Murphy, Eddie 1961–
Eddie Murphy 1961–
Actor and comedian
Panned by Critics, Adored by Fans
Eddie Murphy once told his tenth grade social studies teacher, as reported in Rolling Stone, “I’m going to be bigger than Bob Hope.” The enormously popular entertainer is well on his way to turning that youthful boast into a statement of fact. He has starred on late-night television, toured before sell-out audiences, recorded a couple of best-selling comedy albums, and had leading roles in several blockbuster movies. Newsweek called him “the hottest performer in the land,” for whom “the sky seems to be the limit.” And Time named him “Hollywood’s uncontested box-office champ.”
Born on April 3, 1961, Murphy was raised in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York. His father, Charles Murphy, was a New York City policeman and amateur comedian, and his mother, Lillian, a phone operator. When Eddie was three years old, his parents divorced. Later, when his mother was forced to spend an extended period in the hospital, he and his older brother Charles were taken care of by a woman whom Murphy recalled as “a kind of black Nazi.” He told Richard Corliss of Time, “Those were baaaad days. Staying with her was probably the reason I became a comedian.”
When Murphy was eight years old, his father died, and a year later, his mother married Vernon Lynch, a foreman at a Breyer’s ice cream factory and part-time boxing instructor. Shortly thereafter the family moved to the predominantly black middle-class suburb of Roosevelt, Long Island. Growing up, Murphy spent a great deal of time watching television, practicing impressions of such cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry. “My mother says I never talked in my own voice—always cartoon characters,” he related to Gene Lyons of Newsweek. “Dudley DoRight, Bullwinkle. I used to do Sylvester the Cat (’thufferin’ thuccotash’) all the time.” He also developed impressions of comics like Laurel and Hardy and Jerry Lewis. Film director John Landis later told Corliss that Murphy’s unique point of view is rooted in his early perceptions of TV: “I grew up hooked on TV, but Eddie is TV. His world experience comes from the tube.”
Before long, Murphy began working on comedy routines after school, and developing his comedy skills became his passion. At Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School, he became an expert at “ranking”—trading witty insults with his classmates. Murphy made his first stage appearance in 1976, when, at the age of 15, he hosted a talent show at
At a Glance…
Born Edward Regan Murphy, April 3, 1961, in Brooklyn, NY; son of Charles (a police officer) and Lillian (a telephone operator) Murphy; stepson of Vernon Lynch (a foreman at an ice cream factory); married Nicole Mitchell, March 18, 1993; children: Isabella, Miles Mitchell. Education: Attended Nassau Community College.
Comedian and actor. Began performing as a stand-up comedian at New York City comedy clubs while in high school; later worked at numerous clubs on the East Coast; regular cast member of television series Saturday Night Live, 1980-84; actor appearing in films, including 48 HRS., 1982, Trading Places, 1983, Best Defense, 1984, Beverly Hills Cop, 1984, The Golden Child, 1986, Beverly Hills Cop II, 1987, Coming to America, 1988, Harlem Nights, 1989, Another 48 HRS., 1990, Boomerang, 1992, and The Distinguished Gentleman, 1992; appeared as a stand-up comic in concert films, including Delirious (HBO special), 1983, and Raw, 1987; has released comedy and music albums. Founder of charitable foundation Yeah!
Selected awards: Emmy Award nomination for outstanding comedy performance and outstanding comedy writing for Saturday Night Live; Grammy Award nomination for best comedy album, 1982, for Eddie Murphy; Golden Globe Award and Image Award, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), both 1983, both for Trading Places; Grammy Award for best comedy album, 1984, for Eddie Murphy: Comedian; Golden Globe Award nomination for best actor, Star of the Year Award, and People’s Choice Award for favorite all-around male entertainer, all 1985, all for Beverly Hills Cop.
Addresses: Home —Englewood, NJ. Agent —c/o Entertainment Management Associates Ltd., 232 East 63rd St., New York, NY 10021.
the Roosevelt Youth Center. He did an impersonation of soul singer Al Green, and the kids loved it. “Looking out at the audience, I knew that it was show biz for the rest of my life,” the performer recalled to Corliss.
