Richard Lewis^†

The nickname 'Prince of Pain' wasn't just branding; it was the entire act. Lewis built his 1980s breakthrough on confessional, neurotic stand-up that made Woody Allen look emotionally stable. He racked up 60-plus appearances on David Letterman and turned personal misery into material precise enough to feel like journalism. His 1985 Showtime special I'm in Pain announced the aesthetic. The 1989 ABC sitcom Anything But Love ran 56 episodes opposite Jamie Lee Curtis. Comedy Central later ranked him #45 on their list of the greatest standups of all time.

Forty-plus episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm gave Lewis a second career most standups don't get. He and Larry David were born three days apart in the same Brooklyn hospital, hated each other at summer camp, then rebuilt the friendship and eventually took it to cable television. He got sober on August 3, 1994, after two interventions and years of alcohol and cocaine use that once landed him in the ER. In April 2023, he announced a Parkinson's diagnosis and retired from stand-up. Most of Curb's final season aired after he died.

Before marrying Joyce Lapinsky in 2005, Lewis took her to his therapist to get the therapist's sign-off first. That detail is more revealing than most profiles. He spent years petitioning Bartlett's Familiar Quotations to credit him with popularizing 'the (blank) from hell.' Bartlett's said the phrase predated him, but the Yale Book of Quotations agreed, and the dispute eventually became a Curb episode. The all-black stage wardrobe wasn't an aesthetic statement. It came from watching the TV Western Have Gun - Will Travel as a kid and never letting go.

Most episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm's final season aired after his February 27 death, making his appearances a posthumous goodbye. Larry David's statement read: 'Today he made me sob and for that I'll never forgive him.' HBO called him 'a cherished member of the HBO and Curb Your Enthusiasm families.' He was honored in the In Memoriam segment at the 2024 Emmy Awards.