The Richard Pryor Ultimatum: George Marienthal's Line in the Sand

Mister Kelly's is excited to welcome our newest young guest-blogger, Historian Adam Carston: Simply put, there is American comedy before Richard Pryor, and American comedy after Richard Pryor. With his combination of fearless honesty, provocative language, streetwise cool, and political savvy, he separated himself from other stand-ups. In the process, he also inspired a generation of comedians and cut a new path for them to travel. But Pryor’s famous, challenging persona was not born overnight.  It took years of hard work and experience, and a good measure of pain and go-to-hell abandon to fully define it. While there are multiple chapters in Richard Pryor’s emergence as a cultural icon, some key moments that would help shape his career, worldview and revolutionary comedic style took place at none other than Chicago’s entertainment hot spot on the forefront of political change: Mister Kelly’s.

The Road to Kelly's

Richard Pryor began his comedy career in the small clubs in his hometown of Peoria, Illinois in the early 1960s.  Eventually, he decided to leave home to hone his skills as a road comedian.  His early shows were for mostly segregated audiences, the jokes fell within certain accepted cultural boundaries, and the pay was low. Pryor often lived hand to mouth in between gigs, but he was developing as a young comedian. Here he is at the Kraft Music Hall in 1964. 

During these early days, Pryor became aware of another young black comedian by the name of Bill Cosby.  Cosby was doing something that many black comics only dreamed of: crossing over to audiences of all colors.  Cosby did this by deliberately playing hip coffee houses and clubs, where segregation was less prevalent, and performing a clean, inoffensive and nonpolitical act.  Seeing Cosby’s success, Pryor quickly mimicked these methods. 

The Cosby model served Richard Pryor very well in his early career.  He began appearing on high profile programs like The Ed Sullivan Show and The Merv Griffin Show throughout the 1960s. He even saw success at the same hip clubs as Cosby. Mister Kelly’s was among them, and he became a recurring act. While he used Cosby as an inspiration, it should be said that Pryor was already exceptional in his own right. Comedian Tim Reid remembers being inspired by Pryor when he watched him perform at Kelly’s and thought to himself: “I want to do that.”

The Injustice that Transformed His Act

Pryor was in the midst of a multi-week engagement at Mister Kelly’s on April 4, 1968, when everything changed.  The first show of the night went off without a hitch, but in between shows, tragic news reached those in the club.  Kenny Rogers, whose band was the opener, recalls that fateful evening as: “the night that Martin Luther King Jr. got killed.”

Mister Kelly’s booker, Jeff Wald, spent the rest of the night with Pryor trying to make sense of what had happened.  The two smoked a joint together and then “drove around Chicago like lunatics,” as the city and nation tore itself apart.  Wald recalls Pryor sobbing, coping with the madness of the event.  Like many Americans, that April night would change Pryor forever.

A Political Point of View

While his act was apolitical in nature, Pryor was politically conscious in his personal life, interested in Malcolm X, Angela Davis, and Eldridge Cleaver. He donated thousands to the Black Panther Party.  The significance of MLK’s death was so profound it caused his private and professional life to merge on that April night.  He could no longer be someone he was not.

This transformation was immediately evident in Pryor’s act.  Shortly after the assassination, Pryor was booked for a star-studded MLK benefit show at the Hollywood Bowl.  The once clean comic disappeared that night.  Pryor’s set was laced with vulgar language and passionate political rhetoric that shocked the Hollywood elite: “All these people here are giving money,” he said, “but if your son gets killed by a cop, money don’t mean shit.”

George Marienthal and the Ultimatum

After the Hollywood Bowl show, these features became an integral part of Pryor’s act.  No longer a Cosby clone, Pryor had found his own voice; but it was a voice that scared many people.  Pryor was exploring areas of race, sex, and politics that many were still uncomfortable with.  Expressing his frustration, Pryor said: “The deeper you get, the more uptight they get.  It scares them.  They haven’t heard this stuff.  But it’s the truth.”

Richard Pryor was setting the world on fire with his cutting edge humor for a year or so before he returned to Mister Kelly’s.  His next scheduled appearance at the club would be a multi-date run starting December 26, 1969.  A few days before arriving in Chicago, however, Pryor got a call from owner George Marienthal.  What happened next is up for debate, but the conversation changed their relationship.

What is known is that some disagreement over Pryor’s act occurred. Marienthal had heard that Pryor was working “blue” and he was worried about how it would affect the club’s reputation in light of the attitudes of his audience. He urged Pryor to perform clean material, as he’d done before.  Refusing to budge, Pryor gave an ultimatum; either he performed his new material or no appearances.  The upshot? Richard Pryor never played at Mister Kelly’s again.

While the death of MLK may have pushed Pryor to change, canceling these shows at Mister Kelly’s completed his transformation.  Pryor seldom played supper clubs after that, as he transitioned into a juggernaut of comedy in the 1970s.  Though Richard Pryor and Mister Kelly’s parted ways, for a few glorious years in the 1960s they both played an intricate part in the other’s history.