By Daily Press staff
A best-selling author and longtime Santa Monica resident is talking B-movies. Beverly Gray, the author of “Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh- Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers,” will reveal Wednesday what she learned while working for Roger Corman, the famed B-movie maker known for launching the film careers of Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and James Cameron.
Corman, also a Santa Monican, has been called “the Godfather of Independent Film.”
During a 50-year period, he produced more than 500 movies on shoestring budgets, making a profit on nearly every one, officials said.
He first made a name for himself by directing the B-movies “Little Shop of Horrors,” “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Wild Angels.”
Gray, who was Corman’s story editor for nearly a decade, interviewed 100 former friends and colleagues of Corman to create a portrait of the man behind the movies.
The free event will be held at the Fairview Branch Library Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., 2101 Ocean Park Blvd.
For more information, call the library at (310) 450-0443.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 17, 2004. Read the original PDF.