‘He made their blazing saddles a torch to light the way’.
Today is the 39th anniversary of the world premiere of ‘Blazing Saddles’.
This was the Mel Brookes comedy film that sent up every cowboy film from ‘Stagecoach’ to ‘True Grit’.
Everyone remembers that baked beans scene beside the cowboys’ campfire or how the movie ends with the camera showing the backlot of the Warner Brothers Studios and the mass fist-fight taking place beyond.
But for me one of the best gags comes very early on in the movie when the black sheriff (played by Cleavon Little) climbs up onto a raised stage before the entire townsfolk, turns to the town’s mayor and, as he reaches deep inside his trousers to retrieve a letter, says to the crowd, ‘Excuse me whilst I whip this out!’ … and all of the women in the gathered audience gasped and fainted.
I was only a naive teenager at the time – but even I got the joke!
