"He returned to Stanford when the war ended, graduating in 1947 with a degree in industrial engineering. But after working for just four days..."

"... as an electrical engineer, he quit engineering forever. He was hired as a messenger at 20th Century Fox for $32.50 a week and eventually rose to story reader. But, he wrote in his memoir, 'I knew I was going to be a writer, producer or director of motion pictures, and I needed more background in the arts of the 20th century.' He enrolled at the University of Oxford on the G.I. Bill to study the work of T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence. After six months at Oxford and six months in Paris, he came home and sold a chase-across-the-desert script to Allied Artists for $3,500. He was so unhappy with the finished film, 'Highway Dragnet'... that he decided to become his own producer. With the $3,500, a borrowed one-man submarine and $6,500 raised from a dozen friends, he was almost ready to film 'Monster From the Ocean Floor'..."

From "Roger Corman, 98, Dies; Prolific Master of Low-Budget Cinema/He had hundreds of horror, science fiction and crime films to his credit. He also helped start the careers of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and many others" (NYT)(free access link — read the whole amazing story).

I love monster movies, and the cheaper they are, the better they are.... I wanted to embed this but Blogger won't let me, so here: Frank Zappa — Cheepnis (Original Roxy Footage).