Mel Brooks reveals the stories behind 'Blazing Saddles'

Mel Brooks seems to never tire of telling the tale about Madeline Kahn’s audition for the role of German saloon chanteuse/seductress-for-hire Lili Von Shtupp in his 1974 film Blazing Saddles. With minimal prompting, he tells it again one recent day.

“She didn’t really understand. I said, 'Madeline, would you raise your skirt? I want to see your legs.’ And she said, ‘Oh, it’s one of those auditions,’” Brooks says on the phone. “I said, ‘No, no. You got me all wrong. We’re doing a takeoff of Western movies and one of the big ones is Destry Rides Again, starring Marlene Dietrich. And [in that movie] she kept straddling a chair with her beautiful netted black stockings and I gotta have good-looking legs.’ So, she said, ‘OK.’ She raised her skirt. She straddled a chair and showed me her legs. I said, ‘Oh, my God. You’re beautiful.’”

Brooks pauses half a beat, before adding a joke about what later dawned on him and that he now does in his act. “I say, ‘I was thinking, why couldn’t it be one of those auditions? God. I’ll never get another chance.’”

Exclusive: Mel Brooks says he knows his 'Hotel Transylvania' nose well

There’s a good chance he’ll share this anecdote on Sept. 1 when “Mel Brooks: Back in the Saddle Again!,” a screening of his classic Western comedy spoof, followed by a live conversation and audience Q&A with Brooks, plays Radio City Music Hall. Besides featuring unforgettable scatological humor, Blazing Saddles satirized the racism embedded in Hollywood’s Old West movies — by having a black sheriff (Cleavon Little) defending an all-white town against politicians who want their land for a railroad. The script was riddled with racial epithets.

Over the past year, Brooks has been doing these occasional “Back in the Saddle” events, about 11 so far.

“I’m basically doing that same thing [at Radio City]. I’m doing Blazing Saddles, the movie first, and then I come out on a feather-bed of cheers and laughs … All I have to do is just take 15 or 20 minutes of bowing,” jokes Brooks, who actually engages with the audience for about an hour.

Brooks, who turned 90 in June, clearly loves talking about Blazing Saddles, and its behind-the-scenes stories.

For example, Brooks had wanted Richard Pryor, one of the film’s five screenwriters, to play Sheriff Bart, but the studio wouldn't insure Pryor, who’d had a drug arrest, to act in the film. Brooks said he wouldn’t do the picture without Pryor, who urged Brooks not to quit. “So, I stayed. And Richard helped me find Cleavon Little,” Brooks says. “We looked at maybe 20 actors and Cleavon really stood out as being the most handsome and sharp.”

For another central role — Jim, the “Waco Kid” — Brooks had hired actor Gig Young, an Oscar-winner for 1969’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Brooks admired Young’s ability to do light comedy and serious drama. And though Young was known to struggle with alcohol, Brooks says, “I talked to him. He sounded great.”

But when Young shot his first scene — in which the Waco Kid, recovering from a bender, wakes up in jail — it became apparent there were still problems. “The first scene, he’s hanging upside down in the jail, and Cleavon, as the sheriff, comes over and says, 'Are we awake?’ And he’s supposed to say, 'I don’t know. Are we black?’ He can’t believe there’s a black sheriff,” says Brooks, noting that after Little said his line, Young couldn’t get his line out, then began “spewing” green vomit. “I turned to my assistant director and I said, ‘Wait a minute, did we sign on to direct The Exorcist? What’s going on?’

“Of course, he was still very sick,” says Brooks of Young. “His agents and managers said, ‘Well, he’s a recovered alcoholic.’ And I called them back. I said, ‘He ain’t quite recovered.’”

Brooks called Gene Wilder, who’d played Leo Bloom in Brooks’ 1968 The Producers.

“I was crying and Gene was my best friend,” he recalls. “And I told him and he said, ‘I’ll do it for you.’ And he got on a plane and he came out Sunday. On Monday morning, he was in the jail cell and Cleavon said, ‘Are we awake?' And he said, 'I don’t know. Are we black?' And boom. That was Gene Wilder … It was so lucky. That’s called a good bounce. A good bounce.”

Brooks himself played two parts in Blazing Saddles — a small but memorable role as an Indian chief with a Yiddish accent and a larger one as cross-eyed, cleavage-obsessed Gov. William J. Le Petomane, who was in cahoots with Harvey Korman’s corrupt Mayor Hedley Lamarr.

“I loved being the governor,” says Brooks, who also loved the politicians’ plan to give the Indians a box of paddleball toys in exchange for taking 200,000 acres of their land, pronouncing it a fair trade. Says Brooks, “We make a lot of comments, you know?”

Some of the comments in Blazing Saddles beg the question: Could Brooks even make that movie today?

“I don’t think so. No,” he says. “First of all, maybe you could get away with the campfire scene with the farting. Maybe you could get away with that today. I think you could. But I don’t think you could ever get away with the ‘N’ word being done by so many white people so many times. And I kept asking Cleavon and Richard, ‘Are we going overboard here? Is this too much? Are we going to be in trouble?’ You know, Richard said the most brilliant thing, ’cause he was a very good writer and a realist. And he said, ‘You know, Mel, if the racists and the bad guys use it, then it’s perfect. But if good people use it, then you’re in trouble.’”

Brooks claims he has seen Blazing Saddles — no joke — 2,000 times. But it’s his 11-year-old grandson Henry — the son of horror author and screenwriter Max Brooks (the child of Mel and late wife Anne Bancroft) — who can practically recite the movie’s dialogue from start to finish. And Henry, he says, has been known to, say, quote a certain Slim Pickens line (about the need for a lot of dimes) in the middle of a supermarket.

“He may not know every line, but he knows enough lines to embarrass his father and his grandfather,” Brooks says. “He’s a sweetheart.”

Brooks — who’s among a small group of EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) winners — is also in the process of bringing the musical Young Frankenstein (which ran on Broadway, from late 2007 to early 2009) to London’s West End. (The plan is to have tryouts in Newcastle next August, and a London opening in September, 2017). And on Oct. 18, he’s set to release a book about the making of Young Frankenstein, which also came out in 1974, 10 months after Blazing Saddles.

“We have a great coffee-table book,” Brooks says. “Pictures and some real stories about how it came to be.”

One famous story is that Wilder would only do Young Frankenstein if Brooks agreed to not appear in it. Brooks explains why. “He said, ‘You’re a brilliant director and you have a penchant for breaking the fourth wall.’ He said, ‘I don’t want to break out of this picture.’ …. He said, ‘And if you’re in it, I don’t trust you.’ I said, ‘I know. You’re right. I would break out of it.’ I’d be in a suit of armor and suddenly, I’d flip up the visor and say, ‘Th … That’s all, folks.’ I agree with you.”

Asked if he’d consider doing these screening/chatting events about The Producers or Young Frankenstein, Brooks says not with the first (which is too “Broadway-ish”), but maybe the second.

In the meantime, he’s having fun touring with “Blazing Saddles” — in addition to Radio City, he has an event scheduled for Boston on Oct. 22 — and reminiscing about dear departed cast members, including Dom DeLuise, Little, Korman and especially Kahn, who after her Oscar-nominated turn in Blazing Saddles, went on to work with Brooks on Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety (1977) and History of the World, Part I (1981).

“I miss her very much. There’s a few people,” Brooks says. “I miss my wife the most, but I do miss Madeline.”

Follow Virginia Rohan on Twitter: @virginiarohan