By RUTH WALKER, U.S. BOOKS EDITOR
Richard Pryor’s funeral was ‘a travesty of a mockery of a sham,’ according to his daughter.
‘If Ikea did funerals,’ she said, ‘this would be it. Cold and sterile and monstrously hollow.’
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor has spent the 20 years since the mercurial, ground-breaking comedian’s death trying to make sense of their complicated relationship.
Now she has opened up about what it was really like living with her famous, often intoxicated parent, the revolving door of wives, girlfriends, and prostitutes and the truth about what happened when her father famously set himself on fire while freebasing cocaine.
In her new memoir, Something We Said, she also reveals her shock at being largely cut out of her father’s will at the 11th hour: ‘I knew in my heart that was not what he wanted,’ she said.
Richard Pryor had a total of seven children with six different women – Stordeur Pryor was his third.
Her mother Maxine – who Pryor lovingly called ‘Macky’ – met the comedian in New York in 1965, when they were both in their early 20s, and he was yet to become famous for films like Blazing Saddles, Stir Crazy, and Harlem Nights.
But as his fame grew, writes his daughter, their relationship became more volatile, sometimes violent. And Pryor was an inveterate cheater.
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor didn’t meet her famous father until she was six years old
The history professor has spent the 20 years since her father’s death trying to make sense of their complicated relationship
‘On the night I was born in 1967,’ she writes, ‘things had gotten so bad between them that he was hundreds of miles away, partying in Tijuana, and ended up in a Mexican jail on a marijuana charge.
‘She went into labor alone in Los Angeles and drove herself to the hospital.’
Not long after, they broke up, and Stordeur Pryor didn’t meet her father until she was six years old.
She was in awe of the man who was, by now, making a name for himself on the comedy circuit, and she was desperate to please – despite his often erratic behavior.
‘The more well-known my father became, the more drugs and alcohol began to take over his life,’ she writes, ‘and his drug-fueled behavior began to make the national news.’
On one occasion, he got into a drunken argument with his then wife Deboragh, and shot at her car as she attempted to drive away.
On another occasion, he set himself on fire by pouring 151-proof rum on his shirt and lighting it ablaze. He ran for a mile down the road before police were able to stop him and take him to hospital, where he was treated for burns on more than 50 percent of his body.
‘He couldn’t stop messing up,’ writes Stordeur Pryor. ‘He always had a glass of Courvoisier in his hand and mounds of cocaine all around the house.
‘Every night, Mercy [his housekeeper] put a wastepaper basket by the side of his bed so he wouldn’t throw up on the floor.
‘He passed out all the time. Waking him was nearly impossible.’
As a professor of history, Stordeur Pryor also uses her book to examine the evolution of the n-word – the racial slur her father reclaimed in his comedy during the 1970s and later disavowed after a transformational trip to Africa.
The word – allegedly hurled at her during a passionate fight with her White, Jewish mother – was so offensive, it drove a wedge through the family that was never fully repaired.
Maxine ‘told everyone she was Richard Pryor’s ex-wife. She called herself Maxine Pryor. It was the name she had on her checks and her stationery,’ writes the author.
The reality was – like so much of Pryor’s life – much more complicated.
‘I was never married to your mother,’ Pryor told his daughter one night in anger when she was just 12. ‘Ask her about it. She’s always playing games.’
‘The more well-known my father became, the more drugs and alcohol began to take over his life,’ she writes
Richard Pryor became famous for films including Brewster’s Millions
The comedian in Silver Streak with Gene Wilder – the pair starred in four movies together
In fact, he had been married to someone else when Stordeur Pryor was born. And when she confronted her mom about the lie, they fought bitterly – ending with her mother allegedly delivering the most appalling racial slur.
‘I was waiting for you to be old enough to understand,’ her mother beseeched her.
But Stordeur Pryor was confused and frustrated, and lashed out at the woman who had been her rock.
‘“I hate you!” I screamed, bending my body forward as if I were pumping the words out of my stomach.
‘She cackled like she’d lost her mind. “You’re exactly like him, Elizabeth.” She walked toward me and stared into my face.
‘“I am!” I shouted.
‘The words hit my mom like a slap. She stumbled backward.
‘She looked beautiful, even though she was angrier than I’d ever seen her in my life. Then her face turned ugly, and she put her hands on her hips.
