In half a century, the animators will measure him. Who would have thought that Maurice Tillet, once nicknamed the French Angel, would once again attract the attention of the whole world, now as a fairy-tale character named Shrek, which means “horror” in Yiddish.

The giant was of average height. And still he made a deadly impression - was he a man? When the giant smiled at you, you wanted to move away a couple of steps, or better yet, completely. He was a heavyweight wrestler, this Maurice Tillet, and moreover, he had an appearance that made even his brothers in the ring groan. The very sight of him was a hook. Parents frightened their children with “Tiye the cannibal” and were afraid themselves - what if he got hungry? This was his stage image.

He was a rare person, simply a collectible. Today, his life-size bust is kept in two American museums - anthropological and sports. And in the International Wrestling Museum there is a short, about a minute, video recording of one of his performances. They say he was good at the “bear hug,” which he used on opponents in the ring, squeezing them until they ran out of air in their lungs. This quality - the monster's strength - was also unique, as was its appearance. Since the rare disease that Maurice suffered from a young age, according to doctors, never changes a person in better side. It does not add health, beauty or strength either. Tiye was unusually strong, he didn’t even have anyone to compare him to. Big-eyed funny people on the Internet once noticed his resemblance to our contemporary, also an athlete and also amazing in appearance. Tiye was even called the grandfather of our Valuev a couple of times. Nonsense, of course! Valuev, in principle, could not become related to Tiye. Maurice Tillet did not and could not have children. Unfortunately, his difficult appearance was not something natural, but only the product of a rare disease - acromegaly, in which, in general, health suffers no less than beauty and psychological balance. Tiye was never married, unlike his super-ego (this is not about Valuev, no). His life, full of internal conflict (he never managed to get used to himself in the mirror), could become a reason for a short story, and not for procreation. Well, it almost became, considering Shrek, whose fairy tales were loved by both children and adults. Although the story of the fairy-tale giant is not directly connected with Tiye. The life of our hero was not a fairy tale. And this novella carries an unexpected moral - not everything that looks like a monster, roars like a monster and smells like a monster is actually a monster. There are exceptions in life.

Shrek was invented by the writer William Steig, a part-time cartoonist who for many years decorated the editorial pages of the most popular American publications with his drawings and replenished American literature with a bunch of children's books that no one in Russia had ever thought of translating. Steig also became famous for being one of the top ten writers banned in the United States. In the late 70s, American society took up arms against the most innocent book “Sylvester and the Magic Crystal” - the biography of a smart donkey named Sylvester (nothing sacred!). The writer was framed by his own pig characters. The story was cursed by members of the police association, who were offended by the caricatures of police officers as pigs. The metaphor angered them. They achieved their goal by driving out demons from libraries.

Shrek was born much later, did not cross anyone’s path, and it was a very short story, only about thirty pages, illustrated by the writer himself, a man of great and varied talents. "Shrek" hit bookstore shelves in 1990. There was no epic, the scale was insignificant. It was a story about the adventures of a creature, in European mythology called an ogre - a cannibal giant. The story is about how a young giant living in a swamp, frightening the surrounding people with his appearance, turns out to be so kind that he is simply unable to cause any harm, except for a frightening growl. In search of impressions, the giant Shrek goes on a journey that ends with his marriage to a beautiful princess, a giantess like himself. "Horror!" - this is how the name given by the writer to his character is translated from Yiddish. There is nothing strange in the fact that the writer chooses this word, familiar to him from childhood - this is exactly how his own grandmother reacted to life's collisions. Steig came from a Polish-Jewish emigrant environment. He spent his childhood in Brooklyn. At the beginning of the last century, there was some kind of shrek happening there at every step.

