Magoo creator Kaufman dies at 92

Kaufman said he based the Magoo character on his uncle

The creator of the bumbling cartoon character Mr Magoo, Millard Kaufman, has died at the age of 92.

Kaufman wrote for television and film earning Oscar nominations for Bad Day at Black Rock and Take the High Ground.

He created weak-eyed elderly Magoo for the 1949 animated short Ragtime Bear, which was voiced by actor Jim Backus.

The screenwriter published his first novel aged 90. Bowl of Cherries was a surprise cult hit and his second novel is due out in late 2009.

Kaufman described his change of career to the Los Angeles Times in 2007: "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."

Comic romp

The nonagenarian was an unusual signing for McSweeney's publishers, which specialises in cutting edge young writers.

Bowl of Cherries was a comic coming-of-age romp where the 14-year-old hero moves between Yale university, a horse ranch, a porn studio and the war in Iraq.

Millard Kaufman worked as a merchant seaman and a newspaper journalist before serving with the Marine Corps during World War II.

He later worked on the 1955 film Bad Day at Black Rock, one of the first films to look at white racism toward Japanese Americans during WWII.

Respected as a writer and script doctor in Hollywood he also worked on Raintree County, Never So Few, Living Free and The Klansman.

But it was with Mr Magoo, created in conjunction with John Hubley, that he made an impact on popular culture. He claimed the character was based on a relative

"My uncle had no problem with his eyes," Kaufman told National Public Radio in 2007.

"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."