Millard Kaufman dies

American screenwriter Millard Kaufman has died at the age of 92.

Not only did he write the Oscar-nominated screenplays Take The High Ground! and Bad Day At Black Rock, he also scripted the first appearance of Mr Magoo. And, at the age of 90, he published his first novel, Bowl Of Cherries.

There's an obituary by Dennis McLellan in The L.A. Times.

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.