In 1977 Richard Pryor was hired as the headliner for what he believed was a human rights fundraiser held by the “Save our Human Rights Foundation,” in reality they were not their for all human rights. By the next morning Richard Pryor was front page news again. This time for what has been called the most homophobic rant in the history of comedy. However, that’s a story of half truths and lies. This is what really happened.
Burn Hollywood Bowl Burn
Recently a lot of right-wing comedians have complained about cancel culture ruining comedy. One prominent example they make is about pushback for LGBTQ jokes. They claim that people like Richard Pryor never faced any backlash for these jokes. But they don’t know about the time Richard Pryor was booed off stage at the Hollywood Bowl and was labeled a homophobic bigot on the front page of newspapers the next day. The year was 1977 and the headline was “Richard Pryor loses it again at The Hollywood Bowl,” unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. That night the Hollywood Bowl had a potent mixture of people and personalities ready to combust. What happened wasn’t Richard Pryor losing his mind. It was Richard Pryor holding up a mirror to wealthy white elites of the LGBTQ community, and they didn’t like it.
As always, we’ll need some backstory on the key players here. There’s Richard Pryor, in my opinion one of the greatest stand up comedians of all time and a pretty solid actor. He did cocaine; everyone knew this. Even before he reached the peak of his career in the late 70s and early 80s, there were plenty of headlines about him losing his mind. On one occasion he asked legendary comedian Redd Foxx, “Why do I always want more,” and Red Foxx replied, “because you’re a junkie.”
Next there’s Lily Tomlin, a comedian and actress. She’s most known for staring alongside Dolly Parton in 9 to 5. She was openly lesbian long before this night ever happened. She also considered herself a close friend of Richard’s at the time.
Next is The Lockers. A group of young Black dancers who had been on Soul Train appeared in music videos and toured the country performing. Anita Bryant wasn’t there that night but plays a key role. She was a jingle singer. She attempted to make it as a professional recording artist. But she was unlikable. She pivoted into politics and became an “anti-gay,” activist. That didn’t work out for her either, she was a joke. In fact years later Family Guy would make fun of her, basing the character “Pearl” on her. On one occasion she was giving a speech, and a protestor ran up, and hit her in the face with a pie on national TV. She’s only important because her antics caused the formation of our last player. In 1977 she was at the front of pushing legislation in Florida that would essentially make it illegal to be homosexual. The “Don’t say Gay,” bill passed in Florida has been in the works for almost half a century. In 77 this led to formation of our last key player.
“The Save our Human Rights Foundation,” was their name but in reality, they had no interest in human rights for everyone. Just gay and lesbian rights. Nothing for bisexuals or trans people, nothing for poor people. Nothing for immigrants or disabled people. Hell, nothing for non-white gays and lesbians. It was made up of almost entirely white gay and lesbians with corporate or government jobs in San Francisco. Their goal was to “educate people, but in a nice glossy way.”
The Save Our Human Rights Foundation decided to hold an event at The Hollywood Bowl, a fundraiser, with performances by many talents. But there were some caveats. Their idea of educating people about lesbian and gay people, was to not say lesbian or gay. None of the performers could say, lesbian or gay. Nobody could mention sex at all. With those rules in mind between 17,000 and 18,000 people, almost entirely white gay or lesbian people filled The Hollywood Bowl. I keep saying “White, gay and lesbian,” because it’s important to the story.
Richard Pryor is backstage that night, walking the halls, set to headline. He’s picking up on the tone of the event and he’s getting pissed off. He was sure he was here to do a benefit for Human Rights. But as he watches performer after performer get on stage and avoid the topic completely it just makes him madder.
That night The Lockers performed a dance routine that wasn’t received well. The stage crew refused to set the lights for them. They had changed them for every white performer before and after. The sound mixing was bad, and they were outright treated like trash. The audience completely ignored their performance. A dancer leaped over nine chairs and was met with silence and yawns. They had been cussed out, made fun of and ridiculed by event organizers backstage and Pryor is mad.
Lilly Tomlin comes up to perform and for the first time that day, she breaks the rules. She talks about sex, talks about being a lesbian. She tells the crowd she misses when sex was “dirty and nasty and nobody was gay, only shy,” and the crowd laughs, but organizers hate it despite knowing what a Lilly Tomlin set looked like before they booked her. It’s an eventful day and Richard Pryor is about to headline.
He comes on stage and doesn’t say anything. He walks the length of the stage several times, looking out into the thousands of white people gathered there that evening before he says anything. When he finally speaks, he says, “I came here for human rights, and I found out it was really about not getting caught with a dick in your mouth.” The crowd laughs harder than they have all night, he keeps going. “You don’t want the police to kick your ass if you’re sucking dick, and that’s fair. You’ve got the right to suck anything you want.” Again, the crowd goes wild.
