Comedy legend Richard Pryor forever linked to Peoria

Finally unveiled this year, Peoria’s Richard Pryor statue looms larger than life at 9 feet tall. Yet, to adequately reflect the long shadow he cast over comedy, the memorial would have to be a skyscraper.

Pryor, the Grammy and Emmy winner who at the time of his 2005 death was at the top of Comedy Central’s rankings of Greatest Standups of All Time, revolutionized his field by interweaving belly-laugh comedy with first-hand tragedy, often leaning on his painful Peoria childhood for street-life tales. His vivid, animated storytelling took spellbound audiences into a place never before seen in comedy clubs and theaters: impoverished, urban America.

Meanwhile, Pryor and Peoria had a love-hate relationship. Despite a generations-old reputation as a bawdy town, Peoria long had a hard time accepting Pryor’s on-stage profanities and off-stage foibles. Pryor, who forever grappled with memories of growing up in his family’s whorehouse here, never had much to do with his hometown after hitting it big.

Yet 10 years after his death, Peoria seems to have grown more embracing of its most famous son, as hundreds of fans showed up to the Warehouse District this spring for the unveiling of the long-awaited statue. And finally, after years of fits and starts in endless directions, a biopic looks more certain than ever regarding the comic often introduced in his heyday, “Ladies and gentleman, the most beautiful words in the world of comedy today, Mr. Richard Pryor!”

On Dec. 1, 1940, Richard Franklin Thomas Lennox Pryor came into this world, an only child destined to grow up in one of Peoria’s more affluent brothels, run by his grandmother just north of Downtown, later leveled to make way for Interstate 74. His semi-autobiographical film, “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling” (filmed partially in Peoria in 1985), details the chaos of his early years, such as how he would peep into a keyhole, spying his prostitute-mother servicing a patron.

At school, he would delight his classmates with observational humor, such as slurping steaming hot bowls of soup. He further honed his youthful showmanship under the encouragement and tutelage of the Carver Center.

Pryor began losing interest in school and fell in with a bad crowd, his father would later tell this newspaper. So, when the lad was in his mid-teens, his father kicked him out of the house.

“That’s probably the best thing we ever did for him — make him go out on his own and seek his place in show business,” Leroy Pryor said in 1966.

Indeed, after dropping out of Peoria Central High School at age 16, Pryor began showcasing his talents at local clubs. After a stint in the Army, Pryor performed his routines at New York clubs, eventually landing spots on television shows such as Ed Sullivan’s. At that point, his humor was clean-cut: send-ups of the military, tales of small-town life, other innocuous offerings.

But in 1967, as he took the stage at a sold-out show in Las Vegas, he had an “epiphany,” as he described in the 1995 autobiography “Pryor Convictions.” Scanning the glitzy crowd, he blurted into the microphone, “What the (heck) am I doing here” — and walked off.

From there, he allowed his underlying rage to boil over into his act, dumping his polite patter in favor of scathing societal observations, especially those of the nation’s trampled black community. Harking to Peoria of his youth, Pryor allowed a candid glimpse into a world few people — especially white people — much understood or acknowledged. Wrapping fright with funny, Pryor demonstrated a genius theretofore unknown in stand-up comedy: this is the Pryor known for his Grammy award-winning comedy albums and masterpiece concert films.

Hollywood came calling, and he caught the eye of critics for his deft, understated turn as Piano Man in “Lady Sings the Blues.” He soon became a marquee name with films like “Silver Streak” and “Stir Crazy.” By 1983, he was so high in demand that in “Superman III” his $4 million earnings outpaced the paycheck of star Christopher Reeve by a million bucks.

He kept doing movies, even self-admitted slop, because the money was there. The uneven “Jo Jo Dancer” flopped. But the silver-screen swoons were nothing like the nosedives in his private life. His smoking and drinking triggered a heart attack at age 37 in 1977, while a second cardiac arrest prompted bypass surgery in 1990. Legal woes hit in the 1970s, including fines for failing to file several years’ tax returns, plus shooting an ex-wife’s car (he was married seven times to five women).

The biggest headlines came in 1980, when Pryor nearly burned himself to death. First, the story went that he accidentally started himself afire while smoking crack. Later, there was the version that he had spilled rum on his shirt, then accidentally lit it ablaze. Finally, he admitted that he had tried to kill himself.

But the most lingering physical challenge came from multiple sclerosis, diagnosed in 1986 and growing progressively problematic. By 1992, his mobility had become compromised and unpredictable. Yet on New Year’s Eve that year, his comeback tour stopped at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., with the stand-up comedian delivering his act sitting down. Slowed but sharp, he delivered 45 solid minutes, often musing about his ailment. One crack: “The only thing that worries me is if I try to walk, I stagger. And I look drunk, and the police jump me!”

After the show, during an interview with the Journal Star, a wearied Pryor perked up at the notion of his hometown paper traveling hundreds of miles to pay a visit. After a few brief recollections and one-liners, he was asked for any messages to folks in Peoria. With hangers-on pressing in, Pryor assumed the ghostly voice from the movie, “Amityville Horror,” and rasped, “GET OUT!” As the small crowd chortled and the interview ended, Pryor seemed slightly conflicted, the pleasant reminiscences ending — as so often with his stage show — with the man laughing through a painful memory.

Still, he planned a show in Peoria for spring 1993, exciting hometown fans about his return. But the show was canceled, a victim of low ticket sales, right in his own backyard.

That same year, Peoria crackled with debate over whether the City Council should rename a street for Pryor. The opposition, myopically carping about Pryor’s foul language while failing to recognize his storytelling mastery, held sway until 2001, when the city begrudgingly granted Richard Pryor Place, a short street with low traffic on the south end. Pryor, though too frail to travel, was “thrilled” about the honor, said his manager, adding, “He feels embraced now.”

Perhaps.

Pryor was always more easily embraced by his peers. In 1998, the first Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was presented to Pryor, who watched from a balcony box seat as stars lauded him. At the end of a routine, Robin Williams yelled at Pryor’s box, “You pushed it! You broke all barriers!”

On Dec. 10, 2005, the 65-year-old Pryor suffered his third heart attack, in Los Angeles, and died at a nearby hospital. Afterward, to the New York Times, Eddie Murphy deemed Pryor “better than anyone who ever picked up a microphone,” while Neil Simon called him “the most brilliant comic in America.”

Meanwhile, Hollywood sporadically buzzed about a Pryor biopic. The latest incarnation, to be directed by Lee Daniels, is to feature Mike Epps as Pryor, Oprah Winfrey as his grandmother and Eddie Murphy as his father.

As accolades in Peoria, a local committee pushed for almost a decade to memorialize Pryor. The effort, including a 2014 fundraiser concert in Peoria spearheaded by comic George Lopez, raised $130,000 to put the Preston Jackson work at Washington and State streets. A plaque includes this paean to Pryor:

“His unusually personal and insightful art was a powerful window into his own vulnerable soul, but also a window into a society that still struggles to extend equality and dignity to all humanity.”

PHIL LUCIANO is a Journal Star columnist. He can be reached at pluciano@pjstar.com, facebook.com/philluciano or (309) 686-3155. Follow him on Twitter @LucianoPhil. The book “101 Things That Play in Peoria” is available at the Journal Star offices, 1 News Plaza, Peoria, or online at www.createspace.com/5479904. The book costs $21.95, plus tax.

This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Peoria and Richard Pryor had a love-hate relationship