Pryor, Richard

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Pryor, Richard

December 1, 1940

Born in Peoria, Illinois, comedian Richard Franklin Lenox Thomas Pryor overcame a troubled life in an extended family headed by his grandmother, Marie Carter, to become a preeminent comedian, film star, screenwriter, producer, and director, beginning in the early 1960s.

During Pryor's boyhood, Peoria was like the Deep South. Segregation and discrimination in housing, employment, and places of public accommodation were deeply embedded in southern Illinois. Forty percent of the

black population of Peoria was unemployed, while 32 percent worked for the Works Project Administration (WPA). Odd jobs supported the rest, including the Pryor family, which ran small carting firms, pool halls, and, Pryor claimed, houses of prostitution. Peoria remained segregated for a time even after the 1954 Supreme Court decision that forbade it.

At age eleven, Pryor, the son of Gertrude Thomas and Leroy "Buck" Carter Pryor, and, he once said, the seventh of twelve "Pryor kids," began acting at the Carver Community Center under the guidance of the drama teacher, Juliette Whittaker. Over the years she became the recipient of some of Pryor's performing awards; he also contributed to the private school she later founded, the Learning Tree.

After dropping out of school, Pryor joined the army in 1958, where his life was no less troublesome. After military service, he worked for his father's carting firm and the Caterpillar factory in Peoria. He also haunted the local clubs and watched television for the appearances of African-American entertainers such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Bill Cosby, personalities he wanted to emulate and eventually replace.

Within a few years Pryor was playing small clubs in East St. Louis, Chicago, Windsor (Canada), Buffalo, Youngstown, and Cleveland. Much of his comic material was drawn from his army service and the early Cosby comedy routines. By 1964 he had attracted enough attention to be booked for his first national television appearance, on Rudy Vallee's Broadway Tonight show. Three years later, after stops on the Ed Sullivan, Merv Griffin, and Johnny Carson shows, Pryor appeared in the film The Busy Body with Sid Caesar and other comedians—the first of more than forty films he acted in, wrote, produced, and/or directed into the early 1990s. His first major role was in Lady Sings the Blues (1972), with Diana Ross, in which Pryor played a character called Piano Man.

The Richard Pryor Show ran briefly on NBC-TV for part of 1977. It was innovative and conveyed a wide range of both comedy and tenderness, but it was too daring for the executives of NBC. Amid legal wrangling, the show went off the air and, typically, Pryor laid the blame on NBC. In 1984 he played himself as a boy in Pryor's Place, a children's show that aired on Saturday mornings. It too was short-lived, this time without recrimination.

From 1970 through 1979, Pryor starred or costarred in twenty-one films. He contributed to the script of Blazing Saddles (1973), and in the same year wrote for and appeared on The Flip Wilson Show and was a co-writer for Lily Tomlin's television specials, for which he won Emmy Awards in 1973 and 1974. He continued to perform in clubs and theaters around the country; these performances provided material for his two Richard Pryor Live in Concert films (both in 1979). The recordings of his performances earned him three Grammy Awards: That Nigger's Crazy, 1974; Is It Something I Said?, 1975; and Bicentennial Nigger, 1976. That Nigger's Crazy also became a certified gold and platinum album.

In 1980 he produced his first film, Bustin' Loose, star-ring himself and Cicely Tyson. Two years later he produced and wrote Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip. Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, which Pryor produced, directed, and helped write, was based upon his near-fatal self-immolation that occurred when he was freebasing cocaine in 1980. In 1986 Pryor, who had also survived two heart attacks, discovered that he had multiple sclerosis, but he continued to perform onstage.

Pryor was known as a "crossover" star, one who appealed to both black and white moviegoers. This label resulted from the "buddy" films he made with Gene Wilder—Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), and See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989)—although he had starred with white actors in sixteen other movies. Few of Pryor's films during the 1980s were memorable, not even the concert film Richard Pryor: Here and Now (1983), although Brew-ster's Millions (1985) and Harlem Nights (1989) attracted loyal audiences. But Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip most typified his pungent, raunchy comedy that echoed the African-American man in the street, which was precisely what made Pryor the great comedian he was.

When he was at his peak, few comedians could match Pryor's popularity. Most contemporary comedy is said to be "post-Pryor" because of the standards he set. His life was his act, but he shaped his personal experiences into rollicking comedy. His major themes were racism in its several forms and the battle of the sexes. Usually, the women bested the men. His topics were current and to the point, and his favorite character was an old, foul-mouthed, wise black man named Mudbone from Mississippi.

Richard Pryor became the first recipient of the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain prize for humor on October 20, 1998. Because of ill health, Pryor was not able to get out of his chair, but in his official response he wrote, "It is nice to be regarded on a par with a great white man—now that's funny! Seriously though, two things people throughout history have had in common are hatred and humor. I am proud that, like Mark Twain, I have been able to use humor to lessen people's hatred."

In August 2004 the first Richard Pryor Ethnic Comedy Award was given at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.

See also Comedians; Cosby, Bill; Davis, Sammy, Jr.