project he was
working on, and, as it happens, he was a physical chameleon. He had one
of those faces that seemed to change completely depending on what
costume he wore, and he was willing to go for the gusto when it came to
changing his posture and voice to create a new persona onscreen. From
role to role, he almost unrecognizable.”...
(snip)
R.I.P. Jonathan Haze, 95 ("Little Shop of Horrors" 1960)