But if he came up with Shrek the Ogre himself, he at least had an excellent reason for it. Shrek existed! There was no need to invent it at all, just describe it. And of course, long before the birth of the cartoon, Steig had already met his future literary child. The acquaintance with the prototype character named “Horror-Horror” took place out of love for sports. Love is not to make love, but to watch. Steig in his youth visited favorite places where citizens gathered - wrestling arenas. In those days when the cannibal giant, aka the French Angel, shone on them, this is how Tillet was announced in different years. Wrestling, the type of competition in which he participated, was most popular in America, only later it became a corrupt spectacle, in which, from beginning to end, the circus component replaced the sport, in fact, not the wrestling itself, but its imitation. IN old times true competition was not yet alien to wrestling. Sometimes they fought seriously. And both the rich and the poor, who had nothing to do, went to watch the battles, especially in times Great Depression, And for a long time after it, when there was absolutely nothing to do, at least hang yourself. The passion of the sports world attracted and charged with adrenaline, making some of the impressions unforgettable. And the impressions of youth remain fresh for a long time. The future writer could not get the amazing fighter - the invincible Maurice Tillet out of his head. By the way, Tiye and Steig were almost the same age in age. The writer was born in 1907 in New York. And Shrek, that is, of course, Tiye - in 1904... in the Urals. This curious fact of his biography was recently discovered by journalists who got to the bottom of the truth after the “secret of the birth” of Shrek was revealed. In American magazines of the 40s, there were interviews with Tillet, in which he informed readers of details of his biography, now long forgotten. It turns out that he spent his childhood in St. Petersburg. Is it true? It is quite possible that not. The biography of Tillet, a long-forgotten wrestler, is full of gaps. After all, not everything that media figures tell journalists is worthy of trust. And seventy years ago everything was exactly the same - the stars lie, onlookers believe. Sometimes they lie disinterestedly. Is it worth explaining to your fans that you were born in the city of N, N-district, Zaensky volost, if all these names don’t tell their minds and hearts anything? But St. Petersburg - yeah, a guy from Russia!

A guy from the Russian underworld

In fact, Maurice Tillet was born not in the capital, but in the Urals, where to this day there are settlements that remember French names and surnames. It was always good with the French in the Urals. There is even a village called Paris (they say this was a joke among the Cossacks who settled in those parts along the way from the War of 1812). And Tillet was not Russian at all - it is known for sure that his parents were of French origin. They were the same foreign specialists who were so adored in pre-revolutionary Russia, lovingly sent from abroad - all these “Missy”, “Monsieur” and “Monsieur” - teachers for children, companions for adults. Tiye's mother was a teacher. Obviously, a governess. And my father is a railway engineer. By the way, Tiye carefully hid information about his ancestors all his life, but not at all because he treated them worse than he should have. Vice versa.

Maurice Tillet was an angel. And it was not for nothing that he was called that in the ring - the French Angel. As if to compensate for his appearance, he was decorated with the most beautiful and wonderful traits that can be found in a human being. He was kind, smart, tender-hearted, well-educated, very cultured and inhumanly decent. Every mother dreams of such a loving son - caring was another of his commendable qualities. And he really didn’t want his poor mother to be bothered by journalists in connection with his sporting achievements or interesting appearance. Maurice Tillet was ashamed of himself and intended to protect his family from his fame. True, his father died before the family left Russia and before the boy discovered that he was sick. Dad was lucky, he died without knowing that he gave birth to a farcical ogre, so Maurice believed.

The ogre's mother was born in Paris. Being a Frenchwoman in the Russian province is her personal hell, chosen voluntarily. Madame tried her best to become at least somewhat Russified. Going to Russia following Maurice's dad, who was traveling under a contract, she had no idea that she would have to fit into a very Frost patterns. The young French were promised mountains of gold, but they forgot to talk about the Russian reality that will not leave a European indifferent, be it Voltaire or Théophile Gautier. Mama Tiye was never able to get used to the roads paved with liquid clay, to kvass instead of coffee, to jam instead of confiture, to pickled cucumbers, to the lack of flea liquid in the pharmacy, to an empty powder compact, and so on. You never know what a woman can’t survive. In 1917, she noticed that she had absolutely no place, and most importantly, no money to buy gloves for herself, so she jumped in and left Russia with her minor son. With this, the Russian roots of Maurice Tillet were cut off forever. Except for one story, as it turned out later, that tightly tied him to Russia. He once told this story in his spare time to one of his few close friends, fighting with him in checkers. Or chess - that's not the point.

