7. Gig Young - Blazing Saddles
The role of the Waco Kid, writer/director Mel Brooks knew, would be crucial to the overall success of his raucous (and for the time pretty racy) Western spoof Blazing Saddles. The Waco Kid was essentially a one joke idea -- a take-off on the "old gunslinger gone to seed" cliche -- but with the right actor, there was perhaps real pathos to be wrung out of it, a real weight that would make the absurd comedy surrounding him that much funnier. Mel Brooks' friend Gene Wilder -- with whom he'd worked spectacularly well on The Producers -- was desperate to play the part, but Brooks knew he was entirely wrong for it; the Waco Kid needed to be an older man, someone who looked rugged enough to have been a cowboy, and someone who would also be convincing as an alcoholic, a man who'd had a long affair with the bottle. Brooks offered the part to John Wayne (who found the script hilarious but thought it was "too dirty" for his image) and Dan Dailey (who was too old) before finally settling on Gig Young, who'd made a big splash with his tremendous performance as the seedy, alcoholic promoter in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Turns out Young's alcoholism in that film wasn't entirely acting; on his face day of shooting, in a scene requiring him to be hung upside down in a jail cell, Young had an alcoholic fit so bad that green bile started pouring out of his mouth and nose, and he was completely unable to work. Brooks fired him, and found himself backed into a corner; he was forced to cast the "much too young" Gene Wilder -- who showed up the following Monday morning knowing the scene backwards and forwards, and who was
wonderful in the role.