Blazing Saddles (1974) Cast Then and Now 2026 — Some Thrived, Most Are Gone

Blazing Saddles opened in February 1974 and immediately broke every rule American comedy had quietly agreed to follow. Mel Brooks assembled a cast that crossed Broadway, blaxploitation, television, and film — and the lives they lived away from that backlot were just as unpredictable as the movie itself. Cleavon Little arrived with a Tony Award and delivered one of the decade's most quietly revolutionary performances, yet the career that should have followed never came. Gene Wilder lost Gilda Radner to cancer fifteen years after filming wrapped and carried that grief openly until his own death in 2016. Harvey Korman spent two decades as one of television's sharpest comedians before the show ever cast him. Fifty-two years later, most of this cast is gone — but the film keeps finding new audiences who laugh just as hard as the first ones did.