Angel

Angel - that’s what all the aunties who saw him called little Maurice. Mom also called him an angel. “Come here, little angel...” As a child, he was indeed a very handsome boy. It seems that only one photograph of him has survived, in which he is depicted in a sailor's jacket - it is immediately obvious that he is a good boy from a decent family. In Russia there was a strong fashion for sailor suits, worn by everyone, starting with the heir to the throne. It was in this sailor suit that he left Russia in the summer of 1917 forever. He remembered the birch groves that monotonously, in the rhythm of a waltz, flashed through the window of the train in which his mother was taking him to his homeland, and roadside taverns where travelers were forced to stop to satisfy their hunger. All these establishments were similar to one another, in each of them they bought “pi-ro-gi” with potatoes or cabbage, so as not to get poisoned, they bought the simplest dish that you can take with you, wrapped in paper towel. In one of these establishments, after paying and leaving, the mother forgot her umbrella. They shouted after them to return them, but the mother was in a hurry - the train was on the platform, and did not notice the call. An unfamiliar old woman, who happened to be in the hall, snuck out to catch up. Carrying in my hands lost item, in the bustle of leaving, the old woman stuck her umbrella out the window, and the mother could not understand why she was scratching and why she was knocking with her umbrella, what she was trying to shout with her toothless mouth - the most repulsive sight from which they could not take their eyes off to realize that the grandmother was just returns a forgotten umbrella. Finally, we figured it out. The train was still at the station, and Maurice's mother sent Maurice to pick up the lost property - a good umbrella, even valuable, was left behind thanks to the rain that had stopped pouring. The old woman clearly hoped for financial compensation for her troubles. She extended the bone handle of the umbrella to the boy, but did not give it back, she pulled it back towards her, as if hinting that in return it would be nice... But in the bustle of the station, the mother did not remember the tip. She forgot to give him some change. As a result, Maurice stood on the platform like a sheep, stupidly pulling the umbrella towards him, while the old woman did not let go, muttering something and starting to get angry. Maurice looked at this poorly dressed an elderly woman, unable to hide emotions. He was overcome by the disgust characteristic of youth towards outside old age. Maurice generally easily moved from one mood to another, often the opposite, he was embarrassed, the situation with the umbrella plunged him into anxious embarrassment. To his right, the train was already hissing, spitting on the rails, the seconds were passing, it seemed there would be no end to it. However, realizing that she would not achieve anything from the teenager, and, letting go of the umbrella, the old woman shouted to him offendedly (maybe he misunderstood her?): “Does it disgust you to look at me? You will be just like me, little angel!” At that moment, the train started moving, clattering iron, and Maurice was left forever with an umbrella in his hand and the imprint of the toothless grin of a strange old woman in his eyes. At night, lying on a rocking bed, he tried to figure out what exactly she wanted to tell him - “You will be like me.” Old, perhaps? Her words remained in his ears until the boy fell asleep. He didn’t tell his mother anything. She was already nervous when the train jerked. Maurice forgot about the nasty old woman - the impressions of the road at that time completely blocked this episode from him. He remembered about it only a few years later, when...

Paris, Reims, New York

The small family, consisting of mother and son, was very lucky that they managed to return to their homeland in time. Who knows how this difficult page in Russian history would have turned out for them. Having left the Urals, which never became their home, they returned first to Paris, and later settled in Reims, where any pharmacist has better wine bins than a Russian landowner. But their lives did not become richer because of this. The mother continued to teach, the son continued to study at the Catholic school where she taught. He was an amazingly capable child, this little Tiye. And although they were always in cramped circumstances, he studied, persistently achieving the best knowledge, intending to continue his education - Maurice firmly decided to become a lawyer. Alas, fate laughed at his dreams.

It all started with a bad jump at school. Maurice loved sports and was distinguished among his peers by his excellent physique. He was broader in the shoulders than any of his peers. I considered people from aristocratic circles who set an example for myself physical culture on the same level as intellectual development. One day, after intense exercise, he noticed unpleasant sensations, which he associated only with excessive zeal in training. However, neither after a week nor after a month did the discomfort leave him - at first his limbs began to swell, then he noticed with horror that his face began to swell.

