For Rain Pryor, there is magic in storytelling. In the realm of stories, her dual identities as African American and Jew intersect. And in stories she can act as interpreter of each culture.
“Every culture has storytelling … with its natural ebb and flow, and that naturally flows into show business,” said Pryor, the daughter of the late comedian Richard Pryor.
Pryor spoke with The Chronicle last week at the Midwest Airlines Center before her keynote address at a National Multiple Sclerosis Society-Wisconsin Chapter fundraising luncheon.
Pryor’s mother, Shelley Bonus, a Jewish New Yorker, was transplanted to Hollywood as a teenager, when her father became actor Danny Kaye’s manager.
Variously described as a go-go dancer, hippie and social activist, Bonus changed the spelling of her last name from Bonis, “because she just had to be different,” Pryor said. She has a good relationship with her mother, who is now an astronomer, she said.
Her parents divorced early and she was mostly raised by her maternal Jewish grandparents.
Describing herself as “a product of the 1970s,” Pryor said there weren’t many children of racially mixed marriages at the time she was growing up.
In interviews, Pryor has said that she didn’t feel completely accepted by the white Jewish community she was raised in, but her grandmother, Bernice Bonis, now 87, schooled her in Jewish traditions.
Pryor’s challenges extended beyond her interfaith and interracial family. Growing up in Hollywood, on the periphery of wealth and glamour, she suffered from the effects of her parents’ divorce and life with a volatile father.
She has had more than her share of struggles with substance abuse and low self-esteem, according to various media reports. And now, at age 38, she has found her own way to “show business.”
Her one-woman comedy show “Fried Chicken & Latkes,” now in its fourth year, explores and exploits her dual African American and Jewish heritage.
An actress and comedian, Rain Pryor’s resume features a long list of theater, film and television credits.
It also enumerates an impressive array of abilities, including dance (ballroom, club/freestyle, disco, hip hop, jazz, modern and tap); a range of vocal styles (mezzo-soprano: gospel, jazz, musical theater, R&B, blues and rock/pop); dialects; and specialized performance skills, such as clowning, juggling, mime and billiards.
She also owns her own media production company, Mixed Rain Productions, Inc., and an acting school. And she recently published a memoir titled “Jokes My Father Never Taught Me: Life, Love and Loss with Richard Pryor.”
The success of “Fried Chicken & Latkes” has put her in a position to mentor other actors, something she is greatly enjoying, she said.
“My life is unique. With a famous parent, people have expectations,” of her, she said. But unlike what people tend to assume, she did not lead an indulged, easy life.
“I had a job and I didn’t have money. My grandparents were ‘old-time’ Hollywood,” she said, not the powerful, monied types of a more modern era.
About a year and a half ago, Pryor and husband Yale Partlow left Hollywood for Baltimore, where she said she feels they can enjoy a more “normal” life.
Pryor has just become a mother and her joy is palpable. Daughter Lotus Marie, born April 1, accompanied her mother to Milwaukee last week, making her first airplane trip.
Though she keeps Jewish traditions and attends High Holiday services every year, Pryor said she has fallen in love with her husband’s religion, which is Theravada Buddhism.
The language of that discipline — such concepts as “a clear mind,” “living in the moment” and “being mindful” — are sprinkled through Pryor’s Web site and acting class descriptions.
For Pryor, that does not conflict with her Judaism; Buddhism doesn’t require rejecting other religions, Pryor said.
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