The pump shouldn't require priming, or everytime someone with that vintage or earlier of vehicle would have had to prime it whenever they ran out of gas.

I once had a VW Rabbit that displayed similar symptoms but it had the bad taste to do so on the freeway, 50 miles from home. I eventually was able to apply compressed air to the fuel line and blew years of accumulated junk back into the tank. The Rabbit then cheerfully ran me home. I then dealt with the junk in the tank in a user-friendly environment than the shoulder of the freeway.

Since your filter is near the rear, you would have to do the process in two steps, one from the filter aft and one from the filter forward. On the one forward, disconnect the in-coming fuel line from the pump and catch the junk in a suitable container.