Read Online Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him by Joe Henry, David Henry - Free Book Online
Authors: Joe Henry, David Henry
Tags: nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Retail, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Comedian, Richard Pryor
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we’re givin’ you fair warnin’. Anything you do to that chicken, we’re gonna do to you.” So I put down my knife and fork, I picked up that chicken and I kissed it.
At the end of his show, the frozen-food execs gave him a standing ovation. They handed him money as he left the stage. One of them said, “You know, if you have the right managers you’ll die a billionaire.”
Hugh Hefner came down for the second show to see what all the excitement was about and immediately signed Gregory to a three-year contract, beginning with a three-week run that was held over through March 12.
“And, just like that,” Phillip Lutz would write in the New York Times, “with little fanfare or protest, nightclub comedy was integrated.”
Time magazine of Friday, February 17, featured a prominent article on Gregory, and the following Monday morning a call came from someone on Jack Paar’s staff inviting him to appear on Th e Tonight Show.
“My wife took the call and she’s so happy,” Gregory said. “I got on the phone and said, ‘No, I don’t want to do this,’ and I hung up and started cryin’. ”
Gregory had long dreamed of appearing on The Tonight Show, sometimes practicing for hours in front of the mirror after the show signed off at 1:00 a.m., imagining how he would comport himself and what he would say to Paar when his opportunity finally came, as he was sure it would. Then one night he went out drinking with singer Billy Eckstine who began “cussin’ Paar out to me. [He] told me, ‘Hey, man, that motherfuckin’ Jack Paar, he ain’t never let a nigger sit on the couch.’
“I was so embarrassed, so humiliated, I never told my wife that I could not do the Paar show. It was just a personal thing.”
Fortunately, Gregory’s phone rang again. This time it was Paar himself.
“Dick Gregory?”
“Yes.”
“This is Mr. Paar. How come you don’t want to work my show?”
“I just don’t want to work it.”
“Why?”
“Because the negroes never sit on the couch.”
There was a long pause and he said, “Well come on in, you can sit on the couch.” *
While Paar and Gregory exchanged a few canned jokes (“What kind of car you got?” “A Lincoln, naturally”), so many phone calls came in to the NBC switchboard in New York the circuits blew out. The calls, Gregory says, were coming from “white folks who were seeing a black person for the first time in a human conversation.”
Gregory had been earning $250 a week at the Playboy Club. After sitting on Jack Paar’s couch, he said, his salary jumped to $5,000. “What a country!” he would say. “Where else could I have to ride in the back of the bus, live in the worst neighborhoods, go to the worst schools, eat in the worst restaurants—and average $5,000 a week just talking about it?”
—————
Back in Peoria, Richard Pryor was watching, stretched out on the couch in his in-laws’ living room while his pregnant wife slept upstairs. Agitated by deferred dreams, Benzedrine , and the long, leaping shadows cast by the black-and-white TV, he chewed on bits of paper and flicked spitballs until the walls and ceiling were stuccoed with the stuff.
His sister-in-law Angie got stuck with the job of sweeping his dried up spitballs down. “He was just a mess,” she says. “He wouldn’t go to work. He would just sit around all day making spitballs and throwing them on the walls and ceiling.”
One day he went off in the head. I don’t know what he had taken, but he climbed out our second floor window and said he was going to kill himself and my sister was pulling him back in and begging him to go lay down. Well, she couldn’t do anything with him, so my dad finally got tired of fooling with him and he went upstairs. We had a state hospital here called Bartonville. They would pay you to bring people in, you know. Twenty-five dollars if you brought crazy people in. So my dad went upstairs and he said, “Hey!” He says, “Pat’s tired of
At the end of his show, the frozen-food execs gave him a standing ovation. They handed him money as he left the stage. One of them said, “You know, if you have the right managers you’ll die a billionaire.”
Hugh Hefner came down for the second show to see what all the excitement was about and immediately signed Gregory to a three-year contract, beginning with a three-week run that was held over through March 12.
“And, just like that,” Phillip Lutz would write in the New York Times, “with little fanfare or protest, nightclub comedy was integrated.”
Time magazine of Friday, February 17, featured a prominent article on Gregory, and the following Monday morning a call came from someone on Jack Paar’s staff inviting him to appear on Th e Tonight Show.
“My wife took the call and she’s so happy,” Gregory said. “I got on the phone and said, ‘No, I don’t want to do this,’ and I hung up and started cryin’. ”
Gregory had long dreamed of appearing on The Tonight Show, sometimes practicing for hours in front of the mirror after the show signed off at 1:00 a.m., imagining how he would comport himself and what he would say to Paar when his opportunity finally came, as he was sure it would. Then one night he went out drinking with singer Billy Eckstine who began “cussin’ Paar out to me. [He] told me, ‘Hey, man, that motherfuckin’ Jack Paar, he ain’t never let a nigger sit on the couch.’
“I was so embarrassed, so humiliated, I never told my wife that I could not do the Paar show. It was just a personal thing.”
Fortunately, Gregory’s phone rang again. This time it was Paar himself.
“Dick Gregory?”
“Yes.”
“This is Mr. Paar. How come you don’t want to work my show?”
“I just don’t want to work it.”
“Why?”
“Because the negroes never sit on the couch.”
There was a long pause and he said, “Well come on in, you can sit on the couch.” *
While Paar and Gregory exchanged a few canned jokes (“What kind of car you got?” “A Lincoln, naturally”), so many phone calls came in to the NBC switchboard in New York the circuits blew out. The calls, Gregory says, were coming from “white folks who were seeing a black person for the first time in a human conversation.”
Gregory had been earning $250 a week at the Playboy Club. After sitting on Jack Paar’s couch, he said, his salary jumped to $5,000. “What a country!” he would say. “Where else could I have to ride in the back of the bus, live in the worst neighborhoods, go to the worst schools, eat in the worst restaurants—and average $5,000 a week just talking about it?”
—————
Back in Peoria, Richard Pryor was watching, stretched out on the couch in his in-laws’ living room while his pregnant wife slept upstairs. Agitated by deferred dreams, Benzedrine , and the long, leaping shadows cast by the black-and-white TV, he chewed on bits of paper and flicked spitballs until the walls and ceiling were stuccoed with the stuff.
His sister-in-law Angie got stuck with the job of sweeping his dried up spitballs down. “He was just a mess,” she says. “He wouldn’t go to work. He would just sit around all day making spitballs and throwing them on the walls and ceiling.”
One day he went off in the head. I don’t know what he had taken, but he climbed out our second floor window and said he was going to kill himself and my sister was pulling him back in and begging him to go lay down. Well, she couldn’t do anything with him, so my dad finally got tired of fooling with him and he went upstairs. We had a state hospital here called Bartonville. They would pay you to bring people in, you know. Twenty-five dollars if you brought crazy people in. So my dad went upstairs and he said, “Hey!” He says, “Pat’s tired of
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