‘“You’re a n***er!” she said, like she meant it.’
When she told Pryor about the fight, he never spoke to her mom again. And Liz never forgave herself for causing the rift.
But, as she grew more distant from her mother for a time, she became much closer to her father. So much so that one night, in a moment of vulnerability, a now-sober Pryor confessed the truth about the fire that had left him permanently scarred.
Richard Pryor in conversation with Barbara Walters in 1980, after he had set himself on fire
When Stordeur Pryor told her father that Maxine had called her the n-word, he never spoke to her mom again
Stordeur Pryor (center) with her famous father and mom, Maxine
‘That night, I was so tired,’ he told her. ‘I kept trying to stop doing the drugs and no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t. After a while, I just gave up.’
She writes: ‘He looked me right in the eyes. Tears welled up before I even understood what he was saying.
‘“It wasn’t an accident,” he said. “I lit myself on fire on purpose. I tried to kill myself.”’
In 1986, when Pryor was 41, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The degenerative disease gradually stole his body and his health.
The last time Stordeur Pryor saw him, she writes: ‘He could no longer walk or use his hands, he could barely see, he was in and out of hospitals, and he needed around-the-clock care.
‘He couldn’t even speak anymore, except for a few sputtered words that took excruciating effort to get out.’
He lived alone, with a complicated schedule of carers who, towards the end of his life, she claims, barred his children from visiting for more than 45 minutes once a month, saying it caused him too much stress.
On her final visit, she alleges that a security guard even forbade her from kissing her father.
Two days later – on December 10, 2005 – she received a phone call telling her he had died of a heart attack. He was just 65.
His funeral – held at the Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mortuaries in the Hollywood Hills – was, she writes, bizarrely white for the Black father she had known and loved.
‘Plain white pews, plain white walls, plain pine casket, plain glass windows,’ she writes. ‘If Ikea did funerals, this would be it.
‘Where were all the Black people? The wailing women? The cries of “Lord” and “amen”? If it weren’t for some familiar faces – my six siblings, a few of our mothers, a couple of well-known actors and comedians – I would have sworn I was in the wrong place.’
Things got even stranger, she says, when the celebrant – who was white – made such a clumsy attempt at Black humor, she was convinced she heard Pryor’s ghost laughing at the absurdity of it all.
Richard Pryor with (left to right) daughter Rain, ex-wife Jennifer Lee, son-in-law Jerry Stordeur, and Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor when he was honored by the Kennedy Center in 1998
Pryor’s health declined in the cruel grip of multiple sclerosis and, latterly, he could no longer walk or use his hands, and he could barely see
‘Richard Pryor,’ she boomed, ‘was a funny motherf***er.’
She may not have said the n-word, but Stordeur Pryor says it felt as jarring as if she had.
‘Just as the impulse to stand up and walk out nearly overtook me, I heard my dad’s throaty chuckle: “This sh*t is funny.”
‘I looked around to make sure the voice was in my head, and almost laughed out loud. It felt like he was letting me know this whole event was a joke, the one about a dead Black comedian who accidentally ends up in white heaven (or maybe Black hell) and finds himself headlining a New Age, non-denominational funeral. Ba-dum-bum.’
Her mother agreed.
‘That funeral had no soul,’ she said afterwards, adding: ‘Imagine: A White woman calling Richard Pryor a motherf****r at his own funeral!’
Stordeur Pryor writes: ‘Even my white, Jewish mother knew that was totally out of line.’
A few days later, she received a copy of her father’s will. The details shocked her to the core.
‘None of his creative legacy went to his kids. I knew in my heart that was not what he wanted.
‘I hired a lawyer and fought in court and lost. I appealed and lost again.
‘Soon after, I was removed completely as a beneficiary. Disinherited. Cut out of the family photo album.’
The one thing she did have of her father’s was a battered briefcase, given to her by her mother on the day of his funeral.
‘Elizabeth,’ she’d said, ‘this will explain everything.’
She’d stashed it out of sight for 15 years. But when she finally examined the notebooks inside; the letters, unfinished jokes and journals, they told her who her father really was.
‘Every time I opened the notebook, I got to know him better,’ she writes.
‘It was the last breadcrumb leading me back to my father. It took me 15 years to understand it held the key to the connection we’d had all along. The briefcase was a priceless heirloom. It was my inheritance.’
Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor is published by 37 Ink, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
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