Reel Classics: Blazing Saddles

Perhaps you are famil­iar with Mel Brooks and his “off-the-wall” humor and spoofs of var­i­ous film gen­res with such films as Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood:  Men in Tights.  Also includ­ed in this list is today’s Reel Classic Blazing Saddles. 

Believe me, Blazing Saddles is not your typ­i­cal Western.  What typ­i­cal Western includes an out­law gang of Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and motor­cy­clists?  What typ­i­cal Western has a Hebrew-speak­ing Jew as an Indian Chief?  I believe the answer would be “none.” 

Blazing Saddles was released in 1974, and Mel Brooks was the direc­tor, one of a team of writ­ers and also had a cou­ple of roles in the film.  The sto­ry is set in the year 1874 and near the fron­tier town of Rock Ridge a rail­road is being built. Due to con­struc­tion issues the rail­road will have to be re-rout­ed through the town of Rock Ridge. The evil and con­niv­ing ter­ri­to­r­i­al attor­ney gen­er­al Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) sees a chance to take advan­tage of the sit­u­a­tion and comes up with a plan to force the cit­i­zens to leave the town.  He sends a gang led by his crony Taggert (Slim Pickens) to shoot up the town and kill the sheriff. 

The towns­folk appeal to the dim-wit­ted gov­er­nor, William J. Le Petomane (Mel Brooks), to appoint a new sher­iff.  Hedley Lamarr con­vinces him to appoint a Black for­mer rail­road work­er, know­ing the towns­peo­ple will not want to accept him as their sher­iff.  The new sher­iff is Bart (Cleavon Little) who rides into town look­ing very spiffy and pack­ing Gucci sad­dle bags.

As was antic­i­pat­ed by Lamarr, the towns­peo­ple quick­ly and adamant­ly reject the idea of a Black sher­iff.  However, Bart forms an alliance with a for­mer gun­slinger, now an alco­holic, named Jim who is also known as “The Waco Kid” (Gene Wilder).  Jim works with Bart to gain the accep­tance of the res­i­dents of Rock Ridge and they devel­op a true friendship. 

Hedley Lamarr sees that his plan is not going as expect­ed and we next find a German seduc­tress in Rock Ridge attempt­ing to foil Bart’s efforts.  Her name is Lili Von Shtupp (Madeline Kahn), but alas she finds her­self falling for the hand­some sher­iff. As Lamarr again finds his plans going awry he engages the mix­ture of bik­ers, the KKK, Nazis, and oth­ers to go into the town to wreak hav­oc.  In the mean­time, Bart and Jim have met with the Black, Chinese, and Irish immi­grant work­ers from the rail­road and assist in them form­ing an alliance with the White cit­i­zens of Rock Ridge to fight off the gang sent by Lamarr. 

No spoil­ers, but let me say that as the sto­ry pro­gress­es you will find dancers in tuxe­dos and top hats, food fights in a cafe­te­ria, Lili singing with the Nazi sol­diers, and Jim (“The Waco Kid”) eat­ing pop­corn in a movie the­atre.  I hear you.  You are say­ing “I thought this was a Western.”  Remember—it’s Mel Brooks.

The char­ac­ter of the Jewish Indian chief is a take on the film The Searchers (1956).  The role of the chief in that film, Scar, was played by a German-born Jew named Henry Brandon.  In the ear­ly scenes the tribe approach­es a wag­on with a young Bart on board and the Chief speaks in Hebrew. (You can find the Reel Classic review of The Searchers here.)  The char­ac­ter of Lili was based on Marlene Dieitrich’s char­ac­ter “Frenchy” from Destry Rides Again (1939).

Another homage to the clas­sic Western is in the open­ing cred­its.  We see the Warner Bros. logo on the open­ing screen which bursts into flames as we move into the cred­its.  This is a take on the open­ing of the TV clas­sic Western series Bonanza.

There is also a char­ac­ter named Gabby Johnson, who was a trib­ute to a famous side­kick for many Western heroes—Gabby Hayes.  Hayes appeared with Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and John Wayne.  He has been called by many film his­to­ri­ans “The Ultimate Sidekick.” He actu­al­ly appeared in close to 200 films—almost all of them Westerns. 

There are oth­er famil­iar faces in the film.  Dom DeLuise por­trays the direc­tor Buddy Bizarre (who is direct­ing the “Busby Berkeley” style dance num­ber), and jazz musi­cian Count Basie lead­ing his orches­tra in a ren­di­tion of “April in Paris” out on the prairie.  Remember, this is Mel Brooks!

Blazing Saddles also car­ried with it a bit of con­tro­ver­sy.  Mel Brooks acknowl­edged that his writ­ing in the movie was out of anger at “white cor­rup­tion, racism, and Bible-thump­ing big­otry.” Some stu­dio exec­u­tives were not pleased with some aspects of the film and want­ed them delet­ed or changed.  However, Brook’s con­tract with the stu­dio gave him full say. 

One objec­tion was the mul­ti­ple use of the “N word” direct­ed at the Sheriff Bart. Many of the actors too were uncom­fort­able with using the word.  Richard Pryor, a not­ed Black come­di­an at the time, was one of the co-writ­ers and he insist­ed the word be used.  Cleavon Little also sup­port­ed using the word in the film.  Brooks said the use of the word demon­strat­ed how hat­ed and despised the Black sher­iff was by the white townspeople. 

