Blazing Saddles is a
satirical Western comedy film directed by
Mel Brooks. Starring
Cleavon Little and
Gene Wilder, it was written by Brooks,
Andrew Bergman,
Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg, and Al Uger, and was based on Bergman's story and draft.
[Director and Leading Actors] 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
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; the
racist slur "
nigger" is heard 17 times in
Blazing Saddles, while the film's hero is
black.
Plot
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 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, 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, 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 a 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.
Cast
Cast notes:
- 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!", "Let her alone!" and, "Don't you know she's pooped?!"
Production
Blazing Saddles was Mel Brooks' first movie 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.
[2001 Review, mostly of Brooks's DVD commentary, from Salon.com] 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 because Young was suffering from
delirium tremens on the set due to his
alcoholism.
[IMDb Biography for Gig Young]
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 with it holding the distinction of being the first film to display
flatulence.
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."
[From the libretto of the La-LaLand Records soundtrack album]
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. A very similar gag, with a male character named "Peter Hedley Lamar, Jr." occurs in the 1941 Buster Keaton short "General Nuisance." 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."
Influences
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 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 vulgarism for
sexual intercourse. (When broadcast on television, Lili's last name is usually changed to "Shhhhhh...", but is still written normally on the title card.)
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). When Brooks is speaking 'Indian', he's actually speaking
Yiddish (mixed with English).
Right before the "I'm Tired" scene, after Jim tells Bart about Lili Von Shtupp, the tune that is playing in the background is the theme from the fictional play
Springtime For Hitler which appears in Mel Brooks' first film
The Producers. Another reference to the previous film is when Governor Le Petomane echoes
Max Bialystock's line "Hello Boys!"
The name of Harvey Korman's character, Hedley Lamarr, is regularly mispronounced by others as
Hedy Lamarr (in reference to the actress). In
History of the World, Part I (a later Mel Brooks film), he plays Count De Monet (Mo-nay) another character whose name is often mispronounced as "Count Da Money".
One of the characters played by Mel Brooks, Gov. William J. Le Petomane, is named after Joseph Pujol,
Le Pétomane, who was a
turn of the century artiste in France. Pujol's stage performance consisted of controlled displays of flatulence. Extraordinary control of his abdominal muscles and rectal sphincter allowed him to draw air and water into his rectum and so create a wide range of sounds at will.
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 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.
Reception
While the film is widely considered a classic comedy today, critical reaction was mixed when the film was first released.
Vincent Canby wrote:
[) Review of Blazing Saddles by Vincent Canby]
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.
[boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=blazingsaddles.htm]
Awards and honors
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 1975:
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.
[Awards for Blazing Saddles (1974)]
In 2006,
Blazing Saddles was selected for preservation in the
National Film Registry by the
Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." 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.
[National Film Registry Announces New Titles]
Legacy
TV pilot
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 disk.
Musical adaptation
With the production of musical adaptations of
The Producers and
Young Frankenstein, rumors have spread about a possible adaptation to
Blazing Saddles. Brooks joked about the concept in the final number in
Young Frankenstein, in which the full company sings, "
next year Blazing Saddles!"
Tony Award-winning choreographer,
Jerry Mitchell mentioned hearing of Brooks talking about the possibility in an interview with Broadway World. However, no one has confirmed whether a show is in the works.
[Please, Mel Brooks, Skip ‘Blazing Saddles: The Musical’ - Vulture - Entertainment & Culture Blog - New York Magazine]
Soundtrack release
After nearly 35 years, the first-ever official, studio-licensed release, in any format, of the full music soundtrack to
Blazing Saddles finally 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.
[Blazing Saddles press release at La-La Land Records]
TV Advertising
The Farting Cowboy scene from the movie is used in a UK Gas Safety Advert warning against the use of cowboy installers.
The Tagline is "Cowboys and Gas Dont Mix".
Notes
External links
wikiquote
Mel Brooks Films