At the age of seventeen, he first turned to a doctor, who was unable to help. They were still trying to treat him for arthritis, when it became clear that the joints were not the cause, but the effect. And only two years later he was finally diagnosed with acromegaly. The disease struck him at the most dangerous age, when a young man’s body grows at the most intense speed. These two years, while he could not understand what was happening to his unfortunate body, he suffered unspeakably. He became afraid of mirrors. At night it seemed to him that his bones were cracking, telescopically moving apart. 70 years later, a cartoon about an ogre will faithfully show how a handsome prince turns into Shrek and vice versa. But young Maurice Tillet - the future French Angel - had no time for cartoons. After all, it was not Ducky-Duck, not Mickey Mouse, but he himself became a giant before our eyes. It was as if an evil witch had placed a curse on him: “When you reach adulthood, you will become a monster.”

At night, in the faint light of the moon, he examined his wrists, which by the age of 20 had become twice as wide as ordinary person, and tried to understand... he kept racking his brains as to why he suffered a cruel fate. Once he even remembered the “evil witch” with her curse. As if a fairy tale had jumped out to him from the pages: “You will become just like me!” A terrible fairy tale grew flesh before our eyes.

Acromegaly and nothing else! The doctor who told this news to the young man had the open, good-natured face of a man in the street who had recently dined and intended, having finished with the patient, to go to the club. This was already the tenth doctor to whom the mother took her child. The doctor told Maurice in great detail why this happened to him, and opened his eyes to the mechanism of “witchcraft.” It turns out that the disease is caused by a benign tumor on the pituitary gland, as a result of which the human skeleton thickens, the patient’s bones begin to grow uncontrollably, especially in the skull. And no one can predict when this process will stop or whether it will stop at all. Acromegals grow throughout their lives, until the very moment when the disease overcomes them. How exactly? The doctor looked at his still so young patient, wondering whether it was worth telling him the truth, devoid of embellishment. After all, acromegals die before reaching fifty years of age, as if crushed by their own weight. Most often their heart simply fails. Is it pleasant to live knowing what you will die from?

One could say that Maurice was crushed by this very news. The doctor left him no hope, telling him that modern medicine can offer nothing to the patient except “pill number 7”, which helps with everything. By the way, it remains almost in the same place today - treatment of acromegaly, or gigantism, as it is also called, remains an inaccessible dream for doctors. And the best they can offer living acromegalics are battery-powered heart stimulators implanted inside the body. Every couple of years the batteries have to be replaced by cutting and resuturing the skin, prolonging life. And they live, most often trying to hide from prying eyes. By the way, the most famous giant in the world is our former compatriot Leonid Stadnik, who lives in the Zhytomyr region in Ukraine. In fact, this is the tallest person on the planet today, whose height is 2 meters 53 centimeters - approximately, since for some time now the giant has sent away those who like to climb on him with a ruler from the Guinness Book of Records, who got into the habit of visiting Leonid with dreary regularity. So, since Stadnik, in the spirit of Shrek, closed the door in the face of the representatives of the measurement commission, Guinness turned away from him, replacing him with the Chinese Bao Xishun, also quite tall and heavy, but, of course, not like ours. The herdnik is done with this farce - after all, not every giant has such a gentle character as our main character Tiye, who turned out to be one of the few who managed to turn the disease to their benefit, well, as far as one can imagine the benefit of a disease that brings early death.

As already mentioned, the giant was of average height. With a height of 170 cm and a weight of 122 kg. Maurice was not so much tall as he was wide and huge. The word “huge”, by the way, has the same root as “ogre”. The disease hit him with all its force, for some reason becoming wider and not longer. The most terrible thing in this whole story was that a very young man had to give up all claims to human socialization. He dreamed of becoming a lawyer and entered university for this purpose. He struggled to master the skills necessary to be accepted as an equal in this social niche. Without any financial support from his family, he planned to eventually get on his own feet. It is known that Maurice was an excellent mathematician and polyglot and spoke fluent 14 foreign languages. And he was an aristocrat from sports - he played rugby, polo, golf, but not aimlessly, but realizing that sports grounds provide a convenient field for friendship, for communication and establishing business relations in the world he was about to enter. Behind sporting achievements In rugby, King George V of England himself once shook his hand. But Tillet had to leave the Faculty of Law at the University of Toulouse due to illness. The practice of law is unthinkable without respectability.

