Becoming Richard Pryor

by Scott Saul

  There are two problems with this view. First, while one can lament all that Pryor didn’t accomplish on-screen, the more remarkable story is how Pryor became one of the most unlikely stars in Hollywood history, jimmying a window open, sneaking into the dream factory, and taking over one of its projection rooms. Lady Sings the Blues, Wattstax, and Silver Streak—each of these breakthrough films for Pryor had been conceived with him in a minimal role at best, then were jolted into a new shape by his improvisations. In his Hollywood career, Pryor was aided and abetted by a wide range of collaborators, mostly Jewish or black, who believed in his wayward talent and sometimes staked their credibility upon it. The list of these collaborators is long, and might start with the names John Badham, Mel Brooks, Michael Campus, Rob Cohen, Berry Gordy, James B. Harris, Arthur Hiller, Max Julien, Thom Mount, Sidney Poitier, Paul Schrader, Michael Schultz, Mel Stuart, and Hannah Weinstein. And while it would be wrong to underplay the tension Pryor felt toward many of them, especially white directors like Badham, Campus, and Schrader, it would be churlish to deny that they were crucial intercessors. By trusting in Pryor’s talent, they gave him a new platform, one often conceived with the brazen character of his stand-up in mind. Bingo Long, Which Way Is Up?, and Blue Collar were all scripted with Pryor’s stand-up crackling in the background, and the finished films have a good deal of its bounce and bite.

  The second problem with the dismissal of Pryor’s crossover work is that it can lead us to misconstrue the nature of his creativity. In some sense, all his creative projects—not just his films for Hollywood—were the result of his hunger to “cross over.” He grew up in the tough-minded world of Peoria’s red-light district, and though he held tight to his native knowledge as the grandson of Marie Pryor, madam and matriarch, he yearned for an alternative to the dominion of Marie—a world where he might discover his freedom. His first major crossover performance was at Blaine-Sumner elementary school, before a group of white classmates; his second, at the Carver Center, before a “respectable” black audience of parents and children; his third, at Harold’s Club, before a mixed audience looking to escape respectability. He never stopped from there. “Pryor’s career in total,” sums up critic Greg Tate, “was a masterpiece of how to keep it moving.”

  The stage attracted Pryor because it was a place to experiment with his identity, to make himself as large and as various as his imagination allowed. He pushed beyond the boundaries of his blackness even as he dramatized the extraordinary richness of black life—a balancing act that made him an “off-color” comedian in a different, more profound sense. He was an unusual combination: a trickster in love with the power of disguise and a seeker driven to push beyond surfaces and get to the bottom of things, where he hoped to find something like love, or a state of sheer connection.

  When asked by Barbara Walters, not long after he burned himself alive, if he saw the world in terms of black people and white people, Pryor answered by reframing the question.

  “I see people,” he said searchingly, “as the nucleus of a great idea that hasn’t come to be yet.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  * * *

  Writing this book has been an intensely collaborative effort, and it gives me great pleasure to acknowledge those who helped give it shape.

  Richard Pryor’s own family was extraordinarily generous, adding much insight to my sense of Pryor and his formative years. I would like to thank his great-uncle Allen Pryor, his daughter Elizabeth Pryor, his daughter Rain Pryor, and his son Richard Pryor Jr. for their gracious response to my inquiries. In particular, I would like to thank his sister Barbara McGee for the trove of family photographs she shared; his sister Sharon Wilson Pryor for her brave choice to revisit painful memories with me; and his wife Jennifer Pryor, whose assistance allowed me to procure Pryor’s school and U.S. Army records.

