Jonathan Haze, an actor best known for his role as Seymour in 1960’s Little Shop of Horrors has died. He was 95.
Haze’s daughter Rebecca Haze reported that Roger Corman’s frequent collaborator passed on November 2.
She said he died peacefully of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, per Deadline.
Haze was discovered while working at a gas station and cast in the 1954 film Monster From the Ocean Floor, which Corman, who passed earlier this year at the age of 98, produced.
This was the start of a long working relationship between Corman and Haze. He was soon cast in Corman’s The Fast and the Furious in 1954 and in Five Guns West in 1955.
Jonathan Haze, an actor best known for his role as Seymour in 1960’s Little Shop of Horrors has died. He was 95
Haze was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on April 1, 1929.
After being discovered in the 1950s he went on to rack up 41 credits during an acting career that spanned five decades.
In addition to appearing in nearly 20 Corman films, he also made appearances on television shows including Dragnet and 77 Sunset Strip.
But his most famous role by far was as Seymour Krelboined in 1960s original adaptation of Little Shop of Horrors.
His character is described as ‘a scrawny runt, with a nose like a door-stopper and the gait of an ostrich,’ per Deadline.
He works as an assistant in a down-on-its-luck flower shop where he grows a plant which grows to have villainous, human-like characteristics after a drop of his blood falls on it.
After that, the plant, which he calls Audrey, Jr., begins to demand human blood.
This leads to the film’s catchphrase: ‘Feed me, Seymour.’
‘It seems like everything just came together right, you know,’ Haze said of Little Shop of Horrors at a fan convention in 2001, per a video shared on YouTube.
Haze’s daughter Rebecca Haze reported that Roger Corman’s frequent collaborator passed on November 2
She said he died peacefully of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, per Deadline
Haze was discovered while working at a gas station and cast in the 1954 film Monster From the Ocean Floor, which Corman, who passed earlier this year at the age of 98, produced
This was the start of a long working relationship between Corman and Haze. He was soon cast in Corman’s The Fast and the Furious in 1954 and in Five Guns West in 1955
‘Sometimes it just all works for you; somedays you get home runs and some days you strike out, well that was a home run situation,’ he added.
‘We were shooting it on the stage that Charlie Chaplin used to make his films on, which maybe there was some kind of spiritual ghost or something that affected us all, but it is magical,’ he reminisced.
‘And not only is it magical, you can’t really put your finger on what makes it wonderful,’ he recalled.
Haze is survived by his daughters Rebecca Haze and DD Haze; grandchildren Andre Bryant, Rocco Haze and Ruby Bryant; and a great-grandson, Sonny Haze.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk