Jonathan Haze, Star of ‘The Little Shop of Horrors,’ Dies at 95

Best known for his star turn in the cult film about a flesh-eating plant, he was a go-to member of the low-budget auteur Roger Corman’s repertory company.

Jonathan Haze, a prince of the B-movie who appeared in nearly 20 pulp cinema popcorn munchers by the king of the B-movie, the low-budget auteur Roger Corman — most notably as Seymour, the sniveling flower shop assistant in the original “The Little Shop of Horrors” — died on Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 95.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Rebecca Haze.

Mr. Haze, a fledgling actor who had hitchhiked to Los Angeles to chase his screen dreams, was working at a Hollywood gas station in 1952 when he was discovered by Wyott Ordung, a young actor and aspiring director affiliated with Mr. Corman.

Mr. Corman at that point was just starting a career in which he would produce more than 300 exploitation films and direct roughly 50, with titles like “The Beast With a Million Eyes” and “Teenage Cave Man.” He was also known for his eye for talent: He gave early opportunities to Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson, among many others.

Mr. Corman cast Mr. Haze in two movies in 1954: “Monster From the Ocean Floor,” directed by Mr. Ordung, and “The Fast and the Furious,” whose title would be licensed decades later for the Vin Diesel car-frenzy franchise, in which he had an uncredited role.

As the Tumblr site Know Your B Movie Actors observed: “Haze was 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.”

That formula was good for a decade-plus run with Mr. Corman. He got his big break in 1960 when Dick Miller, another notable character actor in Mr. Corman’s inner circle, turned down the starring role that would become Mr. Haze’s signature. (Mr. Miller took a different, smaller role in the movie.)

“The Little Shop of Horrors” (1960), half horror movie and half spoof, centers on the fidgety Seymour Krelborn, who works in a flower shop on a gritty stretch of downtown Los Angeles and effectively befriends a talking plant whose conversational skills revolve around one sentiment involving its appetite for human flesh: “Feed me!”

As Seymour, Mr. Haze blended creepiness and comedy, as evidenced in a notable scene in which he is forced to pose as a dentist and painfully yank a tooth from an awkward bow-tied masochist, played by Mr. Nicholson in an early screen appearance.

Mr. Corman was known for making films in an eye blink on a microscopic budget. In one interview, Mr. Haze recounted how the producer snipped costs on “Apache Woman” (1955) by having actors swap costumes and play both cowboys and Indians. “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 said.

“The Little Shop of Horrors,” like most Corman films, was made in a blur. “All the interior scenes in the movie were done in two days,” Mr. Haze said in a 2001 video interview. “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, totally different world. It was insane.”

He earned $400 for the role — the equivalent of a little more than $4,000 today — which was at least more than the inebriated extras who were paid 10 cents per walk-through in a scene shot on the actual Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.

“They would want their dime as soon as they walked through,” Mr. Haze recalled. He added, “These guys would make three walk-throughs, get 30 cents, go to a liquor store, buy a jar of bulk wine, drink it down and come back and do three more walk-throughs.”

Jack Aaron Schachter — he adopted the stage name Jack Hayes early in his acting career before settling on Jonathan Haze — was born on April 1, 1929, in Pittsburgh, to Harry Schacter, a watchmaker from Austria, and Elizabeth (Richman) Schacter.

His extended family had multiple ties to show business — the virtuoso jazz drummer Buddy Rich was a cousin — and he eventually drifted into the business himself, working as a stage manager for his famous cousin as well as the renowned dancer and chanteuse Josephine Baker before turning his sights to acting.

After honing his chops in summer stock productions in Connecticut, he thumbed his way to Los Angeles and started his screen career.

During his Corman years, Mr. Haze also worked sideline jobs like stunt driver and fight choreographer. After his acting career wound down starting in the late 1960s, he spent decades working with the Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler in a production company that made television commercials.

In addition to his daughter Rebecca, Mr. Haze is survived by another daughter, DD Haze; three grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

While many of his Corman films were destined to end up on the dusty back aisles of video stores in the 1980s and ’90s, “The Little Shop of Horrors” lived on, earning a cult following and gaining new life when it was turned into a popular Off Broadway musical in 1982 (a revival is currently playing at the Westside Theater/Upstairs in Manhattan), which itself was turned into a star-studded film four years later, starring Rick Moranis as Seymour.

“It just all works,” Mr. Haze said of the film in 2001. “We were shooting it on the stage that Charlie Chaplin used to make his films,” he added. “Maybe there was some kind of spiritual ghost or something that affected us all.”