The legal profession, in which he was so successful at the faculty, could not become his life. If anyone thinks that a lawyer's main tool is his brain, then this is a mistake. Voice! This is what a lawyer does when speaking in court. Tiye lost the main thing with which he had to earn his bread - his voice. The disease affected the vocal cords. Twenty years after the collapse of his ambitions, in an interview with one of the New York newspapers, he would say: “Maybe with such a face I could become a lawyer, but my voice, like the braying of a donkey, is simply impossible to listen to.” He still tried to change something, drank some powders, gargled, practiced oratorical exercises, but every day he understood more and more clearly: he would never become eloquent. The legal profession was going through the woods. Where should the youngest giant go?

In French army he served for about five years, but left armed forces due to some personal circumstances, returning home. However, civilian clothes suddenly turned out to be too big for him. He did not yet know that society does not so easily let in people who are unlike anyone else. And he began a long series of ordeals trying to find a job. He worked as a loader, a librarian, a stage installer in the theater, and even sold medicine in a pharmacy, trying to be closer to life-saving medicine. And sooner or later he was asked to get away from everywhere, since there is no place in society that is not infested with nervous people, frightened faces and voices of an ogre - a man who looks more like an evil cannibal giant than your kind uncle. He was kicked out of the pharmacy after an incident with a little girl who screamed incessantly for half an hour and fell into a nervous stutter after meeting Maurice. He managed to emerge from under the counter, under which he was tying his shoelace. By the age of thirty, he had come to terms with the fact that the first reaction to meeting him was almost always “Oops!”

Tillet met the winter of 1937 in the cinema lobby. There he stood, dressed up as Frankenstein - huge, embarrassed, naked, in some rags on his hairy torso, in makeup and a wig. The costume looked lively on him, and even partially compensated for his real ugliness, since it was not clear where the makeup was and where the real ugliness was. He checked the tickets, earning his honest and hard-earned money, enough to live on. In the guise of a medieval monster, he caught child stowaways. It was there that he was seen by a man named Carl Poggello, a professional wrestler who had come to watch a pre-war comedy. He stood for quite a long time, admiring the unexpected sight, after which he approached Maurice to introduce himself. And that same evening, fate presented Tiya with its completely new, friendly interface.

The new comrades sat down in a cafe, where, over a glass of beer, Poggello revealed the brightest prospects to Tiye. Poggello convinced him to take up a previously untried profession. He brushed aside all the excuses that he had already tried everything and failed everywhere, that standing at the checkout he was earning his hard pennies and had no intention of quitting the job he had found with such difficulty, where he was not persecuted for his appearance, in one sentence: “Sixty? ?? I offer you a thousand!” Tiye agreed. After all, he was still a very young man, no stranger to adventurism. The next morning, the new friends left for Paris, and a week later they began training. Maurice was thirty years old at that time. For a career as a novice athlete, he was, to put it mildly, a bit old. But this did not stop his newly minted producer - in Frankenstein he saw something delightful, like a golden cigarette case in a spittoon. Maurice could only suppress the heavy thoughts that he was becoming a scarecrow of his own free will. After all, wrestling has always been a circus. It was then that he once and for all cut off all talk about his mother - he did not want to associate her with himself, the voluntary comprachico of the ring.

Two years later, England and France already knew the new fighter very well. And only the Second World War prevented him from gaining world fame in Europe, defeating all living things there. Wars do not contribute to the development of interest in sports spectacles. He had to move to the USA. Maurice trained hard, making up for the skills he was deprived of, and less than three years later he managed to win the title of world wrestling champion. This happened shortly after he became a full-fledged American citizen - he received citizenship. However, the world championship was then awarded for living well in any city where there was a wrestling arena. For a year and a half in a row, Tillet toured America, confirming his fame as invincible and truly terrible.

