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Thread: Millard Kaufman - Screenwriter and Mr. Magoo Creator

  1. #1
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    Smile Millard Kaufman - Screenwriter and Mr. Magoo Creator




    Millard Kaufman, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of "Bad Day at Black Rock" and the co-creator of Mr. Magoo who waited until he was 90 to become a first-time novelist, has died. He was 92.

    Kaufman died of heart failure Saturday, two days after his birthday, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said his son, Frederick Kaufman.

    A former newspaperman who launched his screenwriting career after serving in the Marines during World War II, Kaufman quickly made a mark on pop culture by writing the screenplay for "Ragtime Bear," the 1949 cartoon short directed by John Hubley that introduced the near-sighted Mr. Magoo.

    The character, which was voiced by actor Jim Backus, was modeled in part on Kaufman's uncle.

    "My uncle had no problem with his eyes," Kaufman said in a 2007 National Public Radio interview. "He simply interpreted everything that came across his way in his own particular manner, and he could at times be a little bit difficult, but he would only see things the way they existed highly subjectively to him."

    Kaufman wrote the screenplays for "Unknown World" and "Aladdin and His Lamp" before spending more than a decade as a writer at MGM, where he was known as a top script doctor.

    His first screenplay for the studio -- "Take the High Ground!," a 1953 movie about Army basic training starring Richard Widmark -- earned him the first of his two Oscar nominations.

    Then came his Oscar-nominated screenplay for "Bad Day at Black Rock," the 1955 suspense-drama starring Spencer Tracy as a one-armed World War II veteran who finds more than he bargained for when he gets off the train at a tiny desert whistle-stop.

    Other Kaufman film credits are "Raintree County," "Never So Few," The War Lord," "Living Free" and "The Klansman." Among his TV credits are "Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb."

    Early in his Hollywood career, Kaufman fronted for blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo on the 1950 film-noir crime classic "Gun Crazy."

    Kaufman didn't know Trumbo, but they shared the same agent, George Willner. When Willner asked Kaufman if he'd be willing to put his name on the script, Kaufman later recalled, "I had sense enough to say, 'Let me talk it over with my wife.' "

    "But we discussed it and we believed it was rotten that a man couldn't write under his own name," Kaufman told Daily Variety in 1992, the year Kaufman officially requested that the Writers Guild of America West take his name off the credits and replace it with Trumbo's name.

    "Any time I had speaking engagements where they included that film in my credits, I always set the record straight anyway," Kaufman said.

    Christopher Knopf, a screen and TV writer who met Kaufman at MGM in the early '50s, said that "the greatest facility for him was he was absolutely unafraid to face a blank page with no guarantee of anything."

    "A lot of writers today cannot write unless somebody will call up and say, 'You have an assignment,' and that was not Millard; he wrote," said Knopf.

    Kaufman had a major screenwriting assignment at age 86, but then the project fell through.

    "I decided, knowing that nobody my age gets work in movies, and that I had to do something, otherwise I'd get into terrible trouble, that I would try writing a novel," he told The Times in 2007.

    That was the year "Bowl of Cherries," which a New Yorker writer described as "equal parts 'Catcher in the Rye' and 'Die Hard,' " was published.

    Kaufman's second novel, "Misadventure," is due out this fall.

    Born March 12, 1917, in Baltimore, Kaufman spent two years as a merchant seaman after high school.

    After earning a bachelor's degree in English from Johns Hopkins University in 1939, he moved to New York City and worked as a newspaperman for the Daily News and Newsday.

    In 1942, he joined the Marine Corps and saw action on Guadalcanal, Guam and Okinawa.

    In his later years, Kaufman wrote the screenwriting book "Plots and Characters: A Screenwriter on Screenwriting."

    Said Knopf, who met with Kaufman and other Hollywood veterans for weekly lunches at a Santa Monica restaurant: "When you were around him, he elevated you about the craft that you were in and made you want to do the very best you could possibly do."

    In addition to his son, Kaufman is survived by his wife of 66 years, Lorraine; his daughters, Mary Carde and Amy Burk; and seven grandchildren.

  2. #2
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    I Thought things were getting way too politically correct when a few years ago Disney made a Live Action film based on Mr. Magoo and Groups like the National Federation for the Blind went after Disney for 'making fun of blind or people who have a hard time seeing'.

    They all go over Disney for some reason.

    The point behind MR. Magoo was that he either forgot or was too vain too wear glasses.
    In MR. Kaufman's Uncle's case, the guy just had a different perspectives on objects.

    People, back then, had to wear glasses where the lenses looked like the bottom of Coke bottles.

    My Favorite line from a Mr. Magoo special came from the ' Christmas Carol" where one of the ghost says to MR. Magoo

    'You who are soo cheap you can't even go out and buy a proper pair of spectacles'

    It made me laugh.
    We all know one of those.

    RIP Mr. KAufman
    I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

    Edna St. Vincent Millay

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by coconn04 View Post
    I Thought things were getting way too politically correct when a few years ago Disney made a Live Action film based on Mr. Magoo and Groups like the National Federation for the Blind went after Disney for 'making fun of blind or people who have a hard time seeing'.
    was that the one starring Leslie Nielsen? I enjoyed that film! yep, the politically correct nitwits will attack anything unfortunately!

  4. #4
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    The following story was released on December 18, 1997:

    'Mr. Magoo' Movie To Include Statement On Blind

    LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sensitive to complaints from the blind, the Walt Disney Co said Wednesday it will include a disclaimer at the end of its Christmas season movie "Mr. Magoo" about a bumbling short-sighted man.

    A Disney spokeswoman said "a positive statement" would appear on the screen at the end of the film and before the credits roll.

    "It's still in the process of writing and post production so I can't tell you exactly what it says," said spokeswoman Terry Curtin.

    "It's not really a disclaimer, more like a public service announcement."

    The movie, starring Leslie Nielsen and Kelly Lynch, is based on the popular cartoon series which featured the voice of Jim Backus as the myopic, accident-prone Mr. Magoo.

    The National Federation for the Blind had complained such a character was not a positive portrayal of blind or partially-sighted people and even called for Disney to scrap the project.

    "They originally demanded we pull the movie, but then realized that was unrealistic," Curtin said of the protest.

    "We have had many talks with them and are more sensitive to what their thoughts are," she said.

    She said the statement would condemn discrimination against the blind and stress that people with sight handicaps could lead normal lives.

    I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

    Edna St. Vincent Millay

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