The true story of Shrek. The story of Maurice Tillet - the real Shrek from Chelyabinsk Donkey's roar and the appearance of a Neanderthal

Chelyabinsk men are so harsh that one of them became the prototype of Shrek. Both France and America claim the title of the homeland of this outstanding man, but Maurice Tillet was born here.

Everyone vying with each other wants to be proud of him, which is not surprising - Maurice Tillet was a world champion in wrestling, had an excellent engineering education, spoke 14 languages ​​and had excellent charisma.

Maurice Tillet is a historical figure. There is no doubt that his contemporary William Steig, the author of Shrek, drew his charming ogre from him.

Shrek and Maurice Tillet - find the difference.

Hint: the cartoon Shrek has tube ears, but Tillett has ordinary, albeit broken, human ears. Otherwise everything is the same.

Maurice Tillet was born in the Urals into an ethnic French family. His father was a railway engineer, his mother a teacher. In 1917, the Tiye family, fleeing the Bolsheviks, repatriated to France. Maurice was 14 years old at that moment.

It’s hard to believe, but as a child, Maurice had such a pretty doll-like face that his school friends even nicknamed him Angel. However, at the age of 17, his arms, legs and head suddenly began to swell. The doctor examined the young man and reported that these were symptoms of acromegaly - a malfunction of the pituitary gland, which usually manifests itself after the body’s growth has completed.

Maurice managed to serve in the French navy and work as an engineer until, at the age of 34, he met professional wrestler Carl Pogella. At the first glance at Tillet, Karl realized that he needed to involve this colorful person in his business. What he did brilliantly - less than three years later, Maurice Tillet became the world champion in wrestling.

Whether Maurice Tillet was actually an outstanding wrestler or whether his championship was a successful trick of the entrepreneurs is a difficult question, but it doesn’t matter. Nowadays this sport would rather be called wrestling.

Interestingly, he became a champion immediately after he received American citizenship. Here Shrek swears allegiance to the people of the United States.

For 19 straight months, Tillet toured the world as the undefeated and feared champion of the wrestling mat. He had spectacular nicknames - Arena Ogre and French Angel.

He was very popular, and he immediately had epigones - wrestlers with the nicknames Russian Angel, Swedish Angel and so on. The total number of Angels on the circus wrestling mat was ten. But they could not compare with Tiye either in bestiality or charm.

Maurice's friend, the sculptor Louis Link, made a large sculptural portrait of him, and this bust still adorns the hall of the International Institute of Surgery in Chicago.

Tillet’s charm is so great that even now, more than half a century after he left our world, people love and remember him, and his image inspires someone so much that people get tattoos of his portrait.

Although the DreamWorks film studio has never revealed how and where the image of the famous Shrek came from, one glance at photographs of wrestler Maurice Tillet will be enough to understand who became the prototype of the green, kindly giant.

Russian French

Maurice was born in 1903 in the Urals, not far from Chelyabinsk. His parents, French, worked in Russia under contract. His father, an engineer by profession, built the Trans-Siberian Railway, and his mother worked as a teacher.

Maurice Tillet in 1916

Probably, thanks to his mother’s teaching talent, in addition to his native French and Russian, which he knew since childhood, Maurice was able to master several more foreign languages. The boy lost his father quite early, but grew up as a completely ordinary child. After the October Revolution took place in the Russian Empire, mother and son returned to France.

From lawyers to sailors

Maurice completed his primary education in Reims - he graduated from a Paris college. Around then, doctors diagnosed him with acromegaly, a disease in which the growth of the hands, feet, and skull increases significantly. The disease changed Maurice's life forever, but could not break him.

At first, Tiye continued to live a full life: he studied to become a lawyer and played well on the university rugby team, but when his appearance changed greatly, he realized that he was unlikely to make a career as a lawyer.

Maurice Tillet in 1936

Maurice abandoned his studies and signed up as a mechanic on a military ship. He wanted to go to sea, where no one cared about appearance, and people were judged only by their actions. The young man served in the navy for about five years. It was there that he began to engage in wrestling: regular competitions helped the ship's crew keep fit and at least somehow have fun during long sea voyages.

A bit of cinema

During the years of naval service, Maurice became quite accustomed and even treated his peculiar appearance with humor, and after finishing his service, he got a job at a French film studio. Tillet starred in about a dozen films, although all his roles were episodic.

Maurice did not become a movie star. To earn extra money, between filming he worked as a security guard at the same film studio, driving away and scaring away local onlookers. So Maurice would have vegetated as an unknown actor, and part-time watchman, if a significant meeting had not occurred in his life - Tillet met Karl Poggello.

Oh sport, you are the world!

