If you’ve seen an abundance of classic TV shows from the late 1950s and the early 1960s, you know that they were often as lacking in color as they were authenticity; the chaste characters and wholesome stories as foreign to today’s viewers as a transmission from Mars.
It’s possible that those characters and stories were relatable in the 50s and 60s — I don’t know, I wasn’t there — but I tend to put more stock into the idea that rigid early broadcast standards and a less contested and evolved view of moral goodness conspired to nudge people toward a light that didn’t really jive with their natural way of being. A message that got derailed when the sights and sounds of war and societal unrest pierced the protective shell and allowed the counter-culture to spill onto the airwaves.
Comedians like George Carlin and Richard Pryor were, of course, a part of that transformation in the early 70s, alongside Saturday Night Live. But while SNL emerged from the womb fully formed in a more nurturing (though still challenging) environment, both Carlin and Pryor had to become creatures of reinvention while in the thick of a cultural one-eighty; not for their livelihoods, but for their sanity.
When you watch Carlin and Pryor’s separate earlier appearances as clean-cut and inoffensive young comedians, it’s a gut-punch to the system. Those clips from programs like The Ed Sullivan Show and The Kraft Music Hall aren’t without merit, but they are without truth.
Here’s a look at Pryor performing a series of benign one-liners in 1964. Notice how he briefly veers into his upbringing in a way that will feel foreign to anyone who is familiar with Pryor’s later work. It’s Bill Cosby-esque, and it worked for Pryor for a long time until he could no longer stand it. Carlin went through the same thing.
Coincidentally, both Carlin and Pryor had their creative epiphanies in Las Vegas. But while Carlin’s moment seemed tame, the details of Pryor’s night at the Aladdin Hotel are all over the place, with reports indicating that it took place sometime between 1967 and 1971.
Here’s the official account from the official Richard Pryor website.
Hipper and more controversial than Cosby and the other Vegas acts, Pryor found it difficult to conform to the constrained Vegas format and finally walked off stage during a show at the Aladdin in 1969. On a journey to hone his voice, Pryor moved to Berkeley, California and hung out with such counter-cultural writers and personalities as Ishmael Reed and Huey P. Newton. After a couple of years in Berkeley, Pryor hit Hollywood in touch with his very unique brand of comedy.
Simple and direct, but not nearly as entertaining as the story that circulated about Pryor nakedly jumping on a table at the casino while shouting “Black Jack,” or the one that involved Pryor pissing on his audience, mobsters, and a rescue by Bill Cosby. Those two stories were dismissed in David and Joe Henry’s book on Pryor’s life, Furious Cool.
With all due respect to the “when” and “what” of that moment, it’s the “why” that matters most. Here’s Pryor talking about his motives in a 1976 newspaper article.
“In those days, I was basically lying to myself about what I was doing. I kept asking myself, ‘How can I do this, how can I do this?’ I saw how I was going to end up. I was false. I was turning into plastic. It was scary… so I did what I had to do — get out that situation. I was blackballed by most of the industry for two or three years after that.”
A look at Pryor’s list of appearances would seem to indicate that 1969 was the year wherein Pryor endured the brunt of the backlash against him since there were no high-profile TV appearances that year. Pryor also released his self-titled album in the winter of 1968 — an album that was far more in-line with Pryor’s later, more daring work. By 1970, though, Pryor would again make appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Smothers Brothers Hour, but while I can’t find video of those performances, there’s a great bit of contrast on display if you watch this 1968 clip of Pryor talking to Johnny Carson about pretending to be Puerto Rican while growing up in the mid-west…
And this clip of Pryor telling a similar story during the recording of his Live and Smokin special from 1971.
Clearly, a change had taken place by 1971, and Richard Pryor had found his voice, but that’s not why his career is worthy of admiration.
Anyone can get up on a stage and speak the truth. Richard Pryor kept people in their chairs even while he was saying things that might offend or scare them, and he was willing to jeopardize a pretty successful career in the process. Pryor didn’t just play by his own rules, he succeeded by them and became an icon in the process with a blend of tenacity, truth, insanity, and humor. Unfortunately, though, Pryor’s legacy isn’t all positive.
Plagued by MS when he died at the age of 65 and cursed by drug addiction and its accompanying demons all throughout his life, it’s impossible to not think of Pryor as the rare old man who died with so much unfulfilled promise. But while Richard Pryor didn’t go as far as he could have gone with the talent that he had, he did absolutely lay the groundwork for the shape of comedy as it is now.
And in the age of hypersensitivity, when some comics may be tempted to play it safe and avoid controversy, it’s important to remember the moment when Richard Pryor risked his career for the sake of his soul, and decided that he didn’t give a sh*t about making people comfortable.