Peter Wesley Wooley (December 26, 1934 – November 15, 2017) was an American film producer, author, director, and production designer with 85 films and television Series to his credit, including the Mel Brooks' films Blazing Saddles and High Anxiety. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for Production Design of the movie The Day After.[1]
Wooley was born in East Liverpool, Ohio, and entered the navy immediately upon graduating from high school. He studied architecture at Kent State.
He married to Linda Lane, a singer who studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and performed at the Copacabana (nightclub), and they had two children, Stephanie Wilson and musician Christopher Wooley.
Wooley began a career in architecture. He went to work in the movie industry in 1966 as a draftsman on the boards at Warner Brothers. He worked as a Set Designer at Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures. Wooley worked as an Assistant Art Director on several television series including Mod Squad. His first series as an Art Director was on the series My World and Welcome to It. Several television series followed and then a move into feature films. Wooley began a long-lasting working relationship with Mel Brooks and was the Production designer on Blazing Saddles and High Anxiety as well as the Brooks-produced film Fatso.
He was the author of the book What! And Give Up Show Business? and a novel called You Only Go 'Round Once. Source: Wikipedia
Do you realize that every time you read a book without pictures you become a production designer, casting director, and costume designer? Hell, you can be a director if you want to. Whether you know it or not, when you read a book without pictures, your brain fills in the blank spots. You can see the people, how they are dressed, which way they are moving, and what it looks like around them. Neat, huh?
-- Peter Wooley
“As I look back on all of this, it comes to me that this story is really what Hollywood is all about. Or at least what it’s supposed to be about,” says Wooley as he describes an antic casting session with Mel Brooks before they gallop off to shoot Blazing Saddles. 
Wooley’s autobiography is a fast-paced, humorous memoir of scouting and creating sets for numerous feature films and TV movies. Designing often translates into transporting or re-making, as when he dismantled and moved a derelict, vermin-infested house for Sounder and re-created Dom DeLuise’s childhood kitchen for Fatso.
Frequently, location scouting comes to nought and the film is aborted. See, for instance, Wooley’s adventures in Nigeria or in Cleveland, where almost-famous boxing impresario and executive producer Don King introduces him to physicians financing his film Blood, Black and White, “so that the doctors could see that we were, indeed, legitimate Hollywood types.” Wooley’s behind-the-scenes cohorts are as interesting as the notables he encounters, which include Robert Mitchum, James Cagney, Anne Bancroft, and Katharine Hepburn. A welcome antidote to star and director bios. Source: PeterWooley.com
A short story about the first time Peter met Miss Katharine Hepburn, and the wild ride around Culver City…
Trivia: Peter Wooley, a design member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, The Society of Motion Picture and Television Art Director's Guild #876, served as an elected representative design member on the renamed/classified Art Director's Guild #800 Board of Directors for several terms during his extensive employment film and television career.
Peter Wooley, a design member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, The Society of Motion Picture and Television Art Director's Guild #876, served as an elected representative design member on the renamed/classified Art Director's Guild #800 Board of Directors for several terms during his extensive employment in his film and television career. Source: IMDb
How I met Mel Brooks and was hired for Blazing Saddles (and God bless Jack Starrett)…
A short video about Harvey Korman and the Teutonic Twat…
Header Photo: Courtesy Topher McDaniel