FREDDIE PRINZE. Born in New York City, U.S.A., 22 June 1954. Educated at the High School of Performing Arts, 1970. Married: Kathy Cochran, 1975. Performed in Manhattan comedy nightclubs; appeared on Jack Paar's television show, 1972; appeared on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, 1973; starred in television show Chico and the Man, 1974-77. Died in Los Angeles, California, 28 January 1977.

TELEVISION SERIES

1974-77 Chico and the Man

Freddie Prinze is one of only a handful of Puerto Rican Americans to earn national prominence as a popular entertainer--in his case, as a stand-up comedian. Prinze was born in Washington Heights, New York, a working-poor, multi-ethnic neighborhood on the Upper West Side. His father was a Hungarian immigrant who worked as a tool and die maker, his mother a Puerto Rican immigrant who worked in a factory. Playing on the name "Neuorican," as many New York Puerto Ricans identify themselves, Prinze called himself a "Hungarican."

Prinze came from a diverse religious as well as ethnic background. His father was part Jewish, his mother Catholic, and they chose to send him to a Lutheran elementary school. On Sundays he attended Catholic mass. "All was confusing," he told Rolling Stone in 1975, "until I found I could crack up the priest doing Martin Luther." Prinze was also overweight when he was a young boy, which further heightened his anxiety about his "mixed" identity. "I fitted in nowhere," he continued, "I wasn't true spic, true Jew, true anything. I was a miserable fat schmuck kid with glasses and asthma." Like many comedians, Prinze used humor to cope with the traumas of his childhood. "I started doing half-hour routines in the boys room, just winging it. Guy's cut class to catch the act. It was, 'What time's Freddie playing the toilet today?'" His comedic talents paid off, as he was selected to attend the prestigious Performing Arts High School in New York.

Prinze did not graduate from the Performing Arts High School, though after his later professional successes school administrators awarded him a certificate. The young comedian skipped many of his morning classes, most commonly economics, because he often worked as late as 3:00 A.M. in comedy clubs perfecting his routine and style. Of his time spent in these clubs, Prinze would later say, "My heart doesn't start till 1:00 P.M." One of his favorite spots was the Improvisation on West 44th Street, a place where aspiring comics could try out their material on receptive audiences.

Prinze's called himself an "observation comic," and his routines often included impressions of ethnic minorities and film stars such as Marlon Brando. One of his most famous impressions was of his Puerto Rican apartment building superintendent who, when asked to fix a problem in the building, would say with a thick accent: "Eez not mai yob." The line became a national catch phrase in the early 1970's. His comedy also had a political edge that was poignant and raw, perhaps best illustrated by his line about Christopher Columbus: "Queen Isabelle gives him all the money, three boats, and he's wearing a red suit, a big hat, and a feather--that's a pimp." Prinze's comic wit, based in the tradition of street humor pioneered by such comics as Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, landed him a number of television appearances, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1973. His performance there was a major success, and the start of his television career.

Indeed, James Komack, a television producer, liked what he saw in Prinze's routine, and cast him to play the part of Chico Rodriquez, a wise-cracking Chicano, in a situation comedy called Chico and the Man. Komack told Time magazine that Prinze "was the best comic to come along in 20 years." Chico and the Man also starred veteran actor Jack Albertson as "the Man," a crusty old-timer, owner of a run-down garage in a Chicano barrio of East Los Angeles. Among the supporting cast were Scatman Crothers, who played Louie the garbageman, and Della Reese, who played Della the landlady. In the style of other situation comedies such as All in the Family and Sanford and Son, most of the plots involved ethnic conflicts between Chico, who worked in the garage, and the Man, the only Caucasian living in the mostly Latino neighborhood. "Latin music sounds like Montovani getting mugged," the Man says to Chico in one episode. Chico would often respond to the old-timer's bigoted statements with the line, "Looking good," which also became a national catch phrase. Premiering on NBC-TV in September of 1974, Chico and the Man quickly rose to the top of the Nielsen ratings. Time reported that Prinze was "the hottest new property on prime-time TV," and the comedian literally became an overnight star--the first and, to date, only Puerto Rican comedian to command a nation-wide audience. He began working in Las Vegas for a reported $25,000 a night. He bought himself a new Corvette and his parents a home in the Hollywood hills. He was only twenty years old.

Chico and the Man faced criticism and protests from the Los Angeles Chicano community, who protested the use of Prinze, a New York Puerto Rican, to play a Los Angeles Chicano. Citing dialect and accent differences--and the fact that network television rarely employed Chicano actors--Chicano groups picketed NBC's Burbank studios and wrote protest letters. Prinze responded with his usual irreverent humor: "If I can't play a Chicano because I'm Puerto Rican, then God's really gonna be mad when he finds out Charlton Heston played Moses." Nonetheless, the network and producers of the show buckled under the pressure, changing the character to half-Puerto Rican and half-Chicano brought up in New York City. The shift in the character's ethnic identity apparently did not bother television audiences, for Chico and the Man never slipped below sixth place in the ratings when Prinze was its star.

Prinze, however, had a difficult time adjusting to the pressures of his overnight success and stardom, and during this period, he experienced many personal problems. His wife of 15 months, Katherine Elaine Cochran, filed for divorce and Prinze was now less able to see his adored 15 month old son. Early in the show's run, Prinze was arrested for driving under the influence of prescription tranquilizers, fueling speculation of a drug problem. Indeed, friends reported that Prinze turned to drugs to cope with the pressures of fame and the break-up of his marriage. "Freddie was into a lot of drugs," comedian Jimmy Walker said to the New York Times, "not heroin, as far as I know, but coke and a lot of Ludes. The drug thing was a big part of Freddie's life. It completely messed him up."

On 28 January 1977, after a night of phone calls to his secretary, business manager, psychiatrist, mother and estranged wife, Freddie Prinze shot himself in the head in front of his business manager. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was 22 years old. A note found in his apartment read: "I can't take any more. It's all my fault. There is no one to blame but me." According to the New York Times, Prinze had previously threatened suicide in front of many of his friends and associates, often by holding a gun to his head and pulling the trigger while the safety was on. It is not known whether the young comedian actually intended to kill himself that night or merely suggest that he might, as he had done in the past, but it is clear that he was critically depressed.

The death of Freddie Prinze is an American success story turned tragedy. His street-wise insight and raw wit is surely missed, perhaps most by the Puerto Rican American community who have yet to see another politically-minded Puerto Rican comedian grab national attention. "I am ee-noyed there is no Puerto Rican astronaut," Prinze told Rolling Stone in an exaggerated Spanish accent, "thee bigots think we will blow thee horn all the way to thee moon, play thee radio, stick our heads out thee window and whistle ... and then, on thee moon, the white astronaut says, 'bring in the Rocks now,' and we re-ply, 'Eez not mai yob, man!'

-Daniel Bernardi