The first and the last book of Mr. Magoo

To the very end Millard Kaufman was telling jokes, which was some kind of hobby to him. In that job he was kindly helped by his wife. They had a phone trick; both of them would be online and just at one moment in the middle of the conversation one would say a joke. In a cheerful environment, Millard Kaufman lasted to live for 92 years: he died in his apartment in Los Angeles on March the 17th, this year.

He is well known, first of all by giving us a character of an old, near-sighted Quincy Magoo, the famous cartoon character. Than, he had enough courage to write and publish his first book when he was at the age of 90. It was the book “Bowl of cherries”, translated to many languages. When the novel was accepted by riders, Millard got inspirited. One year later he started with writing a new novel “Misadventure”, which will unfortunately be published posthumously this fall.

The thing which cheered up Kaufman was the fact that the publishers to whom he had offered his writing, couldn’t believe that the book was written by a 90 years old man. “Bowl of cherries” is a story of an American solider who went to Iraq where he found out the secrets of an ancient architecture. Novel is filled with curses, but also with jokes of ex American president Bush.

Born in 1917, “father” of Quincy Magoo was a journalist. He stopped his career as a journalist for attending the II World War, to fight against Hitler. He hasn’t continued to his returning his job as a journalist. Coming back to Los Angeles he started working in the film industry. First job was a strike to him. He wrote a script play for a cartoon. He made up a character of a bold, rich, short-sighted and short gentleman who is getting into troubles because of his seeing problem. The character of Quincy Magoo came alive by John Humbly and Robert Canon. Then the life of this charming gentleman found his way straight to the Oscar. After that Kaufman got a job in MGM where he worked as a writer for 15 years. One of his best movies is for sure is “Bad day at Black Rock” with Spenser Tracy.

And so that was his job until he got retired. That is when Millard got to his senses and realized that all he wanted to be for all those years was to be a writer. The last script he wrote in 1986.

“It was a magnificent experience for me”, said Millard Kaufman in one of the latest interviews. “At the beginning I believed that writing a book is not more differences from writing a script play for a movie. I was wrong. It was a real challenge for me.