Things You May Not Know About: Blazing Saddles

Mel Brooks never told Frankie Laine that the theme song "Blazing Saddles" was for a comedy. Laine thought it was a dramatic western. Brooks was worried that Laine wouldn't sing it with conviction if he knew the truth.

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", then to "The Purple Sage". Neither he nor the other writers thought those were great titles. Then one morning, as he was taking a shower, "Blazing Saddles" suddenly popped into Brooks' head. After he dried off, he pitched the title to his wife, actress Anne Bancroft, who liked the idea.

Mel Brooks wrote the movie out of anger at "white corruption, racism, and Bible-thumping bigotry."

Remember the scene where Cleavon Little aims his gun at his own head to save himself from the townspeople's wrath? That was based on an incident from Mel Brooks' childhood. He 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.

Supposedly, this movie officially marks the first time the sound of farting has ever been used in a film (at least according to the DVD's making-of documentary). According to Brooks, they came up with the idea after watching numerous old westerns where cowboys only consume black coffee and plates of beans. Such a combination, they concluded, would inevitably lead to farting.

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 and even made a reference to the lawsuit in the movie.

When the film was first screened for Warner Bros. executives, almost none of them laughed and the studio might not have even released it. However, Mel Brooks quickly set up a subsequent screening for the studio's employees. When these "regular folks" laughed uproariously, Warner Bros. finally agreed put the movie out.

According to Mel Brooks, when Gene Wilder first came on set for Blazing Saddles, he asked Brooks' to make his next movie out of an idea that Wilder had been working on. That idea: Young Frankenstein.