Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor was an American stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style. As an actor, he starred mainly in comedies such as Silver Streak and Blue Collar. He also appeared in several popular films, including Lady Sings the Blues and Superman III.
About Richard Pryor in brief
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor was an American stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style. Pryor’s body of work includes the concert movies and recordings. As an actor, he starred mainly in comedies such as Silver Streak and Blue Collar. He also appeared in several popular films, including Lady Sings the Blues and Superman III. He won an Emmy Award and five Grammy Awards. In 1974, he also won two American Academy of Humor awards and the Writers Guild of America Award. The first-ever Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was presented to him in 1998. He was listed at number one on Comedy Central’s list of all-time greatest stand- up comedians. In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked him first on its list of the 50 bestStand-up comics of all time. Pryor was born on December 1, 1940, in Peoria, Illinois. He grew up in a brothel run by his grandmother, Marie Carter, where his alcoholic mother, Gertrude L. L. Pryor, was a prostitute. Pryor served in the U.S. Army from 1958 to 1960, but spent virtually the entire stint in an army prison. In 1963 Pryor moved to New York City and began performing regularly in clubs alongside performers such as Bob Dylan and Woody Allen. Soon, he began appearing regularly on television variety shows, such as The Ed Sullivan Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
His popularity led to success as a comic in Las Vegas. In September 1967 Pryor had what he described in his autobiography Pryor Convictions as an “epiphany” The first five tracks on the 2005 compilation CD EvolutionRevolution: The Early Years capture Pryor in this period. In this period, Pryor began working profanity into his act, including the word nigger. His first comedy recording, the eponymous 1968 debut release on the DoveReprise label, captures the evolution of Pryor’s comedy routine. In 1969, his parents died—his mother in 1967 and his father in 1968, where he immersed himself in Berkeley, California. In the 1970s Pryor wrote for television shows such as Sanford and Son, The Flip Wilson Show and a 1973 Lily Tomlin special, which he shared with Tomlin. He shared an Emmy award for an episode of Saturday Night Live with the likes of Huey P. Newton and Ishmael Reed. He died of cancer at the age of 48 in 1998, and is survived by his wife and three children. He is buried in California, near where he grew up, in a suburb of Los Angeles. He had four children raised in his grandmother’s brothel, and was sexually abused at age seven, and expelled from school at the aged of 14. Pryor and several other black soldiers beat and stabbed a white soldier in Imitation of Life, although not fatally. In 1999, Pryor was incarcerated for an incident that occurred while he was stationed in West Germany.
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