Jonathan Haze, Star of the Original ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ Dies at 95
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.
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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.”
The son of a jeweler, Jack Aaron Schachter was born in Pittsburgh on April 1, 1929. He worked the stage for Rich and then served for two years as the stage manager for entertainer Josephine Baker.
After a summer acting in Connecticut, Schachter hitchhiked to Los Angeles and got a job pumping gas at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and North Vista Street when he met Wyott Ordung, a would-be director who introduced him to Corman.
“There’s a part for you, a Mexican,” Corman told him. “But you’ll have to grow a mustache. You’ll also have to bring your own costumes, do your own stunts, and you won’t be paid overtime. You still want it?”
He was billed as Jack Hayes in Monster From the Ocean Floor before settling on Jonathan Haze as his stage name. Meanwhile, he brought his friend, actor Dick Miller, to the filmmaker’s attention, and Miller would become a frequent co-star.
In an interview with Tom Weaver for his 1998 book, Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Flashbacks, actress Jackie Joseph, who played the salesgirl Audrey in Little Shop, said Haze “had practically all the pressure on him” during the making of the movie.
“I don’t think any of us would have been as successful if he hadn’t been on top of what he was doing,” she said. “It’s funny to think of ‘professionalism’ when you think of something as dopey as Little Shop, but there definitely were professionals on that stage.”
(Rick Moranis portrayed Seymour in the 1986 Little Shop remake directed by Frank Oz.)
In Apache Woman (1955), because it was cheaper for Corman to have actors change costumes instead of bringing in new actors, Haze and others played warriors on both sides of the battle. “There’s this scene where we’re having this big gunfight and we’re shooting at the Indians and here we are the Indians getting shot,” he recalled.
Haze’s other work for Corman included The Beast With a Million Eyes (1955), Carnival Rock (1957), Naked Paradise (1957), Teenage Cave Man (1958), The Premature Burial (1962), The Terror (1963) and X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (1963).
He shared a project with Corman one last time in 1999 when he had a cameo in the serial The Phantom Eye.
Haze also wrote the screenplay for Invasion of the Star Creatures (1962) and was a production manager on Haskell Wexler‘s Medium Cool (1969) and a producer (with Tom Smothers) on Another Nice Mess (1972). He then was the CEO of a company that created campaigns for such products as Kool-Aid and Schlitz Beer.
In addition to Rebecca, survivors include another daughter, Deedee; his grandchildren, Andre, Rocco and Ruby; and his great-grandson, Sonny. He was married to costume designer Roberta Keith, who died in September, from the mid-1960s until their 1981 divorce.
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