Blazing Saddles screenwriter Norman Steinberg has died at the age of 83

Norman Steinberg, the screenwriter behind comedy classic Blazing Saddles and the Flip Wilson show, has died at the age of 83.

The Brooklyn-born screenwriter and director passed on March 15 at his Hudson Valley home in upstate New York, but his family did not provide any other details.

His other film work includes My Favorite Year, Johnny Dangerously – starring Michael Keaton – Yes, Giorgio, Free to Be…You and Me, and TV show Doctor, Doctor. 

The former lawyer also won an Emmy for his work on the Flip Wilson variety show. 

He is perhaps most well known for his work on Blazing Saddles – on which he teamed up with Mel Brooks, 96. The film was among the highest-grossing ones of 1974. 

Gone: Norman Steinberg, the screenwriter behind comedy classic Blazing Saddles and the Flip Wilson show, has died at the age of 83; Pictured with Ceslie Armstrong in 2008

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Claim to fame: He is perhaps most well known for his work on Blazing Saddles – on which he teamed up with Mel Brooks. The film was among the highest-grossing ones of 1974; Gene Wilder (right) and Cleavon Little pictured in a still from Blazing Saddles

Born on June 6, 1939, in Brooklyn, Steinberg started out his career as a lawyer in Manhattan. 

Steinberg met Brooks in the 1960s at a coffee shop.

After telling him that we wanted to be a comedy writer, he gave Brooks a script for a sitcom called Get Smart! – a James Bond spoof. 

Though the series was canceled, Brooks praised the script as funny, prompting Steinberg to quit his job as a lawyer. 

He later moved to Los Angeles, where he partnered up with George Carlin and started writing for NBC’s The Flip Wilson Show.

And success quickly followed, as that same year, the show’s writers won an Emmy. 

He them teamed up with Brooks, who hired him and Richard Pryor to work on a draft of a screenplay by Andrew Bergman, for a comedy Western titled Tex X.

That show went on to become Blazing Saddles – which starred Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder.

Details: The Brooklyn-born screenwriter passed on March 15 at his Hudson Valley home in upstate New York, according to his family; Pictured with Michael Keaton in 2016

Blazing Saddles follows Bart (Little), who becomes the sheriff of Rock Ridge town.  Wilder played his deputy, the Waco Kid.

The cast also featured Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Madeline Kahn, Burton Gilliam, Alex Karras and Dom DeLuise, among other.