A Look Back at the Life and Career of Cleavon Little: The Star of 'Blazing Saddles' (50 Years Later)

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It's been 32 years since actor Cleavon Little succumbed to colon cancer at only 53 years of age in 1992. He is best known for his ground-breaking role as a Black sheriff hired to save a redneck town in Mel Brooks' 1974 big-screen classic comedy western Blazing Saddles, which is celebrating its 50th Anniversary.

A Closer Look

As entertainment journalist Peggy Herz chronicled in her book, TV 74, Cleavon Little had played a burglar in an episode of All in the Family and a preacher in The Waltons' original two-hour pilot, titled The Homecoming.

That was enough for producer William Asher, formerly of Bewitched (which starred his then-wife Elizabeth Montgomery). Asher offered Little a lead role in the sitcom, Temperatures Rising, which debuted in the fall of 1972 on ABC (which aired Bewitched from September 17, 1964, to the spring of 1972).

"I've learned so much in Temperatures Rising," Little told Herz. That was the actor's initial big break. "I guess you would say the first year in the series was half bad and half good," he relayed. "Technically I learned a lot, but I don't know if you could say I had a good time. Basically, I was learning my craft."

Little had "a marvelous experience" the previous summer. That's when he went on a promotional tour for the show, which was a medical-based sitcom, to a hospital in Philadelphia. "I hadn't realized the effect we would have," he said. "One youngster had fallen out of a tree and broken his arm. He'd also had a tracheotomy, so he couldn't talk. When he saw me he looked like was going to burst."

Rising, Little continued, "seemed personally important to the people we met [at the hospital]. They were feeling something about Temperatures Rising that I hadn't felt. To me, it was career and money. To them, it was something that gave them joy. On that same trip, I went to a horse show and there must have been 75 to 100 young people following me. It was fantastic. It was meaningful to them and great for me. It really made me feel good."

An Awarding Experience

Little won the Tony Award for best actor in a Musical in 1970, when he starred in the play, Purlie. He had also co-starred with Judd Hirsch in I'm Not Rappaport, Herb Gardner's 1986 play about two irascible octogenarians who meet on a bench in Central Park.

"He called me Wednesday to say goodbye," Hirsch told the Times in an interview from 1992. He and Little were together in the show for three years on Broadway and on tour. "We teased each other for years in Rappaport, and I said to him, 'You have to get well so we can tour again.' He was a wonderful actor and a classy man, and I so regret we couldn't have made another tour."

As the Times went on to reveal, Little was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, on June 1, 1939. He was a 1965 graduate of San Diego College and a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan. He made early stage appearances at the La Jolla Playhouse in California, and moved to the New York stage, appearing through the years in such Off-Broadway productions as MacBird!, Keyboard, The Resurrection of Lady Lester, and The Great McDaddy as well as Scuba Duba, a production in which he and Mr. Hirsch first acted together in 1967. He made his Broadway debut in 1968 in Jimmy Shine.

Also in 1968, Little portrayed a hip Hamlet in the New York Shakespeare Festival production. His other Broadway credits included Narrow Road to the Deep North (1972) and All Over Town (1974).

Besides Temperatures Rising, Little's regular TV roles included appearances on Baghdad Cafe and True Colors. He also performed in TV movies such as Separate but Equal opposite Sidney Poitier. He won an Emmy Award as a guest star in Hirsch's classic sitcom Dear John.

Conclusion

As an African-American actor, Cleavon Little was a pioneer in the world of entertainment, whose big and small screen performances remain treasured by countless of his fans around the world.