OPINION: His earliest work in TV and movies made him a national treasure immediately.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I’m so here for the late-life success of Eddie Murphy. His new movie, “Candy Cane Lane” is No. 1 on Amazon Prime right now. To see him now as a grown-up movie star reminds me how wild and, well, raw he was as a young comic. Make no mistake: Murphy became a comedy superstar a few years after he started doing comedy. Comedians love to say that there are no prodigies in comedy. It takes time to learn how to do all of this. This is true but the one exception to that rule is Murphy.
Murphy joined “Saturday Night Live” in 1980 when he was 19 years old. He was immediately the biggest star on the show. In 1982, he starred in his first movie “48 Hours,” which was hysterical and successful. In 1983, he gave us “Trading Places,” another comedy classic, and an iconic stand-up special called “Delirious.” No other comic has ever created so much epic material and ascended higher at such a young age.
In “Delirious” Murphy wore a blood-red leather suit with the zipper open to his navel. This is what a rock star would wear onstage. It was a vision of the comic as a sex symbol. Where other comics were self-deprecating, Murphy was self-ennobling. His comedy seemed to come from his ego as a way of showing how funny, how brilliant, and how untamable he was.
Murphy, as a stand-up, was incendiary. He was quickly placed on the top level of working comedians which, at that time, included the legendary veterans Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby. Murphy was a joke-teller rather than a philosopher of the human spirit like Pryor. Murphy could be a great storyteller though not as great as Cosby, but Murphy’s stories would give you characters and voices and dialogue between the characters that took you into a scene. His stories were painted so well they became visual in your mind. I can still see a group of kids standing around holding ice cream cones while one of them cries over their ice cream falling on the ground and then one of the kids says, “Want a lick?” Aw, they’re being so nice. “Sike!”
Murphy was a rock star comedian who went to nightclubs and got into fights — or at least he said he did onstage — and dated famous women from Whitney Houston to Mel B from the Spice Girls, but above all, he always seemed like he could make anything funny. He could give you his take on James Brown or Gumby or Mr. Rogers and kill with all of them.
I’ve long felt that there are two types of comedians — people with great material and people who could make the phone book funny. The material people put every word and every pause under a microscope trying to find the exact scientific point that will make people laugh. The phone book people just have a funny spirit, hysterical voice and amazing timing such that they could read the phone book and make you laugh. Murphy was the ultimate phone book guy. Just him smiling was funny.
The year that “Beverly Hills Cop” came out I was 13. I went to five birthday parties that summer that consisted of us all going to see “Beverly Hills Cop.” And no one was mad about seeing it again. The movie was incredibly funny, and Murphy was then the biggest comedian in the country and a massive pop cultural figure even though he was still in his early 20s. In the ’80s, he was a massive box office star, TV star and somehow a singer. (I still have not figured out if “Party All the Time” was supposed to be a joke or if he really thought he could sing. Either way, it hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.)
In the ’90s, Murphy faded from the spotlight as some of his projects flopped and other comics rose. But I and many others always hoped he’d come back someday because he was a comedic genius. I usually abhor sequels, but Murphy has shown that he can do anything. Next up, he’s starring in “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley,” the fourth installment in that epic series. I don’t think I’ll go see it five times, but I will be there opening weekend cheering on someone who’s been part of the pop culture firmament for over 40 compelling years.
Touré is a host and Creative Director at theGrio. He is the host of Masters of the Game on theGrioTV. He is also the host and creator of the docuseries podcast “Being Black: The ’80s” and the animated show “Star Stories with Toure” which you can find at TheGrio.com/starstories. He is also the host of the podcast “Toure Show” and the podcast docuseries “Who Was Prince?” He is the author of eight books including the Prince biography Nothing Compares 2 U and the ebook The Ivy League Counterfeiter.
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