Richard then goes on to talk about a man named Wilbur Harp that he grew up with. He said the other boys would let Wilbur suck their dicks, but Richard would quote, “take him roses and call him my dear.” He said, “I sucked one dick. In 1952, I sucked Wilbur Harp’s dick. It was beautiful, but I had to leave it alone.” He would continue, “It was beautiful, because Wilbur had the best booty in the world. Now I’m not saying booty to be nice, I’m talking about asshole. Wilbur had some good asshole and Wilbur would give it up so good and put his thighs against your waist. That would make you cum real quick.” The crowd is hanging on to his every word and Pryor gets more explicit about his relations with Wilbur.
That’s when Richard supposedly loses his mind. He pauses, looks out into the crowd and asks them “how can faggots be racist?” There’s silence. Then he gives them a list of all the racist things he saw that night and the crowd gets quiet. He dedicates a lot of time just to how The Lockers had been treated that night. He goes on to say,
“I hope the police catch you motherfuckers and shoot your ass accidentally. Because you motherfuckers ain’t helping niggers at all,” the crowd is mad, they start to boo. Pryor continues. “Motherfuck women’s rights. What they need to do is pay the people on welfare,” at this point the whole crowd is booing, because he’s crossed a line. But Pryor doesn’t stop. He continues with “Yeah, get mad. Cause you’re going to be even madder than that when Ed Davis catches you motherfuckers out of here in the lot. When the niggers was burning down Watts, you motherfuckers were doing whatever you wanted on Hollywood Boulevard.” Richard turned his back to the crowd, poked out his butt and said “kiss my happy rich black ass,” and left the stage.
That’s not even how the story ends. I mentioned The Save Our Human Rights Foundation was basically wealthy white people. Well, they made calls. The next morning Pryor was all over the newspapers in Los Angeles. The LA Times ran a full-page spread demanding that he apologize. Over their next 17 issues they shared letters of people at The Hollywood Bowl that evening calling Pryor homophobic, claiming his “street language,” was offensive and they couldn’t be racist because they had Black friends.
But the campaign against Pryor didn’t go as they planned for two reasons. The first, is they forgot all LGBTQ people aren’t wealthy skinny white people. More people came out in defense of Pryor than anyone could have expected. Pryor had shined a light on one of the darkest parts of the LGBTQ community and that was the fact that racism was still prevalent and running rampant. One person interviewed stated: “Being a black homosexual and living here practically all my life, I can say that the California homosexual is the most extreme of bigots. He hates Blacks, fats, women and himself most of all.” Another would say, “Pryor’s actions were crude, but sadly true. If one refuses to believe, let any person who is fat, black, ugly or female try going to a gay club alone.”
The second reason the campaign failed is because they ignored Richard Pryor’s past. Believe it or not, there are many people who don’t place a label on their sexual orientation. Pryor was one of them. He once joked that he was ready to “go back to being a horny heterosexual,” but beyond that, nothing.
For starters, Wilbur Harp was a very real person. Pryor’s close friend Cecil Grubbs has confirmed Harp was an openly gay teenager they grew up with in Peoria. Pryor and Harp would spend hours together at a bar called The Blue shadow. In the 1960s Pryor and Harp moved to Chicago together and shared an apartment while Harp worked as a cosmetologist. Even after Pryor made it big, he would still fly out Harp for lengthy vacations together in LA until Harp’s death.
Quincy Jones once let it slip that Richard Pryor and Marlon Brando would have sex frequently. Brando also never placed labels on his sexual orientation, but was very open about the fact that he had sex with men and women. Pryor’s widow Jennifer Lee Pryor would go on to confirm she knew about it, even joking about it with TMZ saying “It was the 70s and drugs were still good, especially quaaludes. If you did enough cocaine, you’d fuck a radiator and send it flowers in the morning.”
The Hollywood Bowl wasn’t even the first or last time Richard Pryor would talk about sleeping with Men on stage. In his very first special, “Live and Smokin,” he would discuss having gay sex. During some banter between scenes on The Richard Pryor Show he talked to the crowd about having sex with Paul Mooney. In his autobiography, Prior spoke about his trans girlfriend being a new experience.
Going back to where we started, Richard Pryor probably faced more retaliation from the LGBTQ community than any milqtoast comic complaining about cancel culture today. It’s because Richard Pryor shined a light on racism plaguing the LGBTQ community that still goes on today.
In 2023 the only clips of that performance available were used in a documentary calling it the most homophobic rant in comedy history. The wealthy elite stereotypical gay men and lesbians that filled The Hollywood Bowl that night refused to acknowledge that every single member of the LGBTQ isn’t going to fit neatly in their boxes. There are Black people, fat people, trans people, bisexual people, ugly people, short people, tall people and people who don’t place labels on their orientation, but know what they like.
It wasn’t because he was standing on stage saying hateful things and calling it comedy. He faced that criticism because the call was coming from inside the house and white people once again refused to reckon with their own racist actions.
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