Black Pack

Origins (1978-1980)

Robert Townsend and Keenen Ivory Wayans met in 1978 when Wayans was back home in New York City, on summer break from Tuskegee University. Townsend and Wayans met at the New York Improv, when trying to get spots to perform there as standup comedians.^[10] Later in 1978, Eddie Murphy, who had been performing in clubs around Long Island since he was 15 two years ago^[11], met Wayans when he began auditioning to be a regular at the Improv, but after being passed over, Murphy began to perform at The Comic Strip. ^[12]

Ascent (1980-1986)

In 1980, when Jean Doumanian took over being the lead producer of Saturday Night Live following the departure of Lorne Michaels and the show's entire cast and writing staff. In mid-September, having cast six white cast members, Doumanian held two days of auditions on the 17th story of SNL's offices at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where Keenen Ivory Wayans auditioned, as part of a group of roughly 30 Black actors and comedians, to join the cast.^[13] From the audition, Doumanian hired standup Charlie Barnett, but there were issues with his ability to read cue cards, so he was let go.^[14][15] Next, she hired Robert Townsend to join the cast, but talent coordinator Neil Levy and other crew members convinced her to hire Murphy instead, before Townsend had signed his contract.^[16][17]

Meanwhile, in late 1980, Wayans move to Los Angeles and began performing at The Comedy Store. He subsequently convinced Townsend, who had become his best friend and collaborator, to move to LA, where the two of them began writing movies together. Arsenio Hall had arrived in LA in January of 1980 from Chicago and met and befriended Wayans while they were both auditioning to perform at The Comedy Store.^[18][19]

After a few episodes of not being used much on Saturday Night Live, Murphy took off and became the show's breakout star, springboarding off that into a successful career as the star of hit movies 48 Hrs., Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop.^[20] After a few episode of not being used on the show, Murphy took off and became the star of Saturday Night Live, springboarding off that into a successful career as the star of hit movies 48 Hrs., Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop.^[21]

As Murphy became a movie star off of his success on SNL, he grew closer with Hall, Townsend, Wayans, and Paul Mooney, who had co-written multiple projects with Richard Pryor.^[22] With Murphy as the most successful member of the Black Pack by far, the other members started to orbit him. He gave the others jobs, jokes, advice, gifts, and attended their standup shows.^[23]

Peak of Black Pack Collaborations (1986-1992)

In the mid-80s, Robert Townsend and Keenen Ivory Wayans made their first movie, Hollywood Shuffle, a comedy about their frustrations with the way Hollywood treated them as Black actors. The film was directed by Townsend, co-written by Townsend and Wayans, and starred Townsend with supporting performances from Wayans and a group of Black comedians and actors who would go on to serve as a kind of stock company for Wayans and Townsend, including Damon Wayans, Kim Wayans, John Witherspoon, and Anne-Marie Johnson.

Hollywood Shuffle was critically-acclaimed and grossed $5.2 million dollars off of its meager $100,000 budget.^[24][25] Townsend and Wayans showed Eddie Murphy, now one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars, a rough cut of the film, which inspired him to hire Townsend to direct his standup comedy film Eddie Murphy Raw and to hire Wayans to co-write the short film that opened the movie with him.^[26] Murphy hired Paul Mooney to perform standup to open for him on the Raw three-and-a-half-month tour that the concert film documented.^[27][28] Murphy and Mooney also began co-writing a film together.^[29]

During a press conference to promote his film Beverly Hills Cop II, Eddie Murphy announced the existence of the Black Pack, a creative alliance between him and comedians/writers/actors/directors Arsenio Hall, Paul Mooney, Robert Townsend, and Keenen Ivory Wayans.^[30] In 1988, The LA Times ran a piece on the group.^[31]

Murphy was so taken with the thriving scene of Black comedians surrounding the Leimert Park venue The Comedy Act that he produced a special for HBO called Uptown Comedy Express, which featured performances from Arsenio Hall and Paul Mooney.^[32]

