Leonard Maltin writes of the late Tony Martin. That man had a helluva career.
Hey, here's something I'll bet most folks don't know. You may recall Mr. Martin in the Marx Brothers movie, The Big Store. He sang a song called "The Tenement Symphony," a treacly ode to mixed ethnicities and the glories of squalid living.
In the final shooting script of Blazing Saddles, there was a scene where Bart (Cleavon Little) goes back to visit the guys on the work crew. They all crowd around him and marvel at the sight of a black man as sheriff. All that is in the finished movie.
What isn't is that suddenly, Tony Martin appears. He's dressed in a tux with a cowboy hat and he says — this is from memory, I don't know where my copy of the script is — "Don't you all see what this means? A tin star on a black man's chest. This is a tremendous step forward for all of us, whatever our heritage, working side by side to bring all of America together in a grand symphony of brotherhood."
And then he begins performing "The Tenement Symphony" with a full orchestra and gets about sixteen bars into it before the work crew boss comes in and shoots him or shoos him off or something.
The first time I met Mel Brooks, I asked him about the scene. He said it had never been filmed because they were unable to clear the rights to the song. In a way, I'm glad. If they had, my friends and I — knowing the number from the Marx Brothers movie and finding it hilarious even in that context — would still be in the floor of the Avco Theater in Westwood, laughing.