The iconic role Richard Pryor couldn’t get insured to play: “Under no circumstances”
In the early 1970s, Richard Pryor was building a name for himself as one of the finest voices in American comedy. He was also one of its most controversial voices, though, given that his standup act was chock full of profanity and razor-sharp humour about race relations in America. During this period, Pryor was also taking his first steps in the film and television industry as a writer and actor, and he nearly landed an iconic role that would have shot him to superstardom.
Unfortunately, the studio deemed him uninsurable – or, at least, that’s what the movie’s director says happened.
Pryor’s early Hollywood efforts were a decidedly mixed bag, as the incendiary comedian tried to mould himself into whatever role he could get hired for. He wrote for the iconic sitcom Sanford & Son and Lily, a one-off special starring Lily Tomlin, for which the entire writing staff landed an Emmy Award. He also appeared in films like The Mack and Lady Sings the Blues, in addition to releasing comedy albums with titles that can’t possibly be reprinted in 2024.
Around this time, Pryor came to the attention of Mel Brooks, the legendary comedy figure who co-created Get Smart and the long-running sketch ‘The 2,000 Year Old Man’. Later in the decade, he would become synonymous with the spoof genre, directing hits like Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, and Silent Movie. In ’74, though, Brooks was putting together his first spoof, Blazing Saddles, and he wanted to hire Pryor to play the protagonist ‘Black’ Bart, a railroad worker who becomes Sheriff of a frontier town in the Old West.
When Brooks spoke with NPR to promote his memoir All About Me in 2022, he claimed Warner Brothers was dead set against casting Pryor, telling him, “No, under no circumstances. We can’t get any insurance on Richard because of the drug problems. And he’s been in jail.”
Brooks claimed he wanted to abandon the movie entirely, so enraged that the studio said he couldn’t have Pryor in the lead. Instead, he noted that Pryor told him, “Nonsense, stupidity. We’re going to do it. And you and I are going to find the right Black sheriff to play the lead.”
Pryor wound up being hired as one part of a five-strong writing team, while Broadway star Cleavon Little landed the part of Bart. Brooks gushed, “He flew out, and he auditioned for me, and I kissed him and said, ‘You’re the guy.’ And Richard said, ‘We lucked out. We took a good bounce here.'”
While Brooks has admitted he wanted Pryor to be on the writing team to handle Bart’s dialogue, Pryor was much more in tune with Mongo, a white character played by former NFL star Alex Karras. Ironically, this left Brooks contributing most of Bart’s lines.
Another member of the writing team, Andrew Bergman, claimed the entire writing process was organised chaos. He told Creative Screenwriting, “In the beginning, we had five people. One guy left after a couple of weeks. Then, it was basically me, Mel, Richie Pryor and Norman Steinberg. Richie left after the first draft, and then Norman, Mel and I wrote the next three or four drafts. It was a riot.”
The film went on to be enormously successful, making $119million and landing three Academy Award nominations. That’s not bad for a comedy co-written by a guy the studio deemed uninsurable. Here’s the thing, though—the truth of Brooks’ version of events regarding Pryor’s role in Blazing Saddles has been challenged over the years.
For example, no Warner Brothers executive has ever corroborated Brooks’ claim that the studio said Pryor couldn’t be insured. Director Michael Schultz also claimed that Brooks wanted complete credit for the film, so he chased Pryor off the project, while Pryor’s biographer David Henry said the star was completely blindsided when Little told him Brooks didn’t intend to use him in front of the camera in the movie.