Townsend and Wayans also began making HBO specials together, co-writing and co-starring in two Robert Townsend and His Partners and Crime specials in 1987 and 19988 that featured a variety show format consisting of sketches, standup, and music. The first special featured standup sets from Mooney and Keenen's younger brother Damon Wayans, who became a frequent collaborator of the group, as well as a breakout sketch called "The Bold, The Black, The Beautiful" which was a parody of soap operas starring a Black cast led by Townsend and Wayans. Following the success of Hollywood Shuffle, the two of them began writing another movie called The Five Heartbeats for themselves and Damon to star in as a fictional Motown group. The project was set up at Warner Bros. in 1988, but the studio later passed on the movie. ^[33] According to Wayans, the Fox network made a series offer for a show based on their sketch, "The Bold, The Black, The Beautiful", but Townsend passed on the project. Townsend and Wayans stopped collaborating around this time, with Townsend making two more Robert Townsend and His Partners in Crime specials on his own and resurrecting The Five Heartbeats at 20th Century Fox. Keenen still received co-writing credit with Townsend, but the roles intended for Keenen and Damon were recast.^[33]

Following the end of his creative partnership with Townsend, Wayans began to focus on projects where he collaborated with his siblings. He asked Eddie Murphy to use an idea he came up with for a parody of Blacksploitation films called I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.^[34] Murphy gave him his blessing, and Wayans wrote, directed, and starred in the film, which featured a brief role from Townsend, as well as performances from Wayans's siblings Damon Wayans, Kim Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, as well as frequent Black Pack collaborators David Alan Grier, Chris Rock, John Witherspoon, and Robin Harris.

In 1987, Hall became the guest host-then-regular host of Fox's The Late Show, following Joan Rivers's exit from the program. Murphy became best friends with Hall around this time, and Hall accompanied Murphy when he pitched Coming to America to Paramount. They received a greenlight and began writing the script together before Murphy handed it off to Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield to finish writing. ^[35] Murphy and Hall held sessions with screenwriters Blaustein and Sheffield at the Gulf & Western Building in Manhattan to work on the script.^[36] Murphy and Hall starred in the film, each playing multiple roles. It was a major box office hit, and Murphy followed it up with his directorial debut, Harlem Nights, a drama starring himself, Richard Pryor, and Redd Foxx that featured a small role from Hall.

Following Hall's stint as guest host of The Late Show, Fox failed to keep Hall at the network, despite his burgeoning popularity, and Paramount Television gave him his own syndicated talk show, The Arsenio Hall Show in 1989, which frequently featured Murphy as a guest and at one point featured Wayans as a guest. In 1990, Wayans created the sketch show In Living Color for Fox, which he also wrote and starred in. The show's cast also included frequent Black Pack collaborators Damon Wayans, Kim Wayans, and David Alan Grier, and Paul Mooney was briefly employed as a writer there on-and-off-again over the course of its first four seasons. Both The Arsenio Hall Show and In Living Color became big culture-defining hits, but the Black Pack was effectively split into different camps, something that Murphy publicly lamented.^[37]

The group worked together one last time, on A Party for Richard Pryor, an NBC special honoring Richard Pryor, the comedian who served as the biggest influence to the group, following his diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. Murphy hosted the special, with Hall, Townsend, and Wayans - every Black Pack member except Mooney - all serving as writers and appearing as themselves on it.

Following the final episode of In Living Color to feature both Wayans and Mooney as writers in 1992, no two members of the Black Pack worked together again for over two decades. After leaving In Living Color, Mooney did not work with any member of the Black Pack again until his death in 2021.

Reunions

Murphy and Hall reunited in 2013 when Murphy appeared as a guest on an episode of the reboot of The Arsenio Hall Show, and the two also collaborated again when they starred in a Coming to America sequel for Amazon called Coming 2 America in 2021. Hall also appeared in the Netflix documentary centered on Murphy, Being Eddie, and was also presented in Netflix's AFI Life Achievement Award tribute to Murphy, as did Townsend. Wayans has not collaborated with a member of the Black Pack since last working with Mooney on In Living Color in 1992.