Here is a "HOLIDAY SOR-BAY" a little spark of madness
that we could use to artificially maintain our Christmas spirit.
December 1, 1940
Richard Pryor is born in Peoria, Illinois.
According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications,
Pryor was “the first African-American stand-up comedian to speak candidly and
successfully to integrated audiences using the language and jokes blacks
previously only shared among themselves when they were most critical of
America….His comic style emancipated African-American humor.”
After being expelled from school in the eighth grade, Pryor worked a series
of jobs and served in the U.S. Army before he was discharged for getting into a
fight. He began performing in comedy clubs and by 1963 was doing stand-up in
New York City, modeling his routines after the clean-cut, non-offensive style of
such fellow African-American comedians as Bill Cosby. The following year, Pryor
made his national TV debut on a variety show hosted by Rudy Vallee. In 1967, he
released his first comedy album, Richard Pryor. The funnyman made his
big-screen debut that same year with the comedy The Busy Body, featuring
Sid Caesar.
During the 1970s, Pryor’s comedy evolved, and he tackled
racially sensitive topics in his stand-up routines and bestselling, Grammy
Award-winning comedy albums, often using raunchy, politically incorrect
language. According to his 2005 obituary in the New York Times: “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.”
Pryor’s movie career took off with the 1976 box-office hit Silver Streak,
a comedy-thriller about a murder on a train, co-starring Gene Wilder. Pryor and
Wilder went on to collaborate on such films as Stir Crazy (1980), See
No Evil Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991). During the
1970s, Pryor also appeared in such movies as 1977’s Greased Lightning,
in which he plays a race car driver; The Wiz (1978), a version of The
Wizard of Oz that featured an entirely African-American cast, with Diana
Ross and Michael Jackson joining Pryor (who played the title role); writer Neil
Simon’s California Suite (1978), with Alan Alda, Jane Fonda, Walter
Matthau, Maggie Smith and Bill Cosby; and The Muppet Movie (1979). In
1979, Pryor also released his first concert film, Richard Pryor, Live in
Concert, which according to a 2005 Times article “remains the
standard by which other movies of live comedy performances are judged.”
In 1980, Pryor, who battled substance-abuse issues during his life, was
severely burned in an explosion caused while he was freebasing cocaine. After
spending several months recovering in the hospital, he resumed his career,
performing stand-up and appearing in a string of movies, including Bustin’
Loose (1980), in which he plays an ex-con who gets a second chance; Superman
III (1983), with Christopher Reeve; Brewster’s Millions (1985), with
John Candy; the semi-autobiographical Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling
(1986); and Harlem Nights (1989), written, directed by and co-starring
Eddie Murphy.
In 1986, Pryor was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He made his final film
appearance in David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997). Pryor, who was married
six times, died at the age of 65 on December 10, 2005, in California after
suffering a heart attack.
December 1, 1945
Bette Midler is born in Honolulu, Hawaii.
By
the time she appeared as the final guest of Johnny Carson's 30-year career on The
Tonight Show and brought tears to the unflappable host's eyes with an
emotional performance of "One For My Baby (And One More For The
Road)," she was an established star of stage and screen—a Tony winner, an
Oscar nominee, a Grammy winner and a multimillion-selling recording artist. It
would be difficult, however, to imagine a more unorthodox path to mainstream
stardom than the one followed by Bette Midler—"The Divine Miss M"—who
was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on this day in 1945.
Equal parts Judy Garland and Ethel Merman, Bette
Midler early on set her sights on making it in New York City. Arriving
in New York in 1965, Midler soon tried out for the national touring company of Fiddler
On The Roof only to land the role of Tzeitel (and the job of singing
"Matchmaker" eight times a week) in the Broadway production instead.
After several years of singing in various Manhattan nightclubs on the side, she
got what would prove to be the most important gig of her career, singing
poolside nightly at the fabled Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse/cabaret in
the basement of the Ansonia building on West 72nd Street in Manhattan. It was
there, in collaboration with a young pianist named Barry Manilow, that she
fully developed her "Divine Miss M" stage persona—a brash, campy
interpreter of numbers ranging from "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and
"Leader Of The Pack" to "Superstar" and "Delta
Dawn." It was at the Continental Baths that Atlantic Records chief Ahmet
Ertegun discovered Midler and signed her to record the album that made her a
star: The Divine Miss M (1972). That album, which made an unlikely pop
hit out of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" (Billboard #8, June
1973), earned Midler the Best New Artist award at the 1973 Grammy Awards.
Though she would remain a beloved favorite of a
significant fan base over the next decade or so, her only pop hit during that
period was the theme song from the 1979 movie The Rose. In 1986,
however, her flagging Hollywood career was revived by a comic turn in Paul
Mazursky's Down And Out In Beverly Hills. Two years later, she would
earn a Record of the Year Grammy and her first and only #1 pop hit with
"Wing Beneath My Wings," from the 1988 movie Beaches, in which
Midler co-starred alongside Barbara Hershey.
December 1, 1950
Keith Thibodeaux is
born.
The former child actor and musician is best known for playing “Little
Ricky” in the I Love Lucy and The
Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour television
shows.
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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