Had he lived long enough Mel Brooks would have turned 100 years old today. Actually, he’s still alive and more importantly still working, which is a good thing for we all could use a little more Schwartz in our life.

There is a special place in my funny bone for Mel. Back in the day when there was no internet, DVD’s, cable, Starbucks and fresh mango, most food products came in sealed cans and most entertainment came from three networks. Sometimes those networks would show motion pictures, and that’s how I was introduced to Blazing Saddles. It came on once a year, every year, our parents letting us watch it, which to this day I still don’t understand because it’s an extremely profane movie. After all, Mel wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Coming off his hit movie, The Producers, Mel Brooks was handed an Andrew Bergman script by Warner Brothers studio executives. They wanted him to direct the movie. Mel wanted to revamp it. So he kept Andrew and added a few more comedic writers, one being a young Richard Pryor. He told them that a movie about a Black man sent to a Western town to be its sheriff should have no guardrails. “Write anything you want,” he told them. “We will never be heard from again. We will all be in jail for making this movie.”

Mel and his crew delivered. When he first read the revamped script, Burton Gilliam, who played the movie’s henchman, Lyle, was perplexed: “What in the world is this? This is crazy!” Warner Bros executives didn’t understand it either. One pulled Mel aside after a screening and told him to take notes: “You can’t punch a horse. You can’t punch an old lady.”

That was only the beginning when it came to studio directives, which Mel proceeded to ignore. He said if he would have listened to the hireups, he would’ve had a ten minute movie and none of those ten minutes would’ve been funny. No, he wasn’t going to listen to the suits. So why not make a movie that takes on racism, makes fun of the Klan and Nazis, has Looney Tunes and Bugsy Berkeley references, and smashes the fourth wall by having the protagonist drive off into a sunset in a rented limo?

Blazing Saddles received three Academy Award nominations in 1975. One was for Best Original Song. The theme song was composed by John Morris and Mel penned the lyrics. Mel also wrote three additional songs for the movie because that’s what an EGOT winner does. In fact, he has written over twenty-three songs for his movies even though he needed a little nudging at the beginning.

After he wrote the script to The Producers, Mel groused to his wife, Anne Bancroft, that he still needed to find someone to write the pivotal song.

“Why don’t you write it,” she asked.

Mel was perplexed. He wasn’t a musician. He was barely a comedy writer. But Anne knew better. She knew in his heart that he was a song and dance man. So she told him to go back into his room and not come out until he had a song.

He did. He wrote “Springtime for Hitler” for The Producers. And later he wrote my favorite “I’m Tired” for Blazing Saddles.

If and when he decides to leave this mortal coil, Mel Brooks will be remembered as one of the funniest ever. But if you ask him who is the funniest person he’s ever worked with, he doesn’t hesitate: “Nobody could approach the magnificence and wonder of Madeline Kahn.”

Madeline earned an Academy Award nomination for her role as the exhausted Lili Von Shtupp, and it isn’t hyperbole to call her portrayal brilliant: to step into a movie filled with comedic and Western legends and steal the show with such nonchalance, not over-playing the moment, but owning it nonetheless, even if her dance crew had to carry her back on stage for the final bow.