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In Blazing Saddles the bead work on Brooks' Indian headdress in the movie poster says "Kosher for Passover" in Hebrew (kosher l'pesach) although jokingly misspelled; it actually reads "Posher for Kassover" (posher l'kesach).
[On Mel Brooks] We are not interested in polite titters, we want the audience rolling on the floor and falling about. Mel works on his feet -- it's a hit and miss, hit and miss, hit and miss. Then in the editing he will take out the misses!
~ Gene Wilder
Blazing Saddles
Blazing Saddles is a 1974 satirical Western comedy film directed by Mel Brooks. Starring Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder, it was written by Mel Brooks, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg, and Al Uger, and was based on Bergman's story and draft. The movie was nominated for three Academy Awards, and is considered one of the great American comedies, coming in at number six on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs list.
Brooks appears in multiple supporting roles, including Governor William J. Le Petomane and a Yiddish-speaking Indian Chief. Slim Pickens, Alex Karras, David Huddleston, and Brooks regulars Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, and Harvey Korman are also featured. Musician Count Basie has a cameo as himself.
The film exposes the racism obscured by myth-making Hollywood accounts of the American West, but in a highly satirical way, with the film's hero being black. The film is full of anachronisms, from a Jazz band in the Wild West to a rustler referring to the Wide World of Sports to Nazis and a camel waiting in the line for villains.
In the American Old West of 1874, construction on a new railroad runs into quicksand. The route has to be changed, which will require it to go through Rock Ridge, a frontier town where everyone has the last name of "Johnson" (including a "Howard Johnson", a "Dr. Samuel Johnson", a "Van Johnson" and an "Olson N. Johnson".) The conniving State Attorney General Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) – not to be confused, as he often is in the film, with actress Hedy Lamarr – wants to buy the land along the new railroad route cheaply by driving the townspeople out. He sends a gang of thugs, led by his flunky Taggart (Slim Pickens), to scare them away, prompting the townsfolk to demand that Governor William J. LePetomane (Mel Brooks) appoint a new sheriff. The Attorney General convinces the dim-witted Governor to select Bart (Cleavon Little), a black railroad worker who was about to be hanged for hitting Taggart in the head with a shovel, as the new sheriff. Because Bart is black, Lamarr believes that this will so offend the townspeople they will either abandon the town or lynch the new sheriff.
With his quick wits and the assistance of drunken gunslinger Jim (Gene Wilder), also known as "The Waco Kid" ("I must have killed more men than Cecil B. DeMille"), Bart works to overcome the townsfolk's hostile reception. He defeats and befriends Mongo (Alex Karras), an immensely strong (but exceptionally dim-witted) henchman sent by Taggart to kill Bart, and beats German seductress-for-hire Lili von Shtupp (Madeline Kahn) at her own game, before inspiring the town to lure Lamarr's newly-recruited and incredibly diverse army of thugs (characterized by Lamarr as ideally consisting of "rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperadoes, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, half-wits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers - and Methodists" in addition to nearly every other kind of stock movie villain) into an ambush. (In the later scene where Lamarr conducts his hiring event, the candidates in line for consideration include stereotypical bikers, Arabs, banditos, crusaders, Nazis and Klansmen.)
The resulting fight between the townsfolk and Lamarr's army of thugs is such that it literally breaks the fourth wall; the fight spills out from the film lot in the Warner Bros. Studios into a neighboring musical set (being directed by Dom DeLuise), then the studio commissary where a pie fight ensues, and finally pouring out into the surrounding streets.
The film ends with Bart shooting Hedley Lamarr in the groin at the 'premiere' of Blazing Saddles outside Grauman's Chinese Theater, saving the town, joining Jim inside the theater to view the end of the movie, persuading people of all colors and creeds to live in harmony and, finally, riding (in a limousine) off into the sunset.
Count Basie appears as himself in a cameo appearance, with his band, which played April in Paris.
Mel Brooks also appears in a tiny cameo on Hedley Lamarr's line of toughs, wearing sunglasses and a bomber jacket, and dubbed the speaking voice for one of the German chorus boys backing Madeline Kahn's performance of "I'm Tired", speaking lines such as "Give her a break!", "She's not a snake" and, "Don't you know she's pooped?!"
In the DVD commentary, Mel Brooks explains that the original title of the film, Tex X (as in the name of black Muslim leader Malcolm X), was rejected along with titles Black Bart and Purple Sage. Finally, Brooks concocted the title Blazing Saddles while taking a shower.