  One of the joys of writing this book is that it gave me a reason to meet a small galaxy of fascinating people and ask questions—often extremely impertinent ones—about their past. The book would be inconceivable without the generosity of those who agreed to reflect on their past involvements with Richard Pryor and the circles he inhabited. I wish to thank Bob Altman, Irving Arthur, Michael Ashburne, John Badham, Bill Banks, the late Amiri Baraka, Pete Barbutti, Pat Benson, Andrew Bergman, the late Harvey Bernhard, Jimmy Binkley, Michael Blum, Ben Caldwell, Caryl Camacho, Joe Camacho, Ralph Camilli, Don Campbell, Michael Campus, Matt Clark, Rob Cohen, Loren Cornish, John Davidson, Ron DeBlasio, Jim Demetropolis, Henry Diltz, Paul Dorpat, Rick Edelstein, the late Alan Farley, Susan Fink, Jane Fishbeck, Silver Saundors Friedman, Sandy Gallin, Carl Gottlieb, Dick Green, Hillis Griswold, Michael Grussemeyer, Cecil Grubbs, Paul Hampton, James Harris, Patricia Heitman, Bert Heyman, Thomas Henseler, Arthur Hiller, Maria Höhn, Henry Jaglom, Margaret Kelch, Craig Kellem, the late Zalman King, Harvey Levine, Robert Marchese, Lonette McKee, Kres Mersky, John Moffitt, Joe Mosley, Sam Mosley, Sonya Nesbit, Harold Parker Jr., Ishmael Reed, Tim Reid, the late Manny Roth, Michael Schultz, Kirk Silsbee, Willis Smith, Penelope Spheeris, Dave Sprattling, Norman Steinberg, the late Mel Stuart, Murray Swartz, Judy Tannen, Renee Taylor, Ros Taylor, Joan Thornell, Fred Tieken, Cathryn Timmes, John Timmes, Lily Tomlin, Rocco Urbisci, Melvin Van Peebles, Jeff Wald, Hollie West, and Bruce Scott Zaxarides.

  The research for this book took me through a maze of archives large and small, public and private, where I found no shortage of material that begged to be deciphered. For helping me to locate, interpret, and/or reprint such material here, I owe a special debt to the following individuals and institutions: Pam Adams, Linda Aylward and Elaine Sokolowski of the Peoria Public Library, the Bahai Center of Peoria, the Bradley University Special Collections Library, Don Cannon, the City of Peoria’s Records Office, the Decatur Circuit Court’s Office, Brian DeShazor of Pacifica Archives, Deborah Dougherty, Dan Einstein of UCLA’s Film and Television Archive, Zephyr Frank, John Glover of Fort Leonard Wood, Martha Hammer of the Peoria Police Department, Edie Harris, David Houston of the Los Angeles Daily Journal, Rick Hunter and Amy Schwegel of the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library, Tal Kahana, Norm Kelly, Harry Langdon, Tammy Lomelino of the Peoria County Circuit Clerk’s Office, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Mary Ann Mason, Rachel McPherson, the Paley Center for Media, Richard Peek of the University of Rochester, the Peoria Journal Star, the Peoria Public Schools Office, Dylan Penningroth, Jim Ralph, Marcia Reed, Loni Shibuyama of ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, and USC’s Cinematic Arts Library and its David L. Wolper Center for the Study of Documentary. I would like to give an extra tip of the cap to Rhino’s Reggie Collins, who has often lent me his expert knowledge of Richard Pryor’s recordings, released and unreleased.

  I owe another sort of debt to the following writers, some of whom counseled me on the art and mechanics of biography, others of whom generously opened up their Rolodexes and shared their contacts: Robin D. G. Kelley, Harvey Kubernik, Gerald Nachman, Ann Powers, Arnold Rampersad, Carlo Rotella, R. J. Smith, Steve Stanley, James Sullivan, Mike Weatherford, Oliver Wang, Eric Weisbard, Richard White, Jon Wright, and Richard Zoglin. A related thanks go out to those whose writings on Pryor were an especially generative source of insights and leads: Hilton Als, Cecil Brown, David Felton, James Haskins, James McPherson, Paul Mooney, Fran Ross, Jeff Rovin, Mel Watkins, and the father-son team of John A. Williams and Dennis Williams.

  A project of this magnitude would have been impossible to incubate and develop without assorted forms of material support. I am grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for crucial seed funding; the Stanford Humanities Center for providing the most clean, well-lighted place imaginable; and Stanford’s Spatial History Project for helping sponsor the development of the book’s companion website and for loaning the services of Erik Steiner, cartographer extraordinaire. At UC-Berkeley, I’ve benefitted from the support of the Office of the Dean of the Arts and Huma
nities, the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, and the Department of English. Special thanks go to UC-Berkeley’s Janet Broughton, Anthony Cascardi, Samuel Otter, Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, and Sue Schweik for all their kind offices.

  I have been blessed to work, over the past five years, with a remarkable group of research assistants—William Bottini, Camille Brown, Alex Catchings, Ismail Muhammad, Jonathan Shelley, and Alex Tarr—who often served as my closest advisers and helped me refine my ideas enormously. Bottini deserves special thanks as he continued to contribute to the project, with intelligence and good humor, long after leaving UC-Berkeley and its employ.