His career developed rapidly. During World War II, in Boston (Massachusetts), promoter Paul Bowser introduced Tillet to the noble public under the pseudonym French Angel as own discovery, superstar. By this time, Tillet had already mastered all the rules of the game, in which he had to maintain his image as an evil and insidious fellow, capable of biting off both ears of someone, along with his head to the waist, without blinking an eye. He growled, spat, uttered an inhuman howl, hitherto unheard of from anyone in the ring, he behaved like a real fairy-tale cannibal giant. Or like Shrek, when he wants to scare people. Crowds came to see Tiye. In the spring of 1940, he won the Boston World Championship and held his title of invincibility for two years in a row, after which he defeated all his opponents in the same way in Montreal. As a result, Tiye had imitators, howler monkeys, who adopted his nickname of angel, only with modifications like the Swedish Angel or the Berlin Angel. He knocked these ones down with one left.

Alas, fairy-tale ogres cannot withstand collisions with real life. Tiye's sports career was not destined to last long. Just a few years after the victorious march across America, he fell ill with migraines that beset him. He stopped sleeping - he was tormented by nightmares. Carl Pagelo, his only closest friend, more than once listened to complaints about dreams, during which the poor man saw more and more transformations of his body. Then one day, right in the ring, he suddenly stopped seeing. Vision returned after rest, but it became clear that further participation in sports life impossible. And although he still continued to entertain the audience from time to time with his cannibalistic jokes, roars and aggressive attacks, entering the ring, this was more of a show than a serious claim to victory. That's when he truly became a show-off ogre. IN last time he entered the ring in 1953 in Singapore, losing the fight to the then equally famous wrestler Bert Assirati.

And so he would have sunk into oblivion, this “arena cannibal,” if not for the Chicago sculptor Louis Link, who became so interested in Tillet’s appearance that he made busts of him. The surviving ones have been preserved in history. For example, one is kept in the Chicago International Museum of Scientific Surgery as a reminder of the game of nature that once laughed at a good man. The sculptor Link managed to convey in his works not only the famous ugliness of Tiye, but also his kindness, his charm and gentleness hidden in the folds of his huge face - Tiye’s head was on average three times larger than an ordinary human one. He was the spitting image of a giant from a medieval epic.

He died, as predicted by the good doctor, barely reaching the age of fifty, from a heart attack that overtook him after the news of the death of his dearest friend - the same Carl Pagelo, who made him a wrestler, a “cannibal giant” and a French Angel. And he was reborn to life in the form of a funny and touching Shrek - more than half a century after his death. By the way, the DreamWorks studio, which once presented the world with its charming Shrek, carefully hides the origin of the character. Apparently, if such heirs are found, it would be a bad idea for them to profit at the expense of their good memory.

Tillet left no legacy, only a memory of himself - a short story about how the most deplorable circumstances are subject to the power of the human spirit. The friendly memory of Maurice Tillet remains only the kindest. Those few people whom he called friends (those who could be sure that they loved him not for his beauty) managed to tell only the most beautiful and even romantic things about him. He loved life, did not consider it cruel, on the contrary, he attributed the quality of “exclusivity” to his fate and was pleased with it. And he loved his friends, without exaggeration, mortally. Carl Paggello, Maurice Tillet's best friend and promoter, died of cancer in 1954, and on the same day, September 4, our hero died of a heart attack. The good doctor’s prediction of “maximum fifty years, my dear” came true. The heart of the fifty-year-old “ogre” could not stand the loss of his friend. “Death cannot separate friends” is written on the tombstone of their common grave, which today is often shown to the curious as “Shrek’s grave.” This is how a good but ugly man became a terrible but very attractive giant. Truly, in great ugliness, as in great beauty, there is something magical that forever attracts people.

(c) Olga Filatova

Among the stars on the Los Angeles Walk of Fame, created in honor of Hollywood actors, only one is dedicated cartoon character. They became a fierce-looking but kind-hearted character named Shrek, whose adventures earned him an Oscar. But the most interesting thing is that Shrek had a real prototype originally from Russia.