Blazing Saddles was Mel Brooks' first film shot in anamorphic format. To date, this film and History of the World, Part I are the only films Brooks has shot in this format.
Brooks repeatedly had conflicts with studio executives over the cast and content. They objected to both the highly provocative script and to the "irregular" activities of the writers (particularly Richard Pryor, who reportedly led all night writing jams where loud music and drugs played a prominent role in the creative process). Brooks wanted Richard Pryor to play the sheriff's role, but the studio objected. Warner executives expressed concern about Pryor's reliability, because of his heavy drug use at the time and the belief that he was mentally unstable. Pryor was, however, hired as one of the film's screenwriters. In a similar vein, Gene Wilder was the second choice to play the character of the Waco Kid. He was quickly brought in to replace Gig Young after the first day of filming.
After screening the movie, the head of Warner Brothers Pictures complained about the use of the word "nigger", the campfire scene and Mongo punching a horse, and told Brooks to remove all these elements from the film. As Brooks' contract gave him control of the final cut, the complaints were disregarded and all three elements were retained in the film. The only element removed is when Lili tries to seduce Bart and (in the dark) he says "That's my arm you're sucking".
Brooks wanted the movie's title song to reflect the western genre, and advertised in the trade papers that he wanted a "Frankie Laine-type" sound. Several days later, singer Frankie Laine himself visited Brooks' office offering his services. Brooks had not told Laine that the movie was planned as a comedy, and says "'Frankie sang his heart out... and we didn't have the heart to tell him it was a spoof — we just said 'oh, great!'. He never heard the whip cracks; we put those in later. We got so lucky with his serious interpretation of the song."
In an interview included in the DVD release of Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks claimed that Hedy Lamarr threatened to sue, saying the film's running "Hedley Lamarr" joke infringed her right to publicity. This is lampooned when Hedley corrects Governor Le Petomane's pronunciation of his name, and Le Petomane replies with "What the hell are you worried about? This is 1874, you'll be able to sue her!". Brooks says they settled out of court for a small sum. In the same interview, Brooks related how he managed to convince John Wayne to read the script after meeting him in the Warner Brothers studio commissary. Wayne was impressed with the script, but politely declined a cameo appearance, fearing it was "too dirty" for his family image. He is also said to have told Brooks that he "would be first in line to see the film, though."
The overall plot (i.e. thwarting a ruthless scheming land-grabber), was a cliche of countless Western movies including Destry Rides Again and Once Upon a Time in the West.
The film, town, and many of the scenes, music, and themes in Blazing Saddles were parodies of the classic Gary Cooper film High Noon. The church scene in particular was imitated down to the costumes and 'murmuring' of the townsfolk. Brooks' The Ballad Of Rock Ridge uses motifs and melodies that echo "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'", performed by Tex Ritter.
Madeline Kahn's role, Lili Von Shtupp, is a parody of Marlene Dietrich's Frenchie in the 1939 western film Destry Rides Again, while "I'm Tired" is a parody of Dietrich's "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)", a song written by Frederick Hollander for The Blue Angel (1930). 'Shtup' is a Yiddish verb meaning "to stuff, poke, or fill" but which is commonly used as a vulgarism best translated into English as "to fuck" (and which is considered as crude in polite society as its English counterpart). (When broadcast on television, Lili's last name is usually changed to "Shhhhhh..." to avoid use of the vulgarism, but is still written normally on the title card.)
Some references to Mel Brooks' first film The Producers include the playing of Springtime for Hitler before the introduction of Lili von Shtupp, Governor Le Petomane's echoes of Max Bialystock's line "Hello Boys!" and the use of the theme from "The French Mistake" when Hedley Lamarr and others escape the movie studio lot after breaking the fourth wall.
The scene under Hedley Lamarr's office window involving Boris, the Quasimodo-like hangman, is used again in a larger fashion in Brooks' 1993 comedy, Robin Hood: Men in Tights with Robert Ridgely reprising his role.
The extensions to the ISO 9660 standard for Unix Filesystem attributes are named as Rock Ridge extensions after the movie's town.
