Richard Pryor

The house he grew up in at Peoria was a brothel, and his grandmother Marie Carter ran it. His mother worked there. His father had been a boxer and worked as a hustler and a pimp. He was sexually abused at seven, lost custody at 10, and was raised by the grandmother — a tall, strict woman who slapped him for any eccentricity and whom he loved anyway. He was expelled from school at 14, and Juliette Whittaker, who ran the theater program at the Carver Center, took him up. He was in the Army from 1958 to 1960 and spent almost all of it in military prison, after he and other Black soldiers beat and stabbed a white soldier who was enjoying the racial scenes in Imitation of Life.

He started out doing a version of Bill Cosby and got where that gets you — Ed Sullivan, Merv Griffin, Carson, Las Vegas. In September 1967, at a sold-out Aladdin Hotel show with Dean Martin in the room, he took the microphone, asked what the hell he was doing there, and walked off. He moved to Berkeley in 1969 and fell in with Huey Newton and Ishmael Reed, and what came back was a different act. Five Grammys followed, for That Nigger's Crazy in 1974, Is It Something I Said in 1975, Bicentennial Nigger in 1976, Live on the Sunset Strip in 1982 and Here and Now in 1983, and an Emmy for writing a Lily Tomlin special. He co-wrote Blazing Saddles. In 1980 Stir Crazy made him the first Black actor paid a million dollars for a picture.

On June 9, 1980, in the middle of that picture, he caught fire. Pryor said he had poured 151-proof rum over himself and lit it. The Los Angeles police said the burns came from an explosion while he was freebasing cocaine. Both accounts sit in the record. He ran down Parthenia Street still burning until police brought him down, and spent six weeks at a burn center with second- and third-degree burns over more than half his body. Two years later he built it into Live on the Sunset Strip as a joke about dunking a cookie in low-fat milk, then waved a lit match at the audience and asked what it was — Richard Pryor running down the street. He had already had a heart attack at 36. Multiple sclerosis came in 1986.

He went to Kenya in 1979 and came home and never again said on stage the word that had titled three of his albums. The Kennedy Center gave him the first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 1998, by then on a mobility scooter. He died at his Los Angeles house on the morning of December 10, 2005, nine days after his 65th birthday, of a third heart attack, on coronary artery disease a forensic pathologist tied to decades of smoking. His widow said he died smiling. He was cremated, and in 2019 she scattered the ashes in the bay at Hana, Hawaii. Comedy Central and Rolling Stone have both since ranked him first among American stand-ups.

Richard Pryor's life against the full span of the corpus.

• That Nigger's Crazy album
  His first Grammy, and the record that separated him from everyone before him 1974
• Blazing Saddles film
  Co-writer — Mel Brooks cast Gene Wilder in the lead instead of him 1974
• Is It Something I Said album
  His second consecutive Grammy for a comedy record 1975
• Bicentennial Nigger album
  Two hundred years of American history, told by a man in chains 1976
• Richard Pryor: Live in Concert film
  The concert film that fixed what stand-up could be 1979
• Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip film
  Where he turned the fire into material 1982

• 1958 aged ~18 Enters the Army and spends almost the whole enlistment in military prison He and other Black soldiers had beaten and stabbed a white soldier in West Germany.
• 1963 aged ~23 Moves to New York and works the clubs He was on bills with performers including Bob Dylan.
• September 1967 aged 26 Walks off the stage at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas Dean Martin was in the audience. Pryor called it an epiphany.
• 1969 aged ~29 Moves to Berkeley and meets Huey Newton and Ishmael Reed
• 1974 aged ~34 Wins his first Grammy for That Nigger's Crazy He also co-wrote Blazing Saddles that year.
• 1979 aged ~39 Visits Kenya and gives up the word for good
• June 9, 1980 aged 39 Catches fire during the making of Stir Crazy Six weeks in a burn center with burns over more than half his body.
• 1986 aged ~46 Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis He said it stood for More Shit.
• December 10, 2005 aged 65 Dies at his Los Angeles home at 65 His body was cremated and the ashes given to his family.

• Sidney Poitier 1927–2022
  First Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, breaking barriers in Hollywood. directed him in Stir Crazy
• Johnny Carson 1925–2005
  Host of The Tonight Show for thirty years and the model for American late-night television. the show that made him national
• George Carlin 1937–2008
  Comedian whose linguistic precision and challenges to censorship made him a defining voice in modern American stand-up. fellow argument about what could be said
• Huey Newton 1942–1989
  Co-founder of the Black Panther Party who paired armed self-defense with free breakfast and clinic programs. met him in Berkeley
• Mark Twain 1835–1910
  Author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, often called the father of American literature. the prize named for him went to Pryor first