Andrew Bergman (b. 1945) is a successful comedy screenwriter and occasional author of hard-boiled mysteries. After receiving a PhD in American history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Bergman sold Tex X, a novella about a black sheriff in the Old West, to Warner Bros. The studio hired him to turn his story into a screenplay, as part of a team of comedy legends led by Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor. The result was Blazing Saddles (1974), which is widely regarded as one of the funniest films of all time. After that early success, Bergman published the first two novels in a mystery series starring Jack LeVine, a hard-boiled Jewish PI. After The Big Kiss-Off of 1944 and Hollywood and… LeVine, he continued writing and directing films, producing such classics as Fletch, The Freshman, and Soapdish. In 2001 he returned to LeVine in Tender Is LeVine. Bergman continues to live and write in New York City.