That said, my first loyalty was always to comedy. Nothing can burst the balloon of pomposity and dictatorial rhetoric better than comedy. Comedy brings religious persecutors, dictators, and tyrants to their knees faster than any other weapon. Since my comedy is serious, I’ve always needed a serious background to play against. There was nothing more serious than the Spanish Inquisition. Poking fun at the grand inquisitor, Torquemada, is a wonderful counterpoint to the horrors he committed. The Roman Empire was an example of “might makes right,” wonderful stuff for my twisted mind to play with. And the French Revolution showed better than any other period the incredible difference between the haves and the have-nots.
We’ve all been taught history in school by well-meaning teachers using well-meaning textbooks, but we all know a lot more about human nature than history books tell us. So I embellished a little more about these famous people and these famous events and maybe all their untold secrets. I wanted to expose their foibles and to show that they were not really such historical big shots.
At the beginning of my career as a comedy writer, I usually worked with other writers. But with The Producers I found my own feet and wrote it all by myself. The Twelve Chairs was based on a book, so I didn’t need any other writers. But it’s very lonely, sitting and writing for months all by yourself. I never got used to that. I was used to Your Show of Shows, at least five guys and gals in a room, pitching, running, screaming, fighting, and laughing. So Blazing Saddles was like going back to the writers’ room on Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour.
But now once again, I trusted myself to write the screenplay without engaging any other writers. I decided to do the job all by myself. Instead of one long plot, History of the World would be a series of different scenes from different periods of history. I decided I would start with the dawn of man and go from cavemen to the Bible, to the Roman Empire, to the Inquisition, and end with the French Revolution.
History of the World, Part I begins with the beginning of mankind. I decided to have fun with the caveman. And who could be funnier as a primitive caveman than Sid Caesar? I made him the first caveman to discover art. I thought it was appropriate to have my artistic mentor be the first person to create the first cave painting on a cave wall.
The script reads:
Even in most primitive man, the need to create was part of his nature. This need, this talent, clearly separated early man from animals who would never know this gift.
So Sid shows his amazing painting to the first caveman critic, who promptly urinates all over it. Sid’s expression tells us what the creative artist has suffered to this very day.
Rudy De Luca also played one of the cavemen. Sid tries out a new weapon called “the spear.” He hurls it through the air, and it finds its way into Rudy De Luca. It works! Sid celebrates; the whole cave celebrates! Everybody is so happy about the invention of the spear…everybody, that is, except Rudy De Luca.
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From the caveman period I entered the biblical era. I decided I would play Moses delivering the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel. My take on it was that there were originally Fifteen Commandments housed in three huge stone tablets.
I start the scene by saying, “The Lord, the Lord Jehovah, has given you these Fifteen…”
BAM! At that point I drop one of the stone tablets and it comes crashing to the ground at my feet. I quickly cover by saying, “…Ten! Ten Commandments!”
It always gets a huge roar of laughter.
Another of my favorites from the biblical period was my re-creation of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting of the Last Supper. I asked John Hurt, who was so wonderful as the Elephant Man, to play Jesus, and without hesitation he flew over to do the part.
I cast myself to play a waiter at the last supper. I gave myself some funny lines like addressing the disciples with, “Are you all together, or is it separate checks?”
Me as Moses, going from the original fifteen commandments down to the now popular ten.
John Hurt and I developed a wonderful bit together. When things went wrong and I didn’t get the order straight, in frustration I would utter, “Jesus!”
And John Hurt as Jesus would respond with, “Yes?”
And I’d say, “Yes? What yes?”
And he’d say, “What?”
We had to do it several times because the actors playing the disciples would always break up and ruin the take. But we finally got a good one.
Our set photographer captured the scene beautifully. It looked exactly like Da Vinci’s The Last Supper except for me holding a big silver serving platter （which looked like a huge halo） behind John Hurt’s head. It so happened that at this time my wife Anne’s parents, Millie and Mike Italiano, had come to visit and were staying with us in California. I put a copy of that set photo of The Last Supper in their guest bedroom. They were both good Catholics and loved the picture—never noticing me as the waiter holding the silver platter!