Karolis Pozela (or, in European terms, Karl Pogello) was from Lithuania. He was a professional wrestler, so he constantly traveled, taking part in sports competitions around the world. In his youth, Pogello performed in the rings of America, France, Italy, Japan and China, and later took up production activities - he began training young and promising fighters.

Walking along the boulevards of Paris, Karl noticed the colorful Maurice, who stood out sharply from the crowd. Pogello's experience as a producer told him that he had a future wrestling star in front of him. The men got to talking, and Karl was convinced that he was not mistaken: Maurice had a memorable appearance, physical strength and acting experience - a full set of qualities necessary for a sports show.

Great wrestler

Maurice had nothing to lose, so he easily agreed to become a wrestler. Tillet began performing in sports arenas in England and France. Karl trained his ward, thought through the image necessary for the show and suggested spectacular techniques. Over time, Maurice Tillet gained popularity not only in Europe, but also in the United States, which allowed him to obtain American citizenship.

Maurice Tillet in 1940

Tillet was nicknamed the French Angel with the "deadly bear grab." He worked as a “ruthless” wrestler for two decades and repeatedly won the championship title. However, the real Maurice Tillet was a completely different person.

Despite his worldwide fame, the devout and deeply religious athlete remained kind and responsive to the misfortune of others. Maurice repeatedly participated in charity performances, the proceeds from which went to orphanages.

Best friends

Over the years of working together, Tiye and Pogello became close friends. Maris became practically a member of the family for Karl. By coincidence, even the health of friends deteriorated almost simultaneously.

Karl's lung cancer progressed, and Maurice's acromegaly-related diseases worsened. Pogello died on September 4, 1954, and literally a few hours later, upon learning of the death of his comrade, Tiye also died. The French angel is gone, but Shrek has appeared, who reminds us of the wonderful man and great wrestler Maurice Tillet.

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. It was no coincidence that the French family ended up in the Southern Urals - Maurice's father worked as an engineer under a contract on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The boy’s mother taught the children of railway workers French, which was in great demand 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 in adulthood, in addition to French and Russian, he could speak fluent English and German.

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 wrestling - during long sea passages the team maintained their physical shape with this 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 has performed in Europe, North and South America, 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 of a heart attack just hours after receiving the sad news.

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.

On February 14, 1953, the famous Frenchman fought his last match in the professional wrestling ring. Maurice Tillet, whose appearance is still controversial. He was born in the Urals into an ordinary French family, and his kind parents nicknamed him Angel from childhood, as many children are called. The child's face could indeed resemble the appearance of an angel, but the nickname remained with him for the rest of his life. In 1917, after the death of his father due to the October Revolution, Tillet and his mother moved to their historical homeland in Reims.

Donkey's roar and the appearance of a Neanderthal

As he reached adulthood, Maurice noticed that his bones continued to grow and thicken, and his face took on angular and not at all angelic features. Doctors soon diagnosed him with acromegaly, a disease in which a tumor forms in the pituitary gland and continues to produce growth hormone into adulthood. Due to his huge bones, the 170-centimeter Tiye soon weighed 120 kg, turning into a huge, ugly giant. Because of this, he had to give up his dream of becoming a lawyer.

But even if a potential client agreed to entrust his fate to a person with such a face, it was impossible to listen to Maurice’s voice, like a donkey’s bray, which made his chances of winning any case close to zero. Tillet went to work for the navy, and subsequently worked as a doorman at a film studio, periodically starring in horror films. Rumor has it that he even played the hunchback Quasimodo in the film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Despite his deformity, he remained a kind and very erudite person, and by the age of 40 he had mastered 14 languages. But for a long time he failed to find himself in life, until he met another native of Russia, the former owner of a pharmacy, Karolis Pozela.

King of Wrestling

Lithuanian Pozhela in St. Petersburg was fond of Greco-Roman wrestling and knew that the shortcomings of a new acquaintance could be turned into advantages. He began teaching Tiye how to fight, simultaneously becoming his manager and promoting him to the professional wrestling ring. Maurice's talent and colorful appearance were simply doomed to success, and the giant, who had recently received 60 francs a week, began to earn a thousand for one performance. After Hitler's attack on France, Tillet was forced to flee for the second time in his life - now to America, where enormous success awaited him.

In 1940, he won the Boston World Heavyweight Championship, and in 1942 he won a similar title in Montreal. During the war years, he almost did not lose, because he was well prepared and liked by the public, and fights in professional wrestling were already well-orchestrated. The success of the French angel was so great that he had a whole army of successors: Tony Angelo(Russian angel), Tour Jonsson(Swedish super angel), Jack Rush(Canadian angel), Vladislav Tulin(Polish angel), Stan Pinto(Czech angel), Clive Welsh(Irish angel) Jack Faulk(golden angel), Gil Guerro(black angel) and Gene Noble(lady angel), but none of the copies could compare with the original.