Murphy soon started performing stand-up comedy at local clubs. According to Lyons, he was “making between $25 and $50 a week appearing in ’Gong Shows’ at Long Island nightclubs where he was still too young to buy a drink.” He was a less than dedicated student, and schoolwork took a back seat to his evening club dates. “My focus was my comedy,” he explained in Time. “You could usually find me in the lunchroom trying out my routines on the kids to perform them in clubs later that night.” His inattention to the books, however, caught up with him when he had to repeat the tenth grade. “As vain as I was,” he told Corliss, “I don’t have to tell you what that did to me. Well, I went to summer school, to night school, I doubled up on classes, and I graduated only a couple of months late.” In his yearbook, Murphy declared his career plans: comedian.
Enrolling at Nassau Community College to please his mother, Murphy pursued his career goal by continuing to appear at area clubs. Just a few months out of high school, he performed at the Comic Strip, a popular Manhattan club. One of the owners, Robert Wachs, noted to Lyons that Murphy’s “material wasn’t out of this world, but he had great presence.” That first appearance led to club dates throughout the East Coast. Wachs and his partner, Richard Tienken, later became Murphy’s managers. Like comedian and actor Richard Pryor—one of Murphy’s childhood idols—his stand-up act is raunchy, filled with four-letter words. Unlike his protege, however, Murphy has always believed in clean living: he doesn’t smoke, drink, or use drugs.
When Murphy learned that the producers of NBC-TV’s series Saturday Night Live were looking for a black cast member for the 1980-81 season, he jumped at the chance to audition. After six tries, he was finally hired as a featured player, or as he told Richard Rein of People, “an extra.” Murphy appeared only occasionally and didn’t win a spot as a regular until later in the season. Because that year’s show was a flop, NBC cleaned house, and most of the cast was fired.
The only performers retained for the next season of Saturday Night Live were Murphy and Joe Piscopo. Murphy emerged as the show’s star. As Rein explained, “He did wickedly adept—and less than worshipful—impressions of [boxer] Muhammad Ali, [actor and comedian] Bill Cosby, [musician] Stevie Wonder and Jerry Lewis.” He also created some memorable new characters, including Mister Robinson, a ghetto version of TV’s Mister Rogers who spewed comments like “Can you say ’scumbucket,’ boys and girls?,” and a grown-up version of the Little Rascals’ Buckwheat. Other hilarious characters included an irreverent version of Gumby; Velvet Jones, a pimp and huckster selling a book called “I Wanna Be a Ho,” a guide for would-be prostitutes; and Tyrone Green, an illiterate convict-poet penning pieces like “Cill My Lanlord.” The New York Times soon proclaimed that “Eddie Murphy has stolen the show.”
A Budding Megastar
In 1982 Murphy recorded an album of his stand-up material. It received a Grammy nomination and eventually went gold. In that same year, he landed his first motion picture role in 48 HRS. Director Walter Hill selected Murphy on the basis of some videotapes of Saturday Night Live that he had seen. Murphy played a fast-talking convict who is released from prison for two days to help a policeman, played by Nick Nolte, track down a pair of killers. Once again, Murphy “stole the show,” according to People. Newsweek called it “a fast, furious and funny movie debut.” Released in December, the film was an instant hit, grossing more than $5 million in its first week.
In mid-1983 Murphy’s second movie, Trading Places, was released. Costarring Dan Aykroyd, this film was another hit for the budding megastar. Director John Landis declared in Time, “Eddie is definitely a movie star now.” Both 48 HRS. and Trading Places ended up among the top ten grossing films of 1983. Murphy also launched a major concert tour that year. In addition, he recorded his second comedy album, Eddie Murphy: Comedian. This time he won a Grammy, and the album went gold.
