Blazing Saddles at 50: Against all odds, Mel Brooks created the wackiest western ever made
It was “too dirty” for John Wayne to accept a part. Too “disgusting and vulgar” for Ted Ashley, the chairman of Warner Brothers, who threatened to “bury” the film. But director Mel Brooks stuck to his guns, refusing to make edits, and was vindicated. Blazing Saddles, 50 this February, was a massive hit, one Brooks declared “the funniest motion picture ever”.
The story of the creation, making and legacy of Blazing Saddles is as anarchic as the movie itself. The idea for a film about Sheriff Bart, a Black dandy who saves a town of rednecks from an unscrupulous developer and his violent henchmen, came in 1972 from a young screenwriter, Andrew Bergman, who had recently completed a PhD in American movie history. Warners asked Brooks to flesh out Bergman’s 30-page “skeletal outline” for a western called Tex-X.
Brooks, then 46, , despite the acclaim for his 1967 movie His actress wife Anne Bancroft was expecting their first child. He leapt at the chance to write and direct “the wackiest, most insane movie he watched growing up as Max Kaminsky in Williamsburg, New York.
