They shared a bond that seemed unbreakable. In his infamous 1982 stand-up film, Live On The Sunset Strip, Richard credited Jim with getting him off of drugs. He also said Brown helped him pull through his painful recovery after his 1980 free-basing accident that caused Pryor to set himself on fire and sustain third degree burns. 

In the early ’80s, Richard Pryor appointed Jim Brown as the president of his then-new Indigo Productions Company after inking a $40 million deal with Columbia Pictures and the Coca-Cola Co.. But then something suddenly changed…something that left Jim confused, the NAACP pissed off, and many accusing Pryor of betraying his friend due to ‘Hollywood politics.’

According to Jim Brown’s autobiography, Out of Bounds, there were a few things that began to tear a riff into their friendship:

“I learned a lot about drugs through Richard Pryor. Although I didn’t indulge, when Richard was hitting the pipe, he never came by and rarely called. I’d drive to Richard’s house and we’d talk for hours, I would try to convince him to enter the hospital but he was not a man to push.”

After Richard’s free-basing accident, Jim said the relationship between Richard and his family became far more strained, and he also didn’t trust the women in his life. Pryor thought they were after his money:

“How could a motherf***er like me get these fine bit**es? They don’t really love me. They want my money,” Jim claims Pryor told him.

Pryor’s family asked Jim for Pryor’s safe combination, but Richard asked Jim to tell them “no”, says Brown…this is where it got ugly:

“Richard was so weak, he could barely write. His family called me again and said they needed $25,000 to pay bills. I had to talk Richard into writing a check. But his family came to resent me. I had refused to give them the combination to the safe.”

“Then it came apart. I had been the one the family had to go through for money and I made crucial decisions on his behalf. One day, Richard told his family that I had become like a father to him.”

One afternoon, Richard asked me to come by. When I arrived, his family hardly looked at me. Richard was upset, I asked him, what’s up? He said, ‘Well, look, I don’t think I really need you anymore. I think my family can take care of everything.’ My mouth fell slightly open, when I regained my composure, I said okay and left.”

And that was how it all fell apart. Afterwards, the NAACP and many in the public, alleged that Pryor fired Brown from the president position of his Indigo Productions company after receiving pressure from his partners, Columbia Pictures and the Coca-Cola Co., to fire Jim and most of the other African American employees on his Indigo staff. In 1983, Richard did an interview with The Bulletin Newspaper and strongly denied those allegations, stating that neither Coca-Cola, nor Columbia Pictures had anything to do with his decisions and that it was just business…nothing personal..

In the end, Jim’s and Richard’s relationship was allegedly very strained.

It would’ve been great if the two of them had been able to remain close and gotten Indigo Productions off of the ground because during that time, Richard’s company was the only Black-owned production company with a deal as large as his. They could have made a lot of noise in the movie game together, without compromising their characters, nor the art in the process.

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