  I wish to thank my tremendous team at HarperCollins: editor David Hirshey, for his galvanizing faith in the project; editor Barry Harbaugh, for his scrupulous sculpting of my prose; editorial assistant Sydney Pierce, for her graceful help with the mechanics of publication; and copy editor Jenna Dolan, for her meticulous labors. My agent Chris Calhoun gave this project a great boost three years ago and has been a continuous source of sage counsel ever since.

  For forms of moral support too various and mind-boggling to enumerate, I would like to thank the following friends and family: Kathy Donegan, Joseph Entin, Dan Fishman, Ethan Goldstine, Melissa Hillier, Dave Landreth, Waldo Martin, Louis Matza, Marjorie Perloff, Gautam Premnath, Corey Robin, my brother Lawrence Saul and his family, my parents, Beth and Ronald Saul, Penny Sinder, Dan Smith, and Bryan Wiley. Ken Parille read each chapter as it rolled off the printer and was both rigorous and generous in his feedback. A special sort of writerly thanks go to the Beanery, a happy local oasis at which I consumed roughly 100 gallons of fine coffee while writing this book, day-in and day-out, on its premises.

  My wife, Elana, has lived the writing of this book on an intimate level; her contributions to it, and to me, are incalculable. I could not have written this book without her. And last, I would like to thank my seven-year-old son, Maxie, who, having listened to much Richard Pryor while in the womb, proceeded then to grow in mass along with my manuscript. Unfailingly he gave me a fresh perspective on it. I dedicate this book to him lovingly.

  NOTES

  * * *

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was made. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature on your e-book reader.

  ix “A trickster does not live”: Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), p. 6.

  ix “The world around us”: Nancy Anderson, “‘Lightning’ Is Not a Black Film,” Mt. Vernon Register-News, Aug. 17, 1977, p. 7A.

  Author’s Note

  xii Pryor himself had declared that he’d reinvented himself: Richard Pryor, with Todd Gold, Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences (New York: Pantheon, 1995), pp. 115–18 (hereafter Pryor Convictions); His previous biographers couldn’t even agree: John A. Williams and Dennis A. Williams, If I Stop, I’ll Die: The Comedy and Tragedy of Richard Pryor (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991), p. 63; Fred Robbins and David Ragan, Richard Pryor: This Cat’s Got 9 Lives! (New York: Delilah Books, 1982), pp. 48–49; Jeff Rovin, Richard Pryor: Black and Blue: The Unauthorized Biography (New York: Bantam, 1983), pp. 77–78; Jim Haskins, Richard Pryor: A Man and His Madness (New York: Beaufort Books, 1984), pp. 57–61.

  xii His struggle was that of an artist searching for his true medium: For more on Pryor’s time in Berkeley, see chapter 14.

  xiii He hated the standard format of Q&A: David Felton, “This Can’t Be Happening to Me,” Rolling Stone, Oct. 10, 1974, p. 44; Frederick D. Murphy, “Richard Pryor: Teetering on Jest, Living by His Wits,” Encore American & Worldwide News, Nov. 24, 1975, p. 27; J. Edgar Hoover: John H. Corcoran Jr., “The Peoria Stroker Has Arrived,” National Observer, May 24, 1975; when film critic Elvis Mitchell: Tirdad Derakhshani, “Godfather of Soul Guilty of Domestic Abuse,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 15, 2004.

  xiv “It’s hard to get information from these people”: “John A. Williams interview with Steve Logue, Nov. 29, 1983,” Box 171, John A. Williams Papers, Special Collections Library, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.

  xiv John A. Williams was the one early biographer: Williams and Williams, If I Stop, I’ll Die, pp. 20–23; see also the interviews collected in Box 171, John A. Williams Papers. In the last year, as I was putting the finishing touches on this book, two other Pryor biographies were published: David Henry and Joe Henry, Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World that Made Him (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2013), and Cecil Brown, Pryor Lives! How Richard Pryor Became Richard Pryor (CreateSpace, independent publishing platform, 2013). Unfortunately, these appeared too late for me to incorporate their insights.

  xvi A recent documentary film on Pryor: Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic, directed by Marina Zenovich (Fresh One Productions and Tarnished Angel, 2013).

  Prologue

  1 the most celebrated stand-up comedy performance of all time: Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, directed by Jeff Margolis (Special Events Entertainment, 1979) (hereafter Richard Pryor Live in Concert). For more on Live in Concert, see chapter 23.

  2 At this point the routine: For a related take on the complex morality of this sketch, see Jonathan Rosenbaum, “The True Auteur,” Take One, May 1979, p. 14.

