R.I.P. Jonathan Haze

Thanks, Eve Golden, for passing along the intel about the passing of Jonathan Haze (Jack Schachter, 1929-2024). You may think there’s something kind of wrong about eulogizing him here today, as opposed to Quincy Jones, but I assure you that it’s just a matter of bandwidth (Jones died the same day; I posted about him a few months later here). But Jonathan Haze’s story can be told relatively quickly. That said, I was already planning a post on Haze for April Fool’s Day (it’s his birthday), for as it happens, Haze was the star of one of my very favorite movies, the original Little Shop of Horrors (1960).

Here’s a cool fact, and one that goes to my notion that Roger Corman and his gang belonged, spiritually and literally, above all, to the cultural moment of beatniks: Jonathan Haze was Buddy Rich’s cousin. There’s something to this, I think: making a movie quickly, on the cheap, often with non-actors or wanna-bes from the fringes, it’s like the improvisation of a small be bop combo. And of course, many of these movies (including Little Shop) use that kind of music on the soundtracks. And I love that he chose the spelling “Haze” as opposed to “Hayes”. Was that perchance a purple haze?

Originally from Pittsburgh, Haze was working as a gas station attendant when he was recuited to be in Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954), produced by Corman. He went on to be a key member of the AIP stock company, appearing in such pictures as The Fast and the Furious (1954), Five Guns West (1955), Apache Woman (1955), Day the World Ended (1955), Gunslinger (1956), The Oklahoma Woman (1956), It Conquered the World (1956), Swamp Women (1956), Flesh and the Spur (1956), Naked Paradise (1957), Not of This Earth (1957), Rock All Night (1957), The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent (1957), Carnival Rock (1957), Teenage Caveman (1958), The Little Shop of Horrors(1960), The Terror (1963), X: The Man With the X Ray Eyes (1963), and The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967), while working behind the scenes in various production capacities on many of these and other AIP features. With AIP regular Charles B. Griffith, who also wrote Little Shop, he worked before and behind the cames on Ghost of the China Sea (1958) and Forbidden Island (1959), both for Columbia.

Believe it or not, Haze had a bit part in East of Eden (1955)! Other films he appeared in outside the Corman orbit included Bayou (1957), Stakeout on Dope Street (1958), and Blood Bath (1966), and episodes of the TV shows Highway Patrol, Dragnet, Cimarron City, and 77 Sunset Strip, among others.

Haze wrote the screenplay for the film Invasion of the Star Creatures (1962), and was a member of the production teams on such films as Corman’s The Born Losers (1967, the first Billy Jack film), Medium Cool (1969), Another Nice Mess (1972), the TV movie 11th Victim (1979) and the unsold pilot Catalina C-Lab (1982). Later acting roles included such projects as Vice Squad (1982), Invisible Mom II (1999), and Nobody Smiling (2010).

But it was as the Jerry Lewis-like schlemliel Seymor Krelboin in the original Little Shop that Jonathan Haze truly achieved immortality. What is it about working for AIP that bestows longevity? Haze was 95 when he passed. Corman was 98, Dick Miller was 90. Jack Nicholson, also in Little Shop, is still with us as 87. And so is Jackie Joseph, the original Audrey!