Craig J. Clark
When Roger Corman died in 2024 at the age of 98, he left behind a filmography hundreds of titles deep. In addition to the 50-plus films he directed (including some where he went uncredited) and the close to 500 he produced in some capacity, he also had a sideline as an actor. At first he only appeared in his films if he needed an extra body in a scene or an actor failed to show up, but later on he did cameos for directors who wanted to pay him back for giving them their start in the business.
The first to ask was one-time protégé Francis Ford Coppola, who tapped him to play a senator on the committee investigating the Corleone organization in 1974’s The Godfather Part II. At first, Corman simply sits and listens to the testimony, but he gets to ask a pivotal question later on when their star witness suddenly clams up. Noticing a nervous-looking man seated next to Michael Corleone, Corman asks who he is and follows up with “Is he related to the witness?” Clearly, some unspoken intimidation is occurring right in front of them, but the senators are powerless to do anything about it.
Corman was on his home turf in Paul Bartel’s Cannonball! (1976), in which he plays the L.A. district attorney out to stop a cross-country race. (Spoiler: he fails.) Considering how busy he was running New World Pictures, it’s not surprising this was the one time he acted in one of its productions, but that sort of thing became more common after his employees left the nest.
The New World alums who used Corman the most were Joe Dante and Jonathan Demme. Demme got a head start writing and producing biker and women-in-prison flicks, while Dante toiled on trailers in the editing department, but Dante put their boss to the work first, in 1981’s The Howling. Paying homage to the scene in Rosemary’s Baby where producer William Castle is standing outside a phone booth while Rosemary makes a call, Dante stationed Corman outside one being used by his heroine. The capper on the scene, where she tells him “It’s all yours” and he steps inside is that he immediately checks the change slot. As Dante says on the commentary, “The legend has it that in order to get Roger to turn around and do the scene, we had to actually put a quarter in the machine. Actually, when Roger tells the story, it’s 50 cents.”
Corman’s next three cameos (after a bit part in Wim Wenders’s The State of Things as a lawyer) were courtesy of Demme, starting with the role of Mr. MacBride, owner of the aircraft manufacturing plant in 1984’s Swing Shift. Initially, he’s only a voice on a loudspeaker welcoming new employees, but he also appears at the end to announce Japan’s surrender and thank them “for a job well done.” He was again cast in a position of authority in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, as FBI Director Hayden Burke, who’s briefly seen calling Jack Crawford on the carpet for dangling a phony reward in front of Hannibal Lecter. Corman had a bigger part in a deleted scene where he suspends Clarice Starling from the Academy for her part in Crawford’s gamble, but that unnecessary beat wisely hit the cutting room floor.
In a reversal of his role in The Godfather Part II, Corman’s part in 1993’s Philadelphia (for which he received billing in the opening titles for the first time) was that of Mr. Laird, a business owner pressured to soften his praise for Andrew Beckett, saying he was merely “satisfied” with the outcome of the litigation done for his company. This time, it’s Beckett’s lawyer who notices Laird’s nervous glance to the defendants and calls out his sudden change in attitude.
A more relaxed and genial Corman turned up as Mr. Randolph in Joe Dante’s Runaway Daughters (1994). Part of Showtime’s series of in-name-only remakes of AIP titles, Runaway Daughters cast Corman as the father of the boy who gets his girlfriend pregnant and runs off to join the Navy. When the girl comes looking for him, she finds Mr. Randolph grilling the hell out of some steaks and beaming about how proud he is of his son for enlisting. (Dante also cast Corman’s wife Julie as Mrs. Randolph.)
The famously penny-pinching Corman came to the fore in his next three cameos. In Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 (1995), he’s a congressman who questions the need to keep funding the space program. (When Jim Lovell says he’s slated to command Apollo 14, Corman grins and replies, “If there is an Apollo 14.”) Then, in Dante’s The Second Civil War (1997), he’s “network guy” Sandy Collins, whose first line is about how “the budget is all blown to hell” and who is laser-focused on News Net’s advertisers, which affects the stories they can cover. (“Africa’s a mess,” Sandy says. “Use the Rwandan massacre. There are no Rwandan advertisers.”) And in Dante’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), Corman has his most amusing cameo as the director of a Batman movie annoyed when a security guard blows a stunt, informing him, “That airbag cost a lot of money.”
Corman’s last two cameos for his alumni were both for Demme, who included him in 2004’s The Manchurian Candidate in the backstage scene where Senator Shaw is pushing her son Raymond for the VP slot at their party’s convention. Corman doesn’t do much apart from shake Meryl Streep’s hand at the beginning and end of the scene and exchange a courteous “Senator”/”Mr. Secretary” with her, but his presence signals important deal-making is afoot. He also shows up in 2008’s Rachel Getting Married as a wedding guest who’s always seen grinning from ear to ear. (He films the ceremony as well, which is as touching as can be.) In a 1991 interview, Demme said, “The only way to see him, he’s always busy working on his empire, is to offer him a part in a movie.” In Rachel Getting Married, it’s plain to see that Corman is pleased as punch to be invited – and to see a filmmaker whose talent he nurtured is doing so well.