  3 “25 or 30 different people”: Louie Robinson, “Richard Pryor Talks,” Ebony, Jan. 1978, p. 122.

  Chapter 1: Dangerous Elements

  7 On the morning of October 19, 1929: “Boy Slapped, Woman Routs Proprietor of Confectionary,” Decatur Herald, Oct. 20, 1929, p. 3.

  8 The city’s black citizens were expected to stay “in their place”: Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, “A Warlike Demonstration: Legalism, Violent Self-Help, and Electoral Politics in Decatur, Illinois, 1894–1898,” Journal of Urban History 26, no. 3 (July 2000).

  8 a straight razor she reportedly stashed in her bra: Author’s interview with David Sprattling, July 16, 2010; author’s interview with Rob Cohen, Aug. 18, 2010.

  8 Richard’s “Mama” was born Rithie Marie Carter: The Mike Douglas Show, aired Nov. 29, 1974, DVD in author’s possession; only three survived: 1900 U.S. Federal Census (Population Schedule), Decatur City, Decatur Township, Macon County, IL, ED 46, Sheet23b, Family 480, Dwelling 495, S. Colfax, Richard Carter household. Marie’s mother had better luck with her next four children: three of them survived. See 1910 U.S. Federal Census (Population Schedule), Decatur City, Decatur Township, Macon County, IL, ED 104, Sheet 8A, Family 191, Dwelling 191, S. Colfax, Richard Carter household.

  8 Marie’s grandfather Abner Piper had been a Union volunteer: Consolidated Lists of Civil War Registrations, 1863–1865, NM-65, entry 172, 620 volumes, Records of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau (Civil War), Record Group 110, National Archives, Washington, DC; “Historical Register of National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, 1866–1938,” Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Record Group 15, National Archives, Washington, DC; lived at home with Marie: “The Death Record,” Decatur Herald, Jan. 5, 1906, p. 6.

  9 early settlers felt: Otto John Tinzmann, Selected Aspects of Early Social History of DeKalb County (Chicago: Loyola University of Chicago, 1986), p. 106; it prospered by attracting cereal mills: Mabel E. Richmond, Centennial History of Decatur and Macon County (Decatur, IL: Decatur Review, 1930), pp. 368–69; “F. P. Howard Returns to Business,” The Soda Fountain 20 (June 1921): 78; Dan Guillory, Decatur (Chicago: Arcadia, 2004); black Decaturites were shunted to a shabby part of town: Cha-Jua, “A Warlike Demonstration,” p. 599.

  9 The lynching of Samuel Bush in 1893: “A Dastard’s Deed,” Decatur Weekly Republican, June 28, 1894, p. 1; Cha-Jua, “‘A Warlike Demonstration,” pp. 599–604. Even as late as 1929, the lynching of Bush was described in the official Centennial History of Decatur and Macon County as “one of the exciting events” of the 1890s (Richmond, Centennial History of Decatur and Macon County, p. 357). Cha-Jua, “‘A Warlike Demonstration,” pp. 609–13.

&nbs
p; 10 a ten-chapter history of the city’s black population: Aug. 27–Sept. 3, 1929; see also Richmond, Centennial History of Decatur and Macon County.

  10 worked as a bouncer in the city’s brothels . . . yelling obscenities in public: “Are Sorry They Spoke,” Daily Review (Decatur), Apr. 27, 1895, p. 1; beating his wife: “Presto Chango,” Decatur Bulletin-Sentinel, Feb. 1, 1896, p. 1; whipping his wife: “Pleaded Guilty,” Decatur Evening Republican, June 26, 1899, p. 2; assaulting someone with brass knuckles: Decatur Daily Review, Oct. 3, 1906, p. 10; pointing a firearm at his brother: “At Peddecord’s,” Decatur Bulletin-Sentinel, Feb. 1, 1896, p. 1; A tall, wiry amputee: “Bothered the Dago,” Herald-Dispatch, (Decatur), Aug. 22, 1896, p.6; “A Strange Burglary,” Bulletin-Sentinel (Decatur), July 13, 1895, p. 4; bootlegged liquor: “Carter Arrested for Selling,” Decatur Review, Oct. 26, 1908, p. 8; gaming room: “Mayor M’Donald Stops Craps Game,” Decatur Review, Dec. 24, 1907, p. 3; “Negroes and Whites Captured in Raid,” Decatur Review, July 7, 1912, p. 19; when Congress passed the Opium Exclusion Act: On the 1909 Opium Exclusion Act, see David Courtwright, Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001 [1982]).