Creepy "angel"

It’s difficult to say how the animators selected the prototype for Shrek, but their find turned out to be truly brilliant. The popular boxer of the first half of the twentieth century, Maurice Tillet, looked exactly like his cartoon incarnation, and his fate largely repeated the plot of the cartoon. Despite his French name, Maurice Tillet was born on October 23, 1903 in the very center of Russia in the Urals. True, the boy's parents were indeed French, working in Russian Empire by contract. His father worked as a railway engineer, and his mother was an ordinary teacher. When the country plunged into the chaos of revolutionary events in 1917, the Tillet family returned to France. At this moment, incredible events begin in the fate of young Maurice. Until the age of seventeen, those around him called him nothing more than “angel”, for his amazingly regular, beautiful facial features. And, of course, they jinxed it. Over the next few years, a young man from fairy prince gradually turned into a real monster. But these metamorphoses took place not in a fairy tale, but in real life. Starting at the age of 17, Maurice's arms, legs and head began to swell. Doctors made a terrible diagnosis - acromegaly. In people suffering from this disease, a rapid and disproportionate increase in all bones of the body, including the cranial bones, begins. So the prince became a goblin - Shrek.

From court to ring

Before the onset of his illness, the young man planned to build a career as a lawyer, but with the tragic changes in his appearance, appearances in court could be forgotten. Moreover, his shrunken voice sounded more like the braying of a donkey than the speech of a man. Maurice Tillet himself stated this with a grin more than once in his numerous interviews. Soon, while serving in the navy in 1937, fate brought Tiye together with professional wrestler Karl Podjalo. Seeing a living goblin, who also had gigantic strength, Podzhelo suggested that Tiya leave the fleet and become a wrestler. Maurice immediately agreed, after which the newly-minted friends set off to conquer Paris. For two years, Maurice Tillet alternately performed at the best fighting venues in London and Paris. In 1939, the rising star wrestler moved to the United States, continuing to perform under the sonorous pseudonym “The French Angel.” Throughout the year, Maurice Tillet did not lose a single fight, becoming the absolute US champion. In 1940, he won the World Heavyweight Championship in Boston. The popularity of the future Shrek prototype was enormous. The public did not have time to assign him new pop nicknames: “Invincible”, “French Angel”, “Cannibal of the Arena”, “Ugly Giant-Eater from the Ring”, “Terrible Organizer of the Ring”. At the same time, fierce on the outside, Maurice Tillet was a very kind, vulnerable person at heart. Despite his career as a wrestler, Maurice Tillet learned 14 languages, played excellent chess and was even invited to a reception with the Pope. Maurice Tillet died in 1954 from a heart attack.

This may seem like a cruel joke or a farce, but this incredible story is historically accurate and true! The prototype of the cartoon Shrek was the famous wrestler Maurice Tillet. He was born in 1903 in Russia, in the Urals, into a French family, which in 1917, due to the revolution, returned back to France.

As a child, Maurice was no different in appearance from his peers, rather the opposite - he was called “Angel”, thanks to his pretty facial features. But everything changed at the age of seventeen, when he began to develop a rare disease, acromegaly, which causes a monstrous, disproportionate increase in bones, especially the facial ones.

Due to these terrible external transformations, Maurice had to give up his desired career as a lawyer. But he did not give up on his life, but decided to use his disadvantage as a huge advantage! Maurice went to the United States to become a professional wrestler, and in May 1940 he became the American Wrestling Association champion, holding the title for the next 19 months. He was known under the nickname “the scary ogre of the ring,” but later they began to call him, as in childhood, “the French angel,” thanks to his warmth and kind character.

It is also worth noting that Maurice Tillet was distinguished by phenomenal intellectual abilities, which many were not even aware of. He was fluent in 14 languages ​​and wrote wonderful stories and poems.

Unfortunately, his illness progressed and at the age of 51, Maurice died of a heart attack. But his entire short but bright life is a wonderful example of human courage and bravery. Instead of complaining that life only gave him “sour lemons,” he cleverly learned to make “lemonade” out of them and enjoy his life. I am sure that Maurice would really like his cartoon prototype Shrek, who, like him, is kind and sensitive, despite his terrifying appearance.

Having released several parts of the animated film "Shrek", the DreamWorks film studio, for some reason, hid the fact that the prototype of the green swamp giant was was a real person. One look at the photo of wrestler Maurice Tillet is enough to understand that it was he who inspired the artists when working on the image of the main character.

Maurice Tillet was born in Russia, near Chelyabinsk, in 1903. The French family found itself on Southern Urals It’s no coincidence that Maurice’s father worked as an engineer under contract on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The boy's mother taught children of railway workers French, which was very popular at that time.

