I'm sad to report that Richard Pryor died this weekend. The great comedian was 65 years old, and died Saturday morning of a heart attack. Pryor had also battled multiple sclerosis for over twenty-five years. Pryor was married six times, and had four children.
Pryor was regarded early in his career as one of the most foul-mouthed comics in show business, but he was widely successful for this expletive-filled insights on life and race relations. Even though his material is modest when compared with some of today's raunchier comedians, it was shocking to us back in the day. Yet he never apologized for it and everybody loved him. His style has influenced such great comedians as Eddie Murphey, the Wayans Brothers, Arsenio Hall, and RobinWilliams.
A series of hit comedies in the '70s and '80s, as well as filmed versions of his concert performances, helped make him Pryor one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood. He was one of the first black performers to have enough leverage to cut his own Hollywood deals. In 1983, he signed a $40 million, five-year contract with Columbia Pictures. His films included "Stir Crazy," "Silver Streak," "Which Way Is Up?" and "Richard Pryor: Live On The Sunset Strip."
Sadly enough, my generation probably doesn't remember Pryor for his comedy sketches or his movies; they remember how in 1980 Pryor was almost killed when he suffered severe burns over 50 percent of his body while freebasing cocaine at his home. An admitted "junkie" at the time, Pryor spent six weeks recovering from the burns and much longer from drug and alcohol dependence. Unfortunately, this terrible incident was the topic of many jokes from his fellow comedians.
Throughout his career, Pryor focused on racial inequality, once joking as the host of the 1977 Academy Awards that Harry Belefonte and Sidney Poitier were the only black members of the Academy. Pryor once marveled "that I live in racist America and I'm uneducated, yet a lot of people love me and like what I do, and I can make a living from it. You can't do much better than that."
I'll laugh and think of Richard Pryor every time I reminisce about the scene in "Stir Crazy" when he was teaching Gene Wilder to walk and talk like a cool dude. They were walking out of jail, strutting and saying "We bad, that's right. We bad." You were bad, Richard Pryor. And we'll miss you.
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