10 February 15 - 21, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents When Harvey Korman, playing “Hedley Lamarr,” the evil henchman to Brooks’ dimwitted, horndog governor, makes a re- cruiting pitch to assemble a mob, he wel- comes “rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperadoes, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, mug- gers, buggers, bushwhackers, hornswog- glers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit- kickers and Methodists.” It’s always dicey to apply contemporary standards to works produced in the past. Be- fore we discard it atop the growing moun- tain of today’s banned books, consider that Blazing Saddles is from the time of Animal House and “Archie Bunker” and that it at- tempts to depict and satirize racism rather than endorse it. Nonetheless, depending on your per- spective, it’s either a “Good Ol’ Days” classic or “Cancel Culture” corrosive. Lyle From Dallas I t also belongs with memorable Dallas- linked movies such as JFK and North Dallas Forty. “Lyle,” after all, grew up in East Dallas, attended Woodrow Wilson High School and fell into the role while working at Dallas Fire Station No. 39 on Shiloh Road. “I never thought about being an actor un- til I was one,” Gilliam says. “I get a part in a movie that I still get recognized for around the world 50 years later. Pretty amazing.” Gilliam was raised in fights, not film. After graduating from high school in 1956, he boxed in the Golden Gloves and the Coast Guard. Following the family “busi- ness,” he became a fireman at age 21. “Acting was something I never dreamed of,” says the 85-year-old Gilliam, wearing a Blazing Saddles cap during lunch near his home in Allen. “My thing was getting in the ring and punching someone’s face.” But in June 1972, while reading the news- paper at the fire station, he happened upon an advertisement to meet actor Ryan O’Neal and try out to be an extra for a movie. O’Neal was a movie star and also a boxer, somebody Gilliam always wanted to meet. So he drove to the old Hilton Inn at Mockingbird Lane and Central Expressway, across from Southern Methodist University, and almost left when he couldn’t find a parking spot. “I came this close to turning around and going home,” he says with a laugh. “Now wouldn’t that have been something?” O’Neal wasn’t there. Instead, after stand- ing in a long line in a crowded ballroom, Gil- liam met two young movie assistants: future director Gary Chason and a man who would become award-winning actor Randy Quaid. Upon introduction, the two became enam- ored with Gilliam’s Texas twang, the same one that years later landed him the job as the voice of Big Tex until officials at the State Fair of Texas decided it was too recogniz- ably “Lyle.” They hurriedly asked Gilliam to read a line: “Make him say ‘calf rope,’ Leeeeeee-roy!” Giddy with their discovery, Chason and Quaid rushed Gilliam up to a suite. There, he encountered director Peter Bogdanovich, barefoot on a chaise lounge and being fed grapes by a woman who introduced herself: “Cybill Shepherd, nice to meet you.” “Peter sat up and framed my face with his hands,” Gilliam recalls. “He asked me to read some lines off a script … like four scenes. That was it.” Said Bogdanovich, “It’s as if it were writ- ten just for you.” Gilliam was officially an actor, landing his first role as “Floyd” the desk clerk in Bogda- novich’s classic Paper Moon. Three weeks later he received a call from Paramount Casting. The company flew him on Braniff Airlines to St. Joseph, Missouri, where he was paid $100 per diem and $255 in scale for a week’s work. Gilliam, 34 at the time, hired an agent and began sporadic acting as a side hustle. But then came another phone call to the fire station. “The guy just says his name and then goes quiet,” he says. “I didn’t know if there was an emergency or what. I’d never heard of Mel Brooks.” Gilliam was flown first class to Holly- wood four times during negotiations for a part in Brooks’ upcoming movie. When he initially balked, Brooks rewrote the script with an expanded role. When he again turned it down, Books had Pryor call to persuade him. When he finally received an offer to make $25,000 in one month for being “Lyle” in Blazing Saddles, Gilliam quit the fire station and moved to Califor- nia. He loved the script, despite his multiple slurs. It was a combustible time in America — less than 10 years after the Civil Rights Act and only six years after the 1968 assassina- tion of Martin Luther King Jr. — but he didn’t falter at believing the movie’s comedy would drown out its controversy. “I knew right away it was going to be funny, and that I could be funny,” Gilliam said. “The fact that word was in it so often didn’t really buzz on me. It was a different time, ya know?” Dallas comedian Paulos Feerow makes a similar point. “This was made in 1974. … In 1974 if I walked across the street someone would Warner Bros./Courtesy of Getty Images Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder. Warner Bros./Courtesy of Getty Images Director Mel Brooks (left) and producer Michael Hertzberg on Blazing Saddles’ set in 1974. Eternal Flame from p8
