Madeline became part of a great stock company that I was unknowingly putting together for future films. Like writer/director Preston Sturges did in the 1940s, I was starting to gather brilliant performers who I could call on to do almost anything. There was Madeline, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Dom DeLuise, and soon I would add the great Marty Feldman and Cloris Leachman—but more on that later.
* * *
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My anarchy vis-à-vis Blazing Saddles didn’t stop with filming; it carried on to the first screening of Blazing Saddles at the Avco Embassy theater on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. I had the lobby filled with live cattle, mooing and doing what live cattle do. It was terrible and wonderful. The theater was packed. There wasn’t a seat to be had. The audience loved it—they went bananas! It was one of the greatest nights of my life. To work so hard on a film for so long and to be rewarded with nonstop riotous laughter is the greatest payment in the world. It was an incredible screening right from the first Frankie Laine rendition of the title song to the limo driving our heroes off into the sunset. It was, as they say in Variety, “A LAFF RIOT.”
* * *
—
My worries about whether or not audiences would get and embrace Blazing Saddles went out the window that night. Everything worked…except for one slight hitch.
The head of Warner Bros., who hadn’t seen any of the footage before, grabbed me on the way out of the screening. He pulled me into the manager’s office at the Avco Embassy theater and I grabbed John Calley to come with me for moral support. He handed me a yellow legal pad and a pencil and said, “Take notes! Farting scene, out.”
I said, “Farting scene, out.”
He said, “No punching a horse. Cannot punch a horse.”
I said, “How stupid of me. How silly! Can’t hit a horse. Mongo punching horse, out.”
It went on and on.
He said, “N-word. Cannot say that word.”
I said, “N-word, out.”
He continued: “No scenes with the secretary. No boobs.”
The greatest thing in Blazing Saddles was Madeline Kahn singing “I’m Tired.” He said: “Too dirty. Take the song out.”
I said, “？‘I’m Tired,’ out.”
I’m taking all of these notes. He’s running a film studio, he should realize that if I had listened to every single thing that he wanted me to cut we’d have the shortest movie in the history of film. I sat down after he left, tore the page of notes off the yellow legal pad, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the wastepaper basket.
John Calley said, “Well filed.”
* * *
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I never changed a thing. Like I’ve said before, as far as movie executives are concerned, always agree with them, but never do a thing they say. When the good reviews, and more important for the front office, the money started rolling in, I never heard a bad word from the head of the studio again.
* * *
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Blazing Saddles opened in stages. It opened in a limited run in February of 1974, and it must have played in only about a hundred theaters nationwide, but to very successful numbers, pretty good reviews, and, most important, very good word of mouth.
Instead of their normal summer fare, Warner Bros. expanded Blazing Saddles into a wide release. Apparently, the exhibitors had been clamoring for it. They made a lot more prints and that summer it really exploded. Whatever I had done before—Blazing Saddles was forty times bigger. It was supposed to run through June and July, but instead it went all the way through Labor Day. A lot of the theaters wouldn’t take it out. （In those days that was a long time for a movie to run!） There was concern among some critics that the outrageousness of Blazing Saddles would destroy the Western as a film genre. Not only were they wrong, at the time it became the second-highest-grossing Western, after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Finally, after two good pictures I had managed to make not only another good picture but, to boot, my first big hit.
Chapter 13
Young Frankenstein
One day on the Western town set of Blazing Saddles, when we broke for lunch I noticed Gene Wilder leaning against the sheriff’s office and scribbling something on a pad propped up on his knees.
I said, “Gene, how ’bout lunch?”
He said, “In a minute, I have to finish a thought I have.”
I said, “What are you writing there?”
He handed me the pad and at the top it had the words “？‘Young Frankenstein.’？”
I repeated, “？‘Young Frankenstein,’ what is that?”