Illness and death

Tillet's career began to decline in 1945, when his health began to deteriorate sharply. Due to severe headaches, he lost his former form and was no longer suitable for the role of an invincible champion. Against the backdrop of heavy workload and the development of the disease, he began to have heart problems. He ended his career at the age of 50 on February 14, 1953, losing in Singapore Berthoud Assirati. Trouble also crept up on his best friend Pozhela, who, due to complications of pneumonia, received lung cancer.

In the fall of 1954 Pozhela died after a long and prolonged illness in the arms of his Russian wife Olga Nikolaevna. Tiye could not cope with the loss of his close friend and died of a heart attack a few hours after the bitter news. “And death cannot separate friends,” says the inscription on their common grave in the outskirts of Chicago.

Monument in the form of Shrek

However, Tiya received the main monument many years after his death. The DreamWorks studio, although it officially considers this to be its creative work, under the influence of the image of the French strongman, created the image of Shrek, which you only need to look at once to see Tiye in him. Chicago sculptor Louis Lin also created a number of plaster busts, one of which is kept in the International Museum of Scientific Surgery.

People with pronounced features of gigantism in the wake of Tillet's success are still interesting to the public. Suffice it to recall the bright performances in Japan of the colorful giant Silva or opponent Fedora Emelianenko Hong Man Choi. In 2011, the Russian giant Nikolay Valuev was forced to end his boxing career and remove a benign tumor, because of which he also had the characteristics of gigantism. Finally, another rival of Emelianenko is a Brazilian Antoni Silva about the nickname Bigfoot” has been experiencing serious health problems in recent years and is knocked out even after not the most powerful blows.

Scary on the outside, but very kind on the inside, the giant actually existed in the first half of the 20th century. And his name was Maurice Tillet.

As a child, Maurice was a completely normal child. His family even called him Angel because of his sweet face. He was born on October 23, 1903 in the Urals into a French family. Maurice's father worked as a railroad engineer, and his mother was a teacher. The father died when the boy was still very young. Then in 1917 there was a revolution in Russia, and he and his mother moved back to their homeland.

When Tiye turned 17, he noticed that his feet, hands and head were swelling. Two years later he was diagnosed with acromegaly. This is a fairly rare disease caused by a benign tumor on the pituitary gland, as a result of which a person's bones grow and thicken. So Maurice turned into a real giant, and not a trace remained of his angelic appearance, at least outwardly.

It was very difficult to go through this. “My peers called me a monkey, and I was very upset. Who would like this? To hide from ridicule, I often went to the pier and spent all my free time near the water. The people who lived there were completely indifferent to what I looked like,” Tiye said many years later.

Despite his creepy appearance, he was a very smart man. He entered the University of Toulouse at the Faculty of Law and studied there quite successfully. His mother taught foreign languages, so Maurice studied them since childhood. It is known that by the age of forty he spoke excellent Russian, French, Bulgarian, English and Lithuanian. He also played chess well and wrote poetry and stories. So there was no shortage of mental abilities, but I still had to give up my career as a lawyer. The fact is that the disease progressed and gave complications to the vocal cords.

“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, so I went to the Navy,” said Tiye.

He served in the French Navy for five years as an engineer.

Possessing a good disposition and a penchant for positive thinking, Maurice treated his appearance quite easily and with humor. He even posed for a paleontological museum next to Neanderthal exhibits. He found this resemblance amusing.

When he was 34 years old, in Singapore, Maurice met Carl Poggello, who was a professional wrestler and quickly realized that Tillet would have incredible success in this matter. They went to Paris together and began training.

For two years, Maurice Tillet performed in the rings of France and England, until the Second World War began, from which his friends left for the USA.

In the USA, real success awaited the wrestler. His appearance was quite remarkable, so he attracted huge crowds to the matches, and the “directors” of the games decided to keep Tillet invincible. Even at that time, wrestling was quite a staged type of fighting. So he could go 19 months straight without losing until the public got bored.

At first he performed under the nickname "The Ugly Ogre of the Ring", but then it was decided to add drama, and Maurice turned into the "French Angel".

An active wrestling career lasted with varying success until 1945, and then acrohemalia again made its adjustments to Maurice’s life. His health was deteriorating, he suffered from headaches, he got tired quickly, and his vision weakened. Professional wrestling also made itself felt - heart problems appeared.

He was no longer given the role of invincible in wrestling matches. The last fight took place in Singapore in 1953. After this, Maurice left professional sports.

Soon his friend and promoter Carl Paggello contracted pneumonia, which resulted in a complication in the form of lung cancer. He died after a long and painful illness.

This shocked Maurice Tillet so much that just a few hours after the news of his friend’s death, he himself died of a heart attack.

They were buried side by side at Lithuanian National Cemetery in Justice, Illinois.