While the film is widely considered a classic comedy today, critical reaction was mixed when the film was first released. Vincent Canby wrote:
“Blazing Saddles has no dominant personality, and it looks as if it includes every gag thought up in every story conference. Whether good, bad, or mild, nothing was thrown out. Mr. (Woody) Allen's comedy, though very much a product of our Age of Analysis, recalls the wonder and discipline of people like Keaton and Laurel and Hardy. Mr. Brooks's sights are lower. His brashness is rare, but his use of anachronism and anarchy recalls not the great film comedies of the past, but the middling ones like the Hope-Crosby "Road" pictures. With his talent he should do much better than that.”
Roger Ebert called the film a "crazed grabbag of a movie that does everything to keep us laughing except hit us over the head with a rubber chicken. Mostly, it succeeds. It's an audience picture; it doesn't have a lot of classy polish and its structure is a total mess. But of course! What does that matter while Alex Karras is knocking a horse cold with a right cross to the jaw?" The film grossed $119.5 million in the box office becoming only the tenth film in history up to that point to pass the $100 million mark.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a certified "fresh" rating of 89%
In the scene where Lamarr addresses his band of bad guys, he says, "You men are only risking your lives, while I am risking an almost-certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor!" Harvey Korman did not, in fact, get an Oscar nod, but the film did receive three other Academy Awards nominations in 1974: Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Madeline Kahn, Best Film Editing, and Best Music, Original Song. The film also nabbed two BAFTA awards nominations, for Best Newcomer (Cleavon Little) and Best Screenplay.
The film won the Writers Guild of America Award for "Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen" for writers Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, and Alan Uger.
In 2006, Blazing Saddles was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. The American film critic Dave Kehr queried if the historical significance of Blazing Saddles lay in the fact that it was the first film from a major studio to have a fart joke.
A television pilot was produced for CBS based on Andrew Bergman's initial story, titled Black Bart, which was the original title of the film. It featured Louis Gossett, Jr. as Bart and Steve Landesberg as the drunk sidekick. Mel Brooks had little if anything to do with the pilot, as writer Andrew Bergman is listed as the sole creator. The pilot did not sell, but CBS aired it once on April 4, 1975. It was later included as a bonus feature on the Blazing Saddles 30th Anniversary DVD and the Blu-ray disc.
With the production of musical adaptations of The Producers and Young Frankenstein, rumors have spread about a possible adaptation of Blazing Saddles. Brooks joked about the concept in the final number in Young Frankenstein, in which the full company sings, "next year Blazing Saddles!" Mel Brooks recently confirmed this, saying that the musical could be finished by 2011. No creative team or plan has been announced.
After nearly 35 years, the first-ever official, studio-licensed release, in any format, of the full music soundtrack to Blazing Saddles came out from La-La Land Records on August 26, 2008. Remastered from original studio vault elements, this Limited Edition CD features the classic songs from the film as well as composer John Morris' score. Bonus tracks on the album include special instrumental versions of all the songs, and the disc features exclusive liner notes featuring comments from Mel Brooks and John Morris. It has been released as a "limited edition" of 3,000 units.
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The role of Bart was intended for Richard Pryor, but due to the controversial nature of Pryor's stand-up routines of the day and his background, Mel Brooks couldn't secure financing for the project with Pryor in that role. So Pryor was made a co-writer of the script, and Cleavon Little played Bart. Pryor later got to star in a different western comedy - Adiós Amigo (1976).
Richard Pryor came up with the character "Mongo".
Production began with Gig Young as the Waco Kid. On the first day of shooting, the scene where the drunk Waco Kid hangs from a bunk asking if Bart is black, Young revealed that he really was indeed drunk (he had had an alcohol problem for years) and proceeded to undergo a physical collapse on set. Brooks shut down production for a day and Gene Wilder flew cross country to take over the role. Young later sued Warner Bros. for breach of contract.
Scriptwriter Andrew Bergman originally named the lead character "Tex X".
The character Governor LePetomane was named after a popular turn-of-the-century French performer, Joseph Pujol, whose stage name was "Le Petomane" ("The Fartmaster"). He told stories punctuated with flatulence, demonstrated his ability to blow out candle flames from two feet way with his back turned, and performed "La Marseillaise" and popular tunes.
The Indian Chief played by Mel Brooks speaks Yiddish. He says: "Blacks!" "Don't be crazy!" "Let them go!" "Have you ever seen in your life?!"
