Post by Journey2herpast on Dec 10, 2005 19:13:51 GMT -5
Richard Pryor, whose blunt, blue and brilliant comedic confrontations confidently tackled what many stand-up comic's before him deemed too shocking—and thus off-limits—to broach died this morning, December 10, 2005. He was 65 . He suffered a heart attack at his home in San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles early Saturday morning. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
The comedian's tremendous body of work, a political movement in itself, was steeped in race, class, social commentary, and encompassed the stage, screen, records and television. He won five Grammys, an Emmy and was an Academy Award nominee for his role in "Lady Sings the Blues" in 1972.
At one point the highest paid black performer in the entertainment industry, the highly-lauded but misfortune-dogged comedian inadvertently became a de facto role model—a lone wolf figure whom many an up-and-coming comic from Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock to Robin Williams and Richard Belzer—have paid due homage. Pryor alone kicked stand-up humor into a brand new realm.
"Richard Pryor is the groundbreaker," comedian Keenan Ivory Wayans once said. "For most of us he was the inspiration to get into comedy and also showed us that you can be black and have a black voice and be successful."
Pryor had a history both bizarre and grim: self-immolation (1980), heart attack (1990) and marathon drug and alcohol use (that he finally kicked in the 1990s). Yet Pryor somehow—oftentimes miraculously it seemed—continued steady on the prowl, even after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986, a disease that robbed him of his trademark physical presence.
Both verbally potent and physically eloquent, Pryor worked as an actor and writer as well as a stand-up comic throughout the '70s and into the '80s. He won Grammys for his groundbreaking, socially irreverent, concert albums "Bicentennial black person" and "That black person's Crazy." And in 1973 he walked away with a writing Emmy for a Lily Tomlin television special.
Pryor starred in more than 30 feature films—from "Lady Sings the Blues" and the semiautobiographical directing turn in "Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling," to the less memorable "The Toy" and "Superman III." He also co-starred with comedian Gene Wilder in the highly popular buddy films "Silver Streak" and "Stir Crazy."
It was however his concert films—particularly "Richard Pryor—Live in Concert" (1979)—which many critics consider to be his best work.
Called genius by some, self-destructive madman by others, Pryor, throughout the tumult of a zigzagging career, remained an inclement force of nature.
"He was actually one of the rare people of that era who was a product of the chitlin' circuit, and the white, liberal, coffee shop thing," said journalist and culture critic Nelson George. "Where Bill Cosby immediately made it into the crossover realm . . . Pryor was a product of both. He was able to draw upon his kind of raw black experience through his storytelling skills, and that was accessible to a hipper white crowd. He mixed all of those things—but always had a singular vision. I think it's why he became such a huge star."
In 1975, Pryor appeared on "Saturday Night Live," at the time considered to be among TV's most irreverent shows. But it wasn't until Pryor went on the air that "SNL" instituted for the first time a five-second delay to ensure that Pryor did not ruffle the NBC censors. (Pryor also had his own short-lived series, "The Richard Pryor Show," which was axed after only four episodes in 1977, the victim of head office scrutiny and low ratings—he was pitted against the hugely popular "Laverne and Shirley" and "Happy Days".)
Pryor was best known for his searing analysis about the state race relations. He was honored by the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts with the first Mark Twain Prize for American humor. "I feel great about accepting this prize," he wrote in his official response, his familiar edge glinting through, "I feel great to be honored on a par on with a great white man—now that's funny!"
The comedian was poignant in his remarks to a Washington Post reporter shortly after winning the honor. "I'm a pioneer. That's my contribution. I broke barriers for black comics. I was being Richard Pryor; that was me on that stage. But I was on drugs at the time."
Born in Peoria, Illinois in 1940, Pryor grew up in one of his grandmother Marie's string of sleeperhouses that catered to various black entertainers and vaudeville performers. Pryor developed and honed his comedic skills at an early age as class clown, and later was tapped by mentor, Juliette Whittaker, director on the Carver Community Center in Carver, Illinois as a "fourteen year old genius." She helped to develop his stage and dramatic skills.
A father by 14 and Army vet by 17, Pryor already had a wealth of material from which to draw.
Pryor worked the Midwestern chitlin circuit until the early 1960s when he took his show on the road to New York's Greenwich Village, which was in the throes of sociopolitical transition.
"A tentative but innovative rapprochement had been established between white audiences and a select group of black comedians," explains journalist and historian Mel Watkins in his book, "On the Real Side" (Simon & Schuster, 1994). "The transitional comics of the fifties (Timmie Rogers, Slappy White, and Nipsey Russell) had made inroads and in varying degrees thingy Gregory, Bill Cosby and Godfrey Cambridge all had bridged the racial impasse."
"Richard basically blazed a trail for black comedy. He defined what it is. As a young black man he was saying what he felt—and was shocking," comedian Damon Wayans once said. "You were supposed to be smiling and laughing and shucking and jiving and he said, 'F--- that and f--- you for thinking that.' "
In his 30 years as a performer, Pryor recorded more than 20 albums, and appeared in more than 40 films, including, "Wild in the Streets" (1968); "You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose that Beat" (1971); "Hit," "The Mack" and "Uptown Saturday Night" (1974); "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings," "Car Wash (1976); "Greased Lightning" and "Which Way Is Up?" (1977); "Blue Collar" and "California Suite" (1978); "The Muppet Movie" (1979); "In God We Trust," and "Wholly Moses" (1980); "Bustin' Loose" (1981); "Some Kind of Hero" and "Brewster's Millions" in (1985); "Critical Condition," (1987); "Moving" (1988); "See No Evil, Hear No Evil" and "Harlem Nights" (1989) and "Another You" (1991).
Pryor became the highest paid black performer at the time in 1983 with his $4 million paycheck for "Superman III."
Along with his Grammys, and Emmy, and the Oscar nod, his script for the comedy satire, "Blazing Saddles" written with Mel Brooks, won the American Writers Guild Award and the American Academy of Humor Award in 1974.
Struggling with his own sense of pride in another realm, Pryor found himself slowed and increasingly incapacitated in later years as MS took hold. And though he traveled around in a motorized scooter, he continued to write and perform throughout the 90s — one-nighters in the Main Room at Sunset Boulevard's Comedy Store and an episode about MS on CBS' hospital drama "Chicago Hope" which he helped to write and co-starred with daughter, Rain.
Pryor, who married six times, is also survived by sons Steven and Richard and daughters Elizabeth and Renee.
Even with the help and therapeutic sparring of ex-wife Jennifer Lee, the disease left the once physically inexhaustible and seemingly insurmountable Pryor immobilized and imprisoned.