<P> Blazing Saddles is a 1974 American satirical Western comedy film directed by Mel Brooks . Starring Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder, the film was written by Brooks, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg, and Al Uger, and was based on Bergman's story and draft . The film received generally positive reviews from critics and audiences, was nominated for three Academy Awards, and is ranked No. 6 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Laughs list . </P> <P> Brooks appears in two supporting roles, Governor William J. Le Petomane and a Yiddish - speaking Indian chief; he also dubs lines for one of Lili von Shtupp's backing troupe . The supporting cast includes Slim Pickens, Alex Karras, and David Huddleston, as well as Brooks regulars Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, and Harvey Korman . Bandleader Count Basie has a cameo as himself . </P> <P> The film satirizes the racism obscured by myth - making Hollywood accounts of the American West, with the hero being a black sheriff in an all - white town . The film is full of deliberate anachronisms, from the Count Basie Orchestra playing "April in Paris" in the Wild West, to Slim Pickens referring to the Wide World of Sports, to the German army of World War II . </P> <P> In the American frontier of 1874, construction on a new railroad will soon be going through Rock Ridge, a town inhabited exclusively by white people with the surname Johnson . The conniving attorney general Hedley Lamarr wants to force Rock Ridge's residents to abandon their town, thereby lowering land prices . After he sends a gang of thugs, led by his flunky Taggart, to shoot the sheriff and trash the town, the townspeople demand that Governor William J. Le Petomane appoint a new sheriff to protect them . Lamarr persuades the dim - witted Le Petomane to appoint Bart, a black railroad worker who was about to be executed for starting a fight . A black sheriff, he reasons, will offend the townspeople, create chaos, and leave the town at his mercy . </P>

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