What in the wide, wide world of sports is a-going on here? I hired you people to get a bit of track laid, not to jump around like a bunch of Kansas City faggots!
That was railroad boss Taggart (Slim Pickens) in Blazing Saddles, which opened on February 7, 1974, a full 50 years ago next month. The Mel Brooks film would not be made today, more reason to revisit the original.
The villainous Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) wants to build a railroad through the frontier town of Rock Ridge but he has a problem. “Unfortunately there is one thing standing between me and that property; the rightful owners.” So the story is based on property rights and offers political insight. For example, when Gov. William J. LePetomane (Mel Brooks) gets word that Rock Ridge has been sacked he cries out, “We’ve got to protect our phony-baloney jobs, gentlemen.”
LePetomane is reportedly named after a French fart artist, an hommage to the famous farting scene. The governor agrees with Lamarr’s plan to send Rock Ridge a black sheriff, wonderfully played by Cleavon Little. Initially rejected because of his race, Bart wins over the townfolk by outwitting the evil Mongo (Alex Karras). Bart also resists the charms of Lili Von Shtupp (Madeline Kahn), tasked by Lamarr to “seduce and abandon” the sheriff. After Lili’s failure, Lamarr seeks a new gang:
I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperadoes, mugs, pugs, thugs, nit wits, halfwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit kickers and. . . Methodists!”
The film is an equal-opportunity offender. One of the writers was Richard Pryor, who could laugh at prejudice with the best of them.
To fight off the bad guys, sheriff Bart teams with the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder), despite a tragic back story still with the fastest hands “in the world.” The townfolk are okay with the railroad workers but as Olson Johnson (Dave Huddleston) says, “we don’t want the Irish!” The black and Chinese workers hold off until “everybody” is on board. Together they take down the bad guys, and the rest is history.
Cleavon Little passed away in 1992, Madeline Kahn in 1999, and Gene Wilder in 2016. At this writing, Mel Brooks is still around at 97. To paraphrase the theme song, he conquered fear and he conquered hate, and gave us many laughs along the way. In the current Age of Wokeness, Blazing Saddles deserves a new theatrical release across the nation.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.