The next year Murphy left Saturday Night Live after his fourth season. His next film, however, titled Best Defense and costarring Dudley Moore, was, stated Richard Grenier of Commentary, a “failure,” causing some people to wonder if Murphy was a “mere novelty, possibly just a flash in the pan.” But Murphy followed Best Defense with a blockbuster hit movie, Beverly Hills Cop, which had a lead role originally slated for actor Sylvester Stallone. It became Murphy’s first starring role, and according to Grenier, writing in the New York Times, it broke box-office records: “Beverly Hills Cop has quite stunned Hollywood. Released in early December, it... grossed more than its next five competitors combined.”
As a result of Murphy’s astounding success, Paramount Pictures signed the 23-year-old to a $25 million, six-picture contract. Added Grenier, “No black actor has ever come anywhere near the position Eddie Murphy holds today. He is quite simply a historic figure.” In an attempt to explain Murphy’s tremendous appeal, Lyons wrote, “Murphy’s most valuable gift as a performer is his saucy charm; he’s not wicked, just naughty. He’s a good little bad boy who can get away with murder when he smiles.” Beverly Hills Cop eventually reached the number nine position on the list of all-time box-office hits.
Murphy was not being universally praised, however. Grenier noted that the Village Voice made a “vitriolic attack” on Murphy for being an expression of “comedy for the 80’s,” one of “[U.S. President Ronald] Reagan’s court jesters.” In addition, because of his penchant for doing homosexual jokes, a militant gay group took out full-page ads in Billboard and Rolling Stone to denounce him as a “homophobe.”
Paramount’s “Golden Child”
Murphy’s next film, released in 1986, was The Golden Child. A number of critics panned the movie: David Ehrenstein of American Film called it “a confused fantasyadventure,” and David Handelman of Rolling Stone labeled it “abysmal.” But, despite negative reviews, the movie fared well at the box office. Janet Maslin of the New York Times commented that Paramount “has done a much better job of marketing The Golden Child than making it.” She added that it was probably just the popular Murphy’s presence that attracted moviegoers.
Early in 1987, Murphy was beset by bad news. In March, Handleman reported, Murphy “made headlines when taken to court by his first manager, a small-time agent named King Broder.” Fired in 1980, Broder wanted a cut of all Murphy’s earnings since that time. Murphy settled out of court, paying nearly $700,000. Later that same month, an Atlantic City tax-shelter scam into which Murphy had invested $240,000 was uncovered. The following month he was hit with a paternity suit.
Misfortune with his personal finances, however, was offset by the box office success of Murphy’s next film, Beverly Hills Cop II, released in 1987. As with The Golden Child, many critics downgraded the film. USA Today called it “a robotic, hard-sell sequel by folks whose Malibu Beach house mortgage payment is due.” Maslin quipped, “Lively as it is, Beverly Hills Cop II can’t help but suffer from the lack of any originality at all.” Handleman exclaimed that Murphy “has ended up producing soulless, self-serving junk.”
Some critics, though, liked the sequel. Michael Buckley of Films in Review stated, “Murphy repeats his character’s bravado, pushy ways and funny bits—and they work.” Fortunately for Paramount, the moviegoing public also liked Beverly Hills Cop II. The New York Times reported that the film “proved itself a box-office blockbuster... marking up the biggest single-day earnings in film history,” a staggering $9.7 million. At a press conference for Beverly Hills Cop II, Murphy also introduced what he called “The Black Pack,” a group of up-and-coming young black comics that included Robert Townsend, Arsenio Hall, Keenen Ivory Wayans, and Paul Mooney.
Murphy’s next film, Raw, in which he performs a stand-up comic routine, was released in December of 1987. “This feature-length concert film,” stated Maslin in a review, “is hilarious, putting Mr. Murphy on a par with Mr. [Richard] Pryor at his best.” She continued, “Even the ushers were laughing.” Audiences poured in to see the movie, and it became the biggest-grossing concert film ever.
Panned by Critics, Adored by Fans
After Murphy’s rise to stardom, some African Americans chided him for not supporting black causes. The truth, according to Walter Leavy of Ebony, is that all along Murphy was working quietly behind the scenes, donating to organizations like the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change. At the 1988 Academy Awards show, however, Murphy went public, calling the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to task for having awarded only three Oscars to black actors in its 60-year history.
