Another Day Of Tribute To Our Man Richard Pryor

Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Richard Pryor Dies at 65 in his Encino, Calif., home in 1995 with his wife Jennifer Lee Pryor. Mr. Pryor, who had been ill with multiple sclerosis, suffered a heart attack and died at a hospital in Los Angeles, his wife, Jennifer Lee Pryor, told CNN.

Mr. Pryor's health had been in decline for many years. Episodes of self-destructive, chaotic and violent behavior, often triggered by drug use, repeatedly threatened his career and jeopardized his life. "I couldn't escape the darkness," he acknowledged, but he was able to put his demons at the service of his art.

Mr. Pryor's brilliant comic imagination and creative use of the blunt cadences of street language were revelations to most Americans. He did not simply he brought them to vivid life, revealing the entire range of black America's humor, from its folksy rural origins to its raunchier urban expressions.

At the height of his career, in the late 1970's, Mr. Pryor prowled the stage like a restless cat, dispensing what critics regarded as the most poignant and penetrating comedic view of African-American life ever afforded the American public. He was volatile yet vulnerable, crass but sensitive, streetwise and cocky but somehow still diffident and anxious. And he could unleash an astonishing array of dramatic and comic skills to win acceptance and approval for a kind of stark humor.

Richard's Greatest Movies

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