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Kathy O'Connell <[log in to unmask]>
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Thu, 22 Oct 1998 17:12:29 EDT
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Friends & Fellow Twainiacs,

        Here is today's NY Times coverage of the first Mark Twain Award at the
Kennedy  Center last night. It seems designed as a citation for standup
comics, alas. Not that Pryor doesn't deserve it, but I always think of SLC as
a writer first rather than a humorist, and certainly not a standup comic.

Kathy O'Connell
Hartford Advocate


          October 22, 1998

          Laughs Mix With Pathos at Richard Pryor Tribute

          By IRVIN MOLOTSKY

          [W] ASHINGTON -- A laughing group of comedians and
              actors who have been inspired in their work by
          Richard Pryor gathered on Tuesday night at the Kennedy
          Center for the Performing Arts to pay tribute to him.
          Robin Williams brought all the loose ends together when
          he recalled the Mark Twain observation that sorrow is a
          greater source of humor than happiness.

          But the laughter far outweighed the sorrow. The
          performers' acts served to remind the audience that
          Pryor, whose health problems include multiple sclerosis,
          was a pioneer among comics in creating characters who
          spoke in the true voice of the streets, obscenities and
          all.

          Many of the words heard during the tribute were probably
          coming from a Kennedy Center stage for the first time,
          and many cannot be repeated here. But the Comedy Central
          cable channel taped the event for showing on Jan. 20.

          The event was to honor Pryor as the first recipient of
          the Kennedy Center's award for humor, the Mark Twain
          Prize. Pryor sat in a box, but he was so weak that he
          could not rise to acknowledge the loud applause from the
          audience in the center's concert hall.

          "I'm glad to see you up there," said one of the
          entertainers, Morgan Freeman, who echoed another
          hallowed Twain remark by adding, "Reports of your death
          were greatly exaggerated."

          At a party after the show, Pryor, 58, was unable to rise
          from his wheelchair and was barely able to say, in a low
          moan, "Thank you," when James Johnson, the chairman of
          the Kennedy Center, gave him the award.

          "Like Mark Twain, you made us laugh and also think,"
          Johnson said.

          Williams said at the party that Pryor had been alert to
          the tributes paid him. "He lights up," Williams said.
          "You can see it."

          In his own appearance at the concert hall, Williams came
          onstage, saying he was scalping tickets to the hugely
          popular van Gogh show at the National Gallery of Art.
          "I've got two tickets to van Gogh," he said. "Check it
          out. Two tickets. Two hundred bucks and you'll see 'The
          Potato Eaters.' " He refused to take a check.

          When his turn came, Freeman recalled yet another Twain
          observation, that he would rather see a taxidermist
          coming toward him than a tax collector. "The taxidermist
          isn't going to take more than your skin," Freeman said.

          The comedian Damon Wayans said in his routine that he
          had drawn inspiration from Pryor, to a point. "I wanted
          to be just like him," Wayans said, "except for the drug
          habit, the failed marriages and the guns."

          Whoopi Goldberg also cited Twain in her remarks, saying:
          "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a
          member of Congress. Oops, I repeat myself."

          The comedian Chris Rock said that Pryor had come on the
          scene "between the two great plagues, disco and AIDS."
          Another comic, Richard Belzer, recalled one of his worst
          stage experiences, having to follow Pryor's act at the
          Improv in Manhattan. "It's like having to paint a
          picture next to one by da Vinci," he said.

          The comedian and social activist Dick Gregory was on
          hand, not as a performer, but as a friend of Pryor's.
          "It must have thrilled him to be there and look down on
          it," Gregory said. "It had to do a lot for him, to see
          that, to feel that."


                Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company

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