In the summer of 1988 Murphy came out with a film that was a change of pace for him. In Coming to America, a lighthearted romantic comedy, Murphy’s character is a departure from the brash, swaggering types of his previous films. Peter Travers of People liked the change: “This is Murphy’s most heartfelt and hilarious performance. And his riskiest.” Other critics knocked it. David Ansen of Newsweek wrote, “Coming to America may be more interesting as a career move than as a movie.” Vincent Canby observed in the New York Times that the film has a “screenplay that seems to have escaped its doctors before it was entirely well.” The public continued to flock to see Murphy, however, and the movie ended up as the second-biggest grossing hit of the year.
Unfortunately, Coming to America also brought additional legal problems for Murphy. Washington Post columnist Art Buchwald and writer Shelby Gregory, reported a People correspondent, alleged that Murphy stole their ideas for the film’s screenplay. Buchwald said he did a story treatment that was optioned to Paramount for Murphy; Gregory claimed he did a screenplay that was given to Murphy. Gregory filed a $10 million lawsuit against Murphy and his co-screenwriters. In 1990 a superior court judge in California ruled that Coming to America was indeed based on the treatment that Buchwald had submitted and ordered Paramount to pay the columnist and Alain Bernheim, a producer and co-plaintiff, a lump sum and percentage of the movie’s net profits.
Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Murphy, a superstar with unrivaled marquee value, continued to make films that critics felt were vapid star vehicles rather than thoughtful showcases for the actor’s prodigious comic gifts. In 1989 Murphy made his directorial debut with Harlem Nights a sprawling 1930s black gangster flick that he also wrote and produced. Although the film made $18 million in its first weekend of release, the premiere was marred by violence in theaters throughout the country, leaving one person dead and many injured.
In the eyes of some critics, the tempest surrounding the opening was in sharp contrast to the film’s dullness and obviousness. “The last thing anyone would have expected from the first film directed by Eddie Murphy is this tame, play-it-very-safe variation on The Sting,” Ralph Novak wrote in People. “What this film suffers from is lack of fun.” Other reviewers called the language of Harlem Nights overly profane and said that Murphy, a brilliant sketch writer, had composed a mechanical, rarely funny, full-length script. But Walter Leavy, writing in Ebony, praised the film for juxtaposing Murphy’s comedic talents with those of the legendary Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor. “For some, it might be just another movie, but the blending of these three generations of comedy is one of those events that can only be described as ’historic.’”
An Entertainment Institution
Murphy’s 1990 effort, Another 48 HRS., directed by Walter Hill, was generally ridiculed as a bland, stale remake of the hugely successful 1982 original. While the first film was praised for the colorful odd-couple interplay between Murphy and Nick Nolte, the sequel, according to Vincent Canby of the New York Times, collapsed under the weight of poor writing, uninteresting direction, and uninspired acting. “Mr. Murphy has two comic moments, which aren’t enough for a feature-length film,” Canby wrote. “He speaks dialogue as if he hadn’t had time to figure out what it meant. When in doubt as to what to do, he adopts an expression of ineffable cool: that is, of heavy-lidded, sexually alert boredom. It’s a lazy, unresponsive performance.” Some critics, painting broader brush strokes, lamented the death of Murphy’s cutting-edge, risk-taking parts and the emergence of safe, forgettable roles that bordered on self parody. But other reviewers, calling the film a harmless bit of fun, saw just the opposite. David Denby wrote in New York, “Eddie Murphy is less funny than before but less slick as well. At times, he’s almost human—he’s beginning to come down off the incomparable high of being Eddie Murphy. When he comes down a little farther, he may turn into an actor.”
In 1991 Murphy, who had criticized his previous contract with Paramount, secured for himself a four-movie deal with the film company, which had recently undergone a management shake-up. Hopes were rekindled that Murphy would now be surrounded by people who cared not only about money—Murphy’s films had grossed more than $1 billion at that point—but also about the quality of the films featuring the star. The first movie made under that contract, Boomerang, confirmed those hopes.
