George Carlin, the edgy comedian and counterculture icon, died Sunday at the age of 71.
The stand-up comic and author – best known for his groundbreaking routine “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” – reportedly died of heart failure at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica. (Carlin, who was open about his long struggle with drugs and alcohol, had a history of heart problems, including a previous heart attack.)
…As the years passed, Carlin solidified his status as a curmudgeonly elder statesman of alternative comedy. Having hosted the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975, he starred in a number of HBO comedy specials over four decades. He also appeared in occasional movie roles, including Kevin Smith’s Dogma (1999), and he lent his voice to Pixar’s 2006 release, Cars. In the past 10 years, he achieved success as an author, publishing three best-sellers; the audiobook of his most recent, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, was nominated for a 2006 Grammy in the Spoken Word category. Just last week, Carlin was named the recipient of the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
“He was a genius and I will miss him dearly,” Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told the AP.
Carlin was best known for his routine “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television,” which appeared in 1972’s “Class Clown” album.
When Carlin uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested for disturbing the peace, the AP reported. The comedy sketch prompted a landmark indecency case after WBAI-FM radio aired it in 1973.
The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court where the justices ruled on a 5-to-4 vote that the sketch was “indecent but not obscene,” giving the FCC broad leeway to determine what constituted indecency on the airwaves.