One day in the Warner Bros. studio commissary, Mel Brooks and the other writers were seated at a table opposite John Wayne ("the Duke"). The Duke turned and said he had heard about their Western, the one where people say stuff like "blow it out your ass". Mel handed the Duke a copy of the script and said, "Yes, and we'd like you to be in it." According to Brooks, the Duke turned down the offer the next day by saying, "Naw, I can't do a movie like that, but I'll be first in line to see it!"
Gene Wilder was originally offered the role of Hedley Lamarr but he didn't feel right for it and told Mel Brooks that he wanted The Waco Kid instead. However, Brooks wanted someone older for The Waco Kid, someone like Dan Dailey. Dailey was originally considered for the role of the Waco Kid but poor health and declining eyesight forced him to decline.
The Hebrew writing on headband worn by Mel Brooks on the movie poster should translate to "Kosher for Passover", but it has a (deliberate) mistake: the first letters were switched, which translates it to something like "Posher for Kassover". The huge coin on the poster is inscribed "Hi! I'm Mel, Trust Me!"
Count Basie leader of the jazz band in the desert. The song being performed is 'April in Paris' written by Vernon Duke and E. Y. Harburg in 1932.
Gilda Radner appears in a scene in the church. She would later become the wife of Gene Wilder (The Waco Kid).
Hedy Lamarr sued Mel Brooks over the use of the name Hedley Lamarr and settled out of court. Mel said he was flattered by this attention.
On the marquee at Graumann's Chinese Theater, the flashing title Blazing Saddles is a matte lay-in, covering the film's original title, Black Bart. The final title of the movie wasn't decided until after principal photography.
When Mongo rides into town, one Mexican says, "Mongo! Santa Maria!" Mongo Santamaría was a famous Cuban musician.
When Mel Brooks advertised in the show business trade papers for a "Frankie Laine-type" voice to sing the film's title song, he was hoping for a good imitator. Instead, Frankie Laine himself showed at Brooks' office two days later, ready to do the job but nobody told him the movie was a parody.
The world premiere was at the (now gone) Pickwick Drive-In Theater in Burbank, California. The guests rode horses into the drive-in for the premiere. (The Pickwick was also used in Grease (1978) as a filming location.)
Filmed on the same outdoor sets as Westworld (1973).
Mel Brooks's first movie filmed in Panavision scope; 2.35:1
The original plan for the film was to have Alan Arkin to direct the film with James Earl Jones playing the role of Bart.
When handing out the paddles to everyone at the table, Gov. William J. LePetomaine calls them by name as Frankie, Johnny, Patsy and Kelly. "Frankie & Johnny" was a popular song in the 1930s and Patsy Kelly was a popular comic actress at that time.
Mel Brooks also asked Johnny Carson to play the Waco Kid; he refused.
The voices for the drunk that Lili Von Shtupp kicks off the stage and the German Soldier that joins her later in the show are both provided by Mel Brooks.
The bull that Mongo rides has "YES" painted on one side and "NO" painted on the other. This is apparently a reference to the practice in the 1950s of marking the back of school buses for which side was safe to pass on, essentially inferring that Mongo and his mount are as big as a bus.
A large photo of Edward G. Robinson can be seen hanging on the commissary wall during the pie fight.
Is #9 on Bravo's list of the 100 Funniest Movies.
Premiere voted this movie as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time" in 2006.
According to Mel Brooks' audio commentary, Warner Bros released it again in the summer of 1975 because they didn't have any other big pictures to release.
Mel Brooks created mob noise by having people say, "Harrumph." We can hear an example of this moment after the townspeople refuse to give land to the Irish. In the ensuing hubbub, Brooks can be heard to say, "Everybody, harrumph!"
According to Mel Brooks (in the commentary for Spaceballs (1987)) when Gene Wilder came on the cast for this movie, he requested that Brooks do his movie idea next. Gene Wilder's idea was Young Frankenstein (1974).
The scene in which Mongo knocks out a horse has a basis in reality. Mel Brooks' former "Your Show of Shows" (1950) and "Caesar's Hour" (1954) boss, Sid Caesar, who was a physically imposing and somewhat violent man, reported in his 1982 autobiography "Where Have I Been?" that while trail riding with his wife, her horse caused trouble and he punched it once between the eyes. The horse collapsed, unconscious. He notes that this event was Brooks' inspiration for the Mongo-vs.-horse scene.
Over 70 stuntmen worked on this film, many of them doubling as extras.