Commenting on address­ing the issue of racism is the movie, Gene Wilder said, “They’ve smashed racism in the face, but they’re doing it while you laugh.”  There is a scene in the film where Jim is try­ing to com­fort Bart after expe­ri­enc­ing the hate spewed at him by the cit­i­zens of Rock Ridge.  He says, “What did you expect? ‘Welcome, son­ny’? ‘Make your­self at home’? ’ Marry my daugh­ter’? You’ve got to remem­ber that these are just sim­ple farm­ers. These are peo­ple of the land. The com­mon clay of the new West. You know... morons.” Bart’s response was unscripted.

Interestingly, Richard Pryor was Brooks’ first choice for the role of Sheriff Bart but the stu­dio nixed the idea due to Pryor’s con­tro­ver­sial com­e­dy rou­tines and his his­to­ry of drug arrests.  They said that the his­to­ry of arrests made him “unin­sur­able.” Cleavon Little was then cho­sen for the role.

Brooks orig­i­nal­ly offered the role of Jim, “The Waco Kid,” to John Wayne.  Wayne refused, say­ing the part was too sil­ly for him.  Gig Young was then giv­en the role.  However, Young had a seri­ous drink­ing prob­lem and did not last long on the set.  Gene Wilder even­tu­al­ly got the role.  Another inter­est­ing tid­bit about who was­n’t in the film is that the role of Hedley Lamarr was ini­tial­ly offered to Johnny Carson.  He turned it down and the part went to Harvey Korman. 

Speaking of Lamarr, Hedy Lamarr sued Mel Brooks in protest of the use of the name Hedley Lamarr—obviously a spoof of her name.  The suit was set­tled but the name remained. 

The theme song of the movie was sung by Frankie Laine, who also had a hit with the theme song from High Noon (also in the archives of Reel Classics).  Brooks had adver­tised in var­i­ous trade papers for a “Frankie Laine-type” voice to sing the song in the movie.  He was pleased to see Frankie Laine him­self come to his office offer­ing to sing the theme. 

Blazing Saddles is anoth­er of those films that, though now con­sid­ered a clas­sic, was met with mixed reviews upon release.  Renowned crit­ic 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. . .. With His (Mel Brooks) tal­ent he should do much bet­ter than that.” 

Roger Ebert gave the film four of four stars, describ­ing it as a “crazed grab bag of a movie that does every­thing to keep us laugh­ing except hit us over the head with a rub­ber chick­en.” Gene Siskel gave it three of four stars say­ing it was “bound to rank with the fun­ni­est of the year.”  The crit­ic in Variety wrote, “If come­dies are mea­sured sole­ly by the num­ber of yocks they gen­er­ate from audi­ences, then Blazing Saddles must be count­ed a success.”

The Washington Post crit­ic was very neg­a­tive stat­ing “Mel Brooks squan­ders a snap­py title on a stock­pile of stale jokes.  To say this slap­dash Western spoof lacks fresh­ness and spon­tane­ity and orig­i­nal­i­ty is putting it mildly.”

More con­tem­po­rary crit­ics are much more pos­i­tive in their per­spec­tives.  Rotten Tomatoes aggre­gate review described it as “Daring, provoca­tive, and laugh-out-loud fun­ny.  Blazing Saddles is a glee­ful­ly vul­gar spoof of Westerns that mark a high point in Mel Brooks sto­ried career.” In February of this year NPR had a sto­ry regard­ing the 50^th anniver­sary of the release of the film on it’s All Things Considered pro­gram.  They iden­ti­fied it as the biggest box-office hit of 1974 and described it as a “pop cul­ture touch­stone.”  They added “And 50 years lat­er, that’s what it remains.” 

In an arti­cle in Variety in 2022 Whoopi Golberg defend­ed the film after it received some neg­a­tive com­ments on social media regard­ing the racism issues addressed in the movie.  She stat­ed, “It deals with racism by com­ing at it right, straight, out front, mak­ing you think and laugh about it, because lis­ten, it’s not just racism, it’s all the isms, he hits all the isms.” 

The world pre­mière was on February 7, 1974, at the Pickwick Drive-In Theater in Burbank, California.  250 invit­ed guests, includ­ing Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little, rode in and watched the film on horse­back.  It earned three Oscar nom­i­na­tions includ­ing Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Madeline Kahn).

In 2006 Blazing Saddles was select­ed by the Library of Congress for preser­va­tion in the National Film Registry.  It was also includ­ed in the American Film Institute’s 2000 list of Top 100 Funniest American Films. 

A spin-off sit­com was devel­oped for TV in 1975 which starred Louis Gossett Jr. as Sheriff Bart.  The show was called Black Bart but only one episode aired. 

And, we can’t ignore one of the more talked-about scenes in the film—the camp­fire fart­ing scene.  How many Westerns have we seen where the cow­boys sit around the camp­fire and eat a plate of beans?  These scenes were Mel Brooks’ inspi­ra­tion for this scene.  As the cow­boys con­sume the beans the nat­ur­al effects are shared with the audi­ence — a most mem­o­rable scene for many view­ers.  Reportedly this was the first time the sounds of pass­ing gas were in a movie. 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) gives Blazing Saddles a rat­ing of 7.7 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 89% and an Audience Score of 91%. 

In check­ing my Roku device I found it avail­able for free stream­ing on the Cinema Box site, and there is a copy of the DVD avail­able at the Clark County Public Library. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia. I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6:00 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as WinCity Voices Facebook page.