The former vice-president of 20th Century Fox Television who won an Emmy Award for his movie about Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir has passed away at the age of 93 in his house.
- October 11, 2020
AceShowbiz - Movie producer Gene Corman has died, aged 93.
His older brother and filmmaking partner, Roger Corman, confirmed his sibling's loss, revealing he passed away at home on 28 September (20).
Gene began his Hollywood career as a talent agent at MCA Inc., where his client roster included the likes of Joan Crawford, Harry Belafonte, and Richard Conte.
He and Roger first teamed up in 1958 to produce "Hot Car Girl", and went on to make low-key horrors like "Beast From Haunted Cave", "Premature Burial", "Tower of London", and "Night of the Blood Beast".
Gene returned to work on mainstream titles in the 1960s, working on movies such as Rock Hudson's "Tobruk", "F.I.S.T." with Sylvester Stallone, and Ingrid Bergman's "A Woman Called Golda", a 1982 TV film about Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, which earned him an Emmy Award.
"We found them easy - fun - to make and more readily marketing than most other types of films," so he explained in Tom Weaver's book, "Interviews With B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers".
"If you got away from that kind of horror or science fiction, you found yourself truly competing with the major studios, and in that arena it was impossible. One, you didn't have the production values, and two, you could not afford the stories or the actors, For some reason, the other studios had laid back and let science fiction alone for a great deal of time."
Gene Corman sometimes made cameos in his own movies as well. "Generally it would happen when an actor didn't show up, but also it did save a few dollars," he said. "I mean, we were there all the time on these films, so why not?"