In the DVD Commentary, Mel Brooks said that the working title for the film was "Tex X" as a reference to black Muslim leader Malcolm X. It was then switched to "Black Bart". In either case, neither he, nor the other writers thought those were great titles. Brooks says that one morning he was taking a shower and the words Blazing Saddles (1974) suddenly popped into his head. When he got out of the shower, he pitched the title to his wife, actress Anne Bancroft, who liked the idea and that's how the movie ended up with its title.
Supposedly, this movie officially marks the first time the sound of farting has ever been used in a film (at least according to the film makers in the DVD Documentary). According to Mel Brooks, they came up with the idea after watching numerous old westerns where cowboys only consume black coffee and plates of beans, thus concluding that such a food combination would inevitably lead to farting.
When auditioning for the role of Lilly, Madeline Kahn was asked by Mel Brooks to pull up her skirt so he could see her legs. She was quite hesitant, being unclear of Brooks's intentions. Brooks actually just wanted to see if she had legs good enough to approximate Marlene Dietrich's famous "gams".
Though credited on screen as "Gum Chewer", Don Megowan actually played a different role in the film: he was the man who Madeline Kahn pushed into the audience after he lurched drunkenly toward her while she was on stage.
Madeline Kahn started working on the movie the day after being fired from the role of Agnes Gooch in Mame (1974). Lucille Ball believed that Kahn got herself fired (by deliberately acting poorly) so that she could take the role of Lili Von Shtupp in this film, but still get paid for the Gooch role in "Mame", which by her contract wouldn't have happened if she'd merely quit.
In Yiddish means, to "shtupp" means to "push" or to "stuff", which is a double entrendre. It has been replaced with "shhh" on some television broadcasts.
When Harvey Korman's character purchases a ticket at the Grauman's Chinese Theater box office, you can see the original film title, "BLACK BART" in the poster case in the background.
The scene in which Cleavon Little draws a gun upon himself to save himself from the townspeople's wrath was based on a childhood incident from Mel Brooks. Brooks said that once, to his disbelief, he stole some gum and a water pistol from a drugstore; when a store worker tried to stop him, Brooks held the worker at bay with the very water pistol he had just fingered from the store.
After writing his first two feature films on his own, Mel Brooks was nostalgic for the collaborative group writing style of his days on "Your Show of Shows" (1950), so he employed 4 other writers to work with. According to co-writer Andrew Bergman, who wrote the treatment on which the film is based, almost all of the scenes include some contribution from the 5 writers.
The sound effects for the famous wind-breaking scene (with the cowboys around the camp fire letting nature take its natural course after a meal of beans) were added in the cutting room by Mel Brooks and any passer-by, who rubbed soap onto their hands and placed the hand under the armpit, and then closing the armpit.
One studio executive stopped Mel Brooks in an elevator at the Warner Brothers lot and told him that several scenes were offensive and needed to be cut in order for the picture to be released. Brooks nodded and agreed to be polite even though he had no intention of changing a thing, being that he had final cut written into his contract.
Just like George Furth's character is named after Van Johnson, David Huddleston's character Olson Johnson is named after comedy duo Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, aka Olsen & Johnson.
After promising to edit out several 'offensive' scenes such as the infamous farting sequence, Mel Brooks in fact never cut a single scene except one: after the room is darkened and Lilly informs Bart "It's TWUE! It's TWUE!", Bart quietly states "Uh, that's my ARM you're sucking...".
Mel Brooks wrote a song called "Bart" which would reveal that character's back-story as a pimp, but it was cut before filming began because he felt it slowed the film down and would make it less likely for audiences to sympathize with his plight.
This film is ranked #6 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs
Mel Brooks never told Frankie Laine that the theme song Blazing Saddles was for a comedy. Frankie thought it was a dramatic western. Mel was worried Frankie wouldn't sing it with conviction if he knew the truth.
During a speech awarding Mel Brooks as a Kennedy Center Honoree, President Barack Obama mentioned going to see Blazing Saddles (1974) at the age of 13. When Brooks asked how he got in with the ratings restriction, the president replied, "I think I had a fake ID," before adding, "The statute of limitations has passed."
Dom DeLuise has claimed that the role of the director of the film-within-a-film 'The French Mistake' was originally meant to be played by actor Peter Sellers. But after he endured an exhaustive four-hour audition, Brooks instead cast DeLuise.
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