Pryor, Richard

Prior was born in Peoria , Illinois. When he was 10 years old, his mother left him in the care of his grandmother, a cruel woman, the mistress of a brothel . Pryor grew up with four children abandoned by him. At age 14, he was expelled from school and began to earn in various ways. The first experience of performing on stage for Pryor was playing drums in a nightclub.

From 1958 to 1960, Richard Prior served in the U.S. Army , but spent most of this time in the Army Prison. The reason, according to the weekly newspaper The New Yorker , was the incident that occurred during the deployment of troops in Germany. While watching Douglas Cirk's film Imitation of Life , one white soldier over-emotionally commented on interracial relationships (one of the heroines of the picture is a black woman with a white daughter), which resulted in a fight during which several black soldiers, including Pryor, beat the instigator and cut it with a knife (non-fatal).

In 1963, Pryor moved to New York, where he began his career as a entertainer. One of Pryor's first performances was the opening of the evening ( entertainer ) of singer Nina Simon at The Village Gate club. According to Simon, Pryor showed an acute fear of the stage , so she had to reassure him before the first performance, and in the following evenings.

Before long, Prior began appearing regularly in the television entertainment programs The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Prior's popularity grew rapidly, he decided to try himself on the stage of Las Vegas , where he was waiting for success as a stand-up comedian .

In September 1967, what happened to Prior was what he later called " enlightenment ." On the stage of the Aladdin Hotel (now Planet Hollywood Las Vegas), Richard Prior glanced around the audience, shouted into the microphone: “What the hell am I doing here ?!” (“What the fuck am I doing here !?”) and went backstage. After this incident, Prior began to use profanity in his speeches, as well as the word “ nigga ”. During this period, his first album released by Reprise Records .

In 1967, Pryor's mother dies, and a year later his father.

In 1969, Prior moved to Berkeley , California, where he adjoins the youth counterculture , works closely with human rights activist Huey Newton and playwright Ishmael Reed. Prior continues to record records with his monologues and songs at various recording studios, and since 1970 he has been trying to make his way to television, taking part in various entertainment shows as a guest and performer. He writes scripts for several shows and other comedians. In 1974, he was accused of tax evasion, and Pryor spends 10 days under arrest. In 1977, the NBC channel aired his own television show, The Richard Pryor Show.

In 1979, at the height of his career, Pryor visits Africa. On his return he promises that will never utter the stage word "nigger".

In the 70s and 80s, he appears in episodic and secondary roles in many popular films, including playing a major role in the 1982 film Toy , a remake of the eponymous French comedy with Pierre Richard .

In 1983, Pryor signed a contract with Columbia Pictures for a period of 5 years and worth $ 40 million. Under this contract, Pryor starred in a series of successful films (so the comedic role in " Superman 3 " brought Pryor a fee of $ 4 million). No less popular were “ Millions of Brewster ” in 1985 and “ I See Nothing, I Hear Nothing ” in 1989, where he played great with his partner Gene Wilder .

In 1989, Pryor starred in the directorial debut of Eddie Murphy's " Harlem Nights ", which was very ambiguously accepted by the press. Murphy was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award as the worst director of the year, but at the box office, the film raised more than $ 60 million in the United States and 95 million worldwide. The picture is noteworthy in that it starred representatives of three generations of black comedians at once: Redd Fox, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy.

In the 1990s, due to serious health problems, Richard Pryor practically ceased to act.

In November 1977, Prior suffered a heart attack . In the mid-1980s, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis . In 1990, Prior suffered an even more complex attack, which turned into a triple heart bypass for him. In the early 90s, he was chained to a wheelchair and moved on a motor scooter.

Free-breeding incident

On June 9, 1980, during the filming of the film “ Raging Crazy ” (1980), Prior set himself on fire while drinking strong rum and freezing (a way to use drugs, in particular cocaine, in which the substance is heated over an open fire and its vapors are inhaled). Pryor's daughter claimed that he, being in a narcotic psychosis, doused himself with rum and set it on fire. Embraced in flames, Prior ran out of the house onto the street and fled until he was stopped by a police patrol. He was taken to hospital, where it was found that the burn amounted to 50% of the surface of his body. As a result, Pryor spent 6 weeks in the burn center.

Later, Richard Pryor used this incident in his performances, in particular, in the 1982 comedy album “Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip” (where he jokes that the explosion occurred when he dipped cookies in a glass of skim milk). He also laughed at people who, waving a lit match in the air, asked: “What is this? This is Richard Prior running down the street! ”

Marriages and relationships

Prior was married seven times on five women ^{[1] [2] [3]} :

1. Patrisha Price; married in 1960, divorced in 1961.
2. Shelly Bonus; married in 1967, divorced in 1969.
3. Deborah McGuire; married on September 22, 1977, divorced in 1978.
4. Jennifer Lee; married in august 1981. Pryor and Lee divorced in October 1982, but remarried on June 29, 2001, and remained together until Pryor's death.
5. Flynn Belein; got married in October 1986. Pryor and Belein divorced in April 1987, but remarried on April 1, 1990, but divorced again in July 1991.

Pryor also had a relationship with Geraldine Mason, Pam Grier, and Margot Kidder. ^[4]

In February 2018, musician Quincy Jones , in one of his interviews, stated that Prior had sex with actor Marlon Brando . Jones’s words were later confirmed by Pryor’s widow, Jennifer Lee, noting that Pryor never hid his bisexuality , and would not mind Quincy talking about it ^{[5] [6]} . Prior himself in an autobiography admitted that he had a two-week relationship with a transvestite , which he called "two weeks being gay" ^[7] .

Children

1. Renee Prior (born 1957) is the daughter of Prior and his girlfriend Susan, who was born when Prior was 17 years old.
2. Richard Pryor, Jr. (born 1961), is the son of Pryor and his first wife, Patricia Price.
3. Elizabeth Ann (born April 1967) is the daughter of Pryor and his girlfriend Maxine Anderson (also known as Maxine Silverman).
4. Rain Pryor (born July 16, 1969) is the daughter of Pryor and his second wife Shelley Bonus.
5. Stephen (born 1984) is the son of Pryor and Flynn Belein, who later became his fifth wife.
6. Kelsey (born October 1987) is the son of Pryor and his fifth wife Flynn Belayne.
7. Franklin (born 1987) - son of Pryor and actress Geraldine Mason

Back in 1986, while filming the comedy Millions of Brewster , Prior learned that he was a victim of multiple sclerosis. The disease began to progress in the late 1980s, the comedian appeared stiff in his movements, which is clearly seen in his last major film work “ The Second Self ”. The developed illness forced Pryor to move on a motorized scooter (on it he can be seen in the last appearance on the screen, as the owner of the auto repair shop Arnie in the David Lynch film “ Highway to Nowhere ”).

In 2004, Prior got the 1st place in the list of “100 best stand-up comedians of all time” of the Comedy Central cable channel.

At the end of 2004, Pryor’s sister told the press that Richard had lost her voice due to illness. Nevertheless, on December 9, 2005, his statement appeared on Richard Pryor's official website: “I’m tired of hearing this shit about me that I can’t talk ... not true ... I have good days, bad days ... but I'm still a talking bastard ! "(" I'm sick of hearing this shit about me not talking ... not true ... I have good days, bad days ... but I still am a talkin 'motherfucker! ")

On December 10, 2005, at the age of 65, Richard Pryor died of a heart attack. His body was cremated, the ashes transferred to the family.

• The official site of Richard Pryor (English) . Date of treatment February 13, 2010. Archived on April 8, 2012.