Although the 1992 Boomerang received mixed reviews, the mix was in Murphy’s favor to an extent that it hadn’t been in years. The movie, created by the brother team of Warrington and Reginald Hudlin, makers of the critically praised film House Party, featured Murphy as a hot shot cosmetics executive whose woman-chasing lechery is superseded, to his dismay, by the man-hunting zeal of his new female boss, played by actress Robin Givens. Reviewing the comedic tale of sexual role reversal in the black boardroom, Jay Carr wrote in the Boston Globe, “It took him a while, but Eddie Murphy finally got the message that the disarming cockiness of a 19-year-old Saturday Night Live star had bloated into off-putting arrogance 10 years later. So, following the public cooling to Murphy in Harlem Nights and Another 48 HRS., he went back to the drawing board for some image retooling. The result is Boomerang, a smart comedy that sends a few interesting messages, the big one being that Murphy has learned his lesson.”
In December of 1992 Murphy appeared in another comedy film, The Distinguished Gentleman. In the role of Thomas Jefferson Johnson, Murphy is a resourceful con man whose ultimate scam is getting elected to the U.S. Congress, where he hopes to get rich on donations from lobbyists. Johnson soon faces a moral dilemma, however, when he learns that the electric companies that pay off his congressional committee are responsible for erecting environmentally unsafe power lines. Detroit Free Press film critic Judy Gerstel noted, “The Distinguished Gentleman provides Murphy with a role that’s both more sophisticated and more sympathetic than usual. It does this without sacrificing too much of the popular Murphy screen personality—that patented wink, punch, grin.”
As an entertainment institution powerful enough to call his own shots, Murphy has branched out from movies into the recording industry. His first album, 1984’s How Could It Be?, went gold and featured a spin-off hit, “Party All the Time,” and his 1989 release, So Happy, displayed his perfectionism and musical gifts. “While most of the songs are as sexually raunchy as anything ever put on vinyl, Murphy’s vocal talent and the overall quality of the recording are better than 95 percent of the stuff flooding record stores these days,” Charles L. Sanders wrote in Ebony. A third album, Love’s Alright, debuted in October of 1992 and featured the single “Yeah!,” a collaboration with such pop superstars as Paul McCartney, Janet Jackson, and Hammer. The song’s proceeds were to be donated to Yeah!, the charitable foundation that was founded by Murphy.
“I live to make people happy,” Murphy told James McBride of People, and his huge popularity attests that he’s done exceptionally well in achieving this goal. In fact, the ability to leave his audiences happy in whatever he does may very well be the simple secret to his phenomenal success. As Corliss wrote, “More than any other entertainer in recent memory, Eddie Murphy just plain makes people feel good.”
Selected discography
Eddie Murphy (comedy), Columbia, 1982.
Eddie Murphy: Comedian (comedy), Columbia, 1983.
How Could It Be?, Columbia, 1984.
So Happy, Columbia, 1989.
Love’s Alright, 1992.
Sources
American Film, December 1987; September 1988.
Boston Globe, July 3, 1992.
Christian Science Monitor, July 6, 1990.
Commentary, March 1985.
Detroit Free Press, July 1, 1992; December 4, 1992.
Ebony, July 1988; November 1989; January 1990.
Entertainment Weekly, July 10, 1992.
Esquire, December 1985.
Films in Review, August-September 1987.
Interview, September 1987.
New Republic, December 18, 1989.
Newsweek, January 7, 1985; July 4, 1988.
New York, June 25, 1990.
New York Times, March 10, 1985; February 15, 1987; May 20, 1987; May 28, 1987; December 19, 1987; June 29, 1988; January 9, 1990; June 8, 1990; September 24, 1991.
Oakland Press (Oakland County, MI), August 23, 1992.
People, January 25, 1982; January 31, 1983; July 4, 1988; August 8, 1988; December 4, 1989; December 18, 1989.
Rolling Stone, July 7, 1983; July 2, 1987.
Time, July 11, 1983; January 7, 1985; July 4, 1988; July 6, 1992.
—Greg Mazurkiewicz and Isaac Rosen
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Murphy, Eddie 1961–