In his RollingStone magazine interview, Eddie stated that he's done with making family movies. And his latest role as a streetwise burglar (reminiscent of characters he played in his first two films) has everyone asking if the old Eddie Murphy has returned? Maybe, but I don't think so. This isn't a review of his new film Tower Heist, its more of an observation of a long and very successful film career that going into its third evolution.
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. Eddie 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 swag 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 swag 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 mainstream leading man level that Murphy had. There was very briefly Jim Brown who definitely wasn't sensitive either but he never really attained leading man mainstream superstar status either. The only other person I can think of who flaunted his celebrity as bold and brazenly as Murphy had would be early 20th century heavy weight boxing champ Jack Johnson.
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