Maurice's father died very early, and his mother had to raise the boy herself. It was probably thanks to the efforts of his mother that Tillet mastered languages ​​on the fly and mature age In addition to French and Russian, he could speak English and German fluently.

After the October Revolution, mother and son returned to France, where Maurice graduated from a prestigious college in Reims and entered university. The beginning of young Tiye's student life coincided with a deterioration in his health - Maurice was diagnosed with acromegaly (a severe disorder of the neuroendocrine system caused by hypersecretion of the so-called growth hormone).

The disease, which causes excessive bone growth, did not prevent the young man from studying and even playing professional rugby on the university team. But, unfortunately, due to a change in appearance, he had to forget about the career of a lawyer that the young man dreamed of.

When Maurice's appearance changed beyond recognition, he regretfully left his studies and began to look for a place in life where actions, not appearance, were important. The solution for Tiye was to serve in the navy - the young man got a job as a mechanic on a warship, where he spent the next five years of his life.

It was in the navy that Maurice Tillet became interested in fighting - during long sea passages the team supported physical fitness this particular sport. During his wanderings around the world, the man came to terms with his appearance and even began to treat it with a certain amount of humor. Therefore, when, after leaving the navy, Tillet received an invitation to try his hand at cinema, he gladly agreed.

With his abilities, Maurice had the opportunity to act only in comic films, and playing minor roles. After starring in a dozen not very intellectual films, Tillet realized the futility of such a career and moved to security at a film studio.

Most likely, the man would have worked for the rest of his life as a watchman, guarding filming props, if not for a fateful meeting with Carl Pogello, a professional wrestler. Karl, or rather Karolis Pozela, was born and raised in Lithuania, but his wrestling career gave him the opportunity to travel around the world. Pogello performed in Europe, Nordic and South America, in China and Japan. At the time of the meeting with Tiye, the athlete had already completed his career and was engaged in coaching and producing activities.

Karl saw Maurice on one of the French boulevards - the young giant was difficult not to notice in the crowd. Pogello immediately realized that he had a real wrestling diamond in front of him, which just needed to be given a decent cut.

The young Frenchman had everything he needed to succeed with spectators of sports shows: physical strength, unusual appearance, charm and, most importantly, acting experience. Maurice, after some hesitation, agreed to try his hand at wrestling - he had nothing to lose except a wobbly chair in the guard's booth.

Under the guidance of the experienced Pogello, Tiye quickly began to make progress in wrestling. Karl was involved in creating the image of an athlete, staging stunts, developing training programs and concluding contracts all over the world. Maurice was an obedient student and, as it turned out, a talented fighter, so things quickly went up for the couple.

A charismatic wrestler with an unusual appearance quickly became a favorite of the audience. Tillet was a dizzying success in Europe, and then became one of the audience's favorites in the United States. Thanks to this, Maurice was able to obtain American citizenship without any problems. In the USA, the wrestler became known as the French Angel, and his signature move was “bear grip”, from which the opponent could not escape.

Tillet's wrestling career lasted for twenty long years, during which Maurice became a champion several times. But, despite the harsh profession, the man remained the same in his soul. The athlete was a deeply religious man, and his responsiveness to other people's misfortunes was legendary. The athlete held many charity shows, the proceeds of which were transferred to orphans and hospitals, while Karl supported the ward in all his affairs.

Over the years of working together, Tia and Pogello became close friends, and Maurice was practically a member of his coach's family. Coincidentally, the wrestler and his mentor began to have health problems almost simultaneously - Karl was diagnosed with lung cancer, and Maurice began to experience exacerbations of chronic diseases associated with acromegaly. Pogello died on September 4, 1954, and his friend Tiye died just a few hours after receiving sad news, from a heart attack.

It was decided not to separate the friends after death, so Carl and Maurice were buried in the same grave in the Lithuanian cemetery in Justice, Cook County, Illinois. A short but succinct epitaph is carved on their common tombstone: “And death cannot separate friends.”

A wonderful athlete and a wonderful person passed away, but the hero created by DreamWorks animators helped replicate his image around the world in millions of toys and images. Every time you see the good-natured green Shrek, remember the glorious Maurice Tillet - he, without a doubt, deserves it.