1982 Richard Pryor releases Live on the Sunset Strip
On this day in 1982, Live on the Sunset Strip, the latest concert film recorded by the provocative comedian Richard Pryor, arrives in movie theaters.
Born in 1940 in Peoria, Illinois, Pryor broke into the New York comedy scene in the early 1960s; he made his national television debut in 1964 in On Broadway Tonight. The successful black comedian Bill Cosby was a strong influence in Pryor’s early stage persona, but the younger comic soon broke out with his own unique brand of edgy, irreverent comedy, mostly focusing on portrayals of a variety of black “street” characters and observations about the black experience in America. In the mid-1970s, Pryor recorded two gold-selling comedy albums, both of which earned an X-rating for explicit language and sexual content, and both of which were hits with black and white audiences.