Eddie Murphy Tapped For Mark Twain American Humor Prize

April 2015



In a room of comedy legends and more at Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special in February, he was the star attraction.

Now the man who brought Axel Foley and some much more to life is being honored by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Eddie Murphy will be the recipient of this year’s Mark Twain Prize For American Humor on October 18, it was announced today.

“Through his appearances on Saturday Night Live, groundbreaking stand-up comedy, and work as a movie star, Eddie Murphy has shown that like Mark Twain, he was years ahead of his time,” said Kennedy Center chief Deborah F. Rutter on Thursday.

“I am deeply honored to receive this recognition from the Kennedy Center and to join the distinguished list of past recipients of this award,” said Murphy.

Murphy’s own comic hero Richard Pryor was awarded the Twain Prize.


http://tinyurl.com/qxbdbhx

 

The first evolution of Eddie Murphy was as a young bold and brash stand up comedian and break out performer in the early 80s on Saturday Night Live. He quickly captured the imagination and hearts of a generation and rocketed to stardom. Murphy took his place among stand up comedian legends like Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby before he was thirty. Today's generation really may not fully understand just how big Eddie was in the 80s. Take Will Smith, Jay Z and Chris Rock's fame and star power at the absolute height of their popularity and put that into one person in 1985 and you now see what Eddie Murphy was dealing with back then. The leather suits and rock star swagger he embodied was something that was rarely seen in its full form in a black man in mainstream entertainment.

There weren't too many black celebrities who could pull it off in the way that Murphy did before the 80s. Not even Micheal Jackson had it quite the same way Murphy did at the time. Don't get me wrong, Off The Wall was big and Thriller was phenomenal but Jackson's swagger was more on the soft quiet side. Murphy once joked in Delirious:

"Sing ! 'cos all you got to do is sing. Michael Jackson, who can sing,
and is a good looking guy. But ain't the most masculine fellow in the world. That's Micheal's hook, his sensitivity ! That's when women be sayin: "Micheal's just so sensitive..."

Eddie Murphy was anything but "sensitive". He wielded his fame and popularity in much the same way Elvis and Mick Jagger did. And up to that point it was very rare to see a black celebrity do that. Most usually played the humble role like Nat King Cole or Sidney Poitier and even though Sammy Davis Jr. was a swinging cat back in the 50s who thumbed his nose at society by dating and marrying white women and cavorting with known Hollywood rabble rousers like Peter Lawford and Dean Martin, his celebrity was tied closely to Frank Sinatra, leader of the Rat Pack. Sinatra more or less had to cosign Sammy's boldness in a "it's okay, he's with me..." fashion. Richard Pryor was the precursor to what Murphy would become but he never quite made it to the mainstream leading man level that Murphy had. There was very briefly Jim Brown who definitely wasn't sensitive either, Brown was as bold, confident and masculine as they came back then but he never really attained leading man mainstream superstar status either. The only other person I can think of who flaunted his celebrity as brazenly as Murphy had would be early 20th century heavy weight boxing champ Jack Johnson.

Johnson was not only rich but dated and married white women and publicly flaunted his wealth at a time in American history when black men were being lynched at astounding rates in the south. The most flamboyant black entertainer today couldn't hold Johnson's jockstrap in comparison.

And you wouldn't see that kind of conspicuous display of arrogance and conceit by a black man in quite the same way again in mainstream entertainment until the 1980s. And like Johnson, it would all come down to one person pretty much holding it down for the whole group. Chris Rock made the observation that before Eddie there was a sidekick way of acting in the past that other black actors did that Murphy never subscribed to. Make no mistake, 48hrs and Trading Places were Nick Nolte and Dan Akroyd lead films. Eddie just shined brighter. His star quality was so big by that time that when the third film he worked on, Best Defense, tanked at the box office people were saying it was his first bomb when in actuality it was a Dudley Moore film. His first leading role was in his fourth movie, Beverly Hills Cop.

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