Word: pryor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...neophyte actor took a couple of Richard Pryor hand-me-down roles and parlayed them into movie stardom. In 48 HRS., released last Christmas, Murphy played a sassy convict sprung from stir for two days to help Tough Cop Nick Nolte catch a couple of killers. The film's director, Walter Hill, says of Eddie: "This kid is so enormously talented he can get away with anything." This time Eddie ran away with the movie: 48 HRS., for which he was paid $200,000, has tallied an imposing $78 million at the box office...
...studio signed Eddie to an exclusive five-picture deal with a $15 million guarantee. This puts him in the movies' major leagues next to Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood-"Now those guys are movie stars!" says Eddie, modest for a moment. And up there even with Richard Pryor...
...Pryor, the most popular black actor in movie history, was one of Murphy's early comedy heroes; as a fledgling professional comic, Murphy used to perform an entire act using Pryor's material, calling it "A Tribute to Richard Pryor." Both performers have won the multiracial mass movie audiences, and both have swum in the dark blue undercurrents of ethnic humor. Since meeting Murphy on an airplane last year, Pryor has been "very kind and generous to me, offering all kinds of advice. I've started calling him Yoda. When I told him I was thinking...
Long before he met Pryor, Murphy had learned to admire the artist, not imitate his excesses. Pryor was and remains a street kid, always in trouble or on the move, honing his hostility into a fine and angry art. Murphy, as Landis notes, "has solid middle-class values. Put it another way: he's too vain to destroy himself." He does not smoke, drink or use drugs, and even after he hit it big on SNL, he continued to live in his suburban home with his mother, stepfather and half brother Vernon Jr., 16. "Being black has never been...
Fifty years is a long time. Perhaps Eddie Murphy will show nothing more than firefly form: a flash of lightning followed by critical and popular pans. Perhaps he will tire of squeaky-clean living and head for Pryor-like self-immolation. Perhaps he will cease to be an entertainment event and become an agreeable habit, working a Vegas lounge, living on tired blood and the public's memories. But if he keeps going as he is going now-young, gifted, black and hot-he can hope for the ultimate backhanded compliment. On a Saturday Night Live in 2033, some...