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Oscars honour filmmaker Roger Corman

Last Updated: Thursday, November 12, 2009 | 3:18 PM ET

CBC News

Film producer and director Roger Corman, seen at his office in Los Angeles on Nov. 5, will receive an honorary Academy Award on Saturday. (Chris Pizzello/Associated Press)B-movie king Roger Corman is set for an A-list celebration this weekend, when he will receive an honorary Oscar.

The U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present the prolific, 83-year-old filmmaker with an Academy Award for lifetime achievement in Los Angeles on Saturday.

"I was truly surprised when I got the call," he said in an recent interview, acknowledging that while he knew he was being considered, he didn't think he would win.

Corman's vast oeuvre of approximately 350 films — a plethora of low-budget, quickly made horror, comedy and drama titles — includes The Masque of Red Death, Galaxy of Terror, Piranha, Dementia 13 and The Little Shop of Horrors, starring a young actor named Jack Nicholson.

In addition to giving actors like Nicholson, Robert De Niro, and Sylvester Stallone an early break when they were little known, Corman is widely acknowledged as a Hollywood mentor of younger peers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Peter Bogdanovich and Jonathan Demme — many of whom worked for him as directors, effects creators and assistants.

He also helped introduce renowned films by internationally acclaimed greats like Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa to U.S. audiences through his former distribution company New World Pictures.

Alongside Corman, also receiving honorary Oscars on Saturday will be esteemed actress Lauren Bacall and cinematographer Gordon Willis, whose credits include The Godfather trilogy, Woody Allen films like Annie Hall and Manhattan and political classic All the President's Men.

The winners will also be acknowledged during the full Academy Awards ceremony on March 7, 2010.

With files from The Associated Press

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