'Shrek' Illustrator William Steig Dies
BOSTON - William Steig, an illustrator for The New Yorker who was known as the "King of Cartoons" for his award-winning, best-selling children's books including "Shrek," has died. He was 95.
Steig died of natural causes Friday night at his home in Boston, said his agent, Holly McGhee.
Steig combined a child's innocent eye with idiosyncratic line to create a wonderful world of animal characters for his books and Edwardian-era dandies in his drawings.
"I carry on a lot of the functions of an adult but I have to force myself," he said in a 1984 interview with People. "For some reason I've never felt grown up."
His 1990 book about a green monster, "Shrek!," was made into the hit film that in 2002 became the first winner of an Oscar in the new category of best animated feature. In a 1997 Boston Globe interview, he said he gave the filmmakers ideas for the script.
Steig sold his first cartoon to New Yorker editor Harold Ross in 1930 and was hired as a staff cartoonist.
Over the following seven decades, he produced more than 1,600 drawings and 117 covers for the magazine. He also wrote more than 30 children's books, inducing Newsweek to dub him the "King of Cartoons."
His cartoon style evolved from the straightforward worldly children he called "Small Fry" in the 1930s to the expressionist drawings of his later years that illuminated a word or phrase.
In the latter, clowns and princes and lovers came to life from Steig's imagination. It was a pastoral place "where you hear plenty of laughter and only an occasional shriek of pain," Lillian Ross once wrote.
Steig told the Globe he loved Rembrandt and Picasso and was "nuts about van Gogh." And he said his own drawings have a light, feathery line "because I'm having fun."
He began writing children's books when he was 60. His third, "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble," received the prestigious Caldecott Medal in 1970.
Other notable children's books included "Roland, the Minstrel Pig," "Amos and Boris," "Dominic," "Abel's Island," "The Amazing Bone," "Caleb and Kate," "Doctor De Soto" and "Wizzil."
Steig was born Nov. 14, 1907, in New York, the son of a house painter and a seamstress. He began drawing cartoons for his high school newspaper and attended the National Academy of Design.
In the '30s he became fascinated with Freud and psychoanalysis. His 1942 book "The Lonely Ones" was hailed for its symbolic drawings of human neuroses. It was in print for 25 years.
For many years, Steig lived in a sprawling country house in Kent, Conn., where he took inspiration from the countryside.
"I find it hard ... to do a job on order, even if the order comes from myself," he once said. "I go to my desk without any plans or ideas and wait there for inspiration. Which comes if you get in the right frame of mind."
Steig, who was married four times, was survived by his wife Jeanne, two daughters and a son.
Tiger Mauls Magician Roy Horn in Las Vegas Show
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Famed Las Vegas magician Roy Horn of the "Siegfried and Roy" duo remained in critical but stable condition on Saturday after being mauled by a white tiger during a performance on his 59th birthday, his spokesman said.
The 7-year-old male tiger, named Montecore, grabbed Horn's forearm about halfway into the Friday night performance at the Mirage hotel-casino, witnesses said.
When Horn tried to fend the tiger off with his microphone, the tiger lunged and bit him on the left side of the neck, causing profuse blood loss, they said.
Horn was conscious when he was rushed to University Medical Center and underwent about two hours of surgery, said his spokesman, Dave Kirvin.
"It's just sad and extremely unfortunate. The doctors are encouraged that he will recover, but it will be several days until the full extent of his injury is known," Kirvin said.
Spectators were horrified by the scene.
"There were a couple of gasps, and people thought it was part of the act, and then it was real quiet," audience member Paul D'Antonio, who was sitting about 15 feet from the stage, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
"It literally drug him by his neck off the stage like a rag doll," D'Antonio said.
In a mid-day news conference, Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM Mirage, said Horn's status had not changed and declined to comment on reports he had gone back into surgery.
"It's a very serious situation," Feldman said. "He's obviously under constant supervision by a team of doctors. They're keeping an eye on things quite literally every moment."
The show has been canceled through Christmas and refunds will be issued, he said.
The tiger was being quarantined, Feldman said, declining to say what would happen to it.
Horn's partner, 64-year-old Siegfried Fischbacher, spent most of the night at the hospital, Kirvin said. "He is shocked and devastated," he added. Horn turned 59 on Friday.
"The last place Roy would place blame would be with the animal," said Bernie Yuman, manager for "Siegfried and Roy."
Although Horn had told the crowd it was the tiger's first performance, the animal has been performing for years, Kirvin said. There have been no attacks in the more than 5,000 shows the two men have performed at the hotel since 1990, he said.
White tigers and lions are a trademark of the German-born illusionists, who have been putting on one of the most famous shows in Las Vegas for more than 30 years.
Horn, born in Nordenham, Germany, and Siegfried, of Rosenheim, Germany, have performed worldwide since meeting in 1959.
When he was 7, Horn's "beloved pet Hexe" saved his life, according to the duo's Web site. It does not say what type of pet it was.