George Carlin

Career

1959–1969: Early work and breakthrough

In 1959, Carlin met Jack Burns, a fellow DJ at radio station KXOL in Fort Worth, Texas. They formed a comedy team and after successful performances at Fort Worth's beat coffeehouse The Cellar, Burns and Carlin headed for California in February 1960.

Within weeks of arriving in California, Burns and Carlin put together an audition tape and created The Wright Brothers, a morning show on KDAY in Hollywood. During their tenure at KDAY, they honed their material in beatnik coffeehouses at night. Years later, when he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Carlin requested that it be placed in front of the KDAY studios near the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street. Burns and Carlin recorded their only album, Burns and Carlin at the Playboy Club Tonight, in May 1960 at Cosmo Alley in Hollywood. After two years as a team, they parted to pursue individual careers, but "remain[ed] the best of friends".

In the 1960s, Carlin began appearing on television variety shows, where he played various characters, including a Native American sergeant, a stupid radio disc jockey, and a hippie weatherman. Variations on these routines appear on his 1967 debut album, Take-Offs and Put-Ons, which was recorded live in 1966 at The Roostertail in Detroit and issued by RCA Victor in 1967. During this period, Carlin appeared on Tonight Starring Jack Paar before becoming a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He was one of Johnny Carson's most frequent substitutes during his three-decade tenure. Carlin was also cast as a co-host alongside Buddy Greco in Away We Go, a 1967 CBS comedy-variety show, which was the summer replacement for The Jackie Gleason Show. His material during his early career and his appearance—he wore suits and had short-cropped hair—was seen as conventional, particularly compared to his later anti-establishment material.

Carlin was present at Lenny Bruce's arrest for obscenity at the Gate of Horn club in Chicago on December 5, 1962. As the police began detaining audience members for questioning, they asked Carlin for identification. After responding that he did not believe in government-issued IDs, Carlin was arrested and taken to jail with Bruce in the same vehicle.

1970–1971: Transformation

In the late 1960s, Carlin made about $250,000 annually. In 1970, he changed his routines and his appearance; he grew his hair long, sported a beard and earrings, and typically dressed in T-shirts and blue jeans. He lost some TV bookings by dressing strangely for a comedian at a time when clean-cut, well-dressed comedians were the norm. He hired talent managers Jeff Wald and Ron De Blasio to help him change his image, making him look more "hip" for a younger audience. Wald put Carlin into much smaller clubs such as The Troubadour in West Hollywood and The Bitter End in New York City, and later said that Carlin's income declined by 90% but his later career arc was greatly improved.

1972–1979: Stardom and acclaim

In 1970, record producer Monte Kay formed the Little David Records subsidiary of Atlantic Records, with comedian Flip Wilson as co-owner. Kay and Wilson signed Carlin away from RCA Records and recorded a Carlin performance at Washington, D.C.'s Cellar Door in 1971, which was released as the album FM & AM in 1972. De Blasio was busy managing the fast-paced career of Freddie Prinze and was about to sign Richard Pryor, so he released Carlin to Little David general manager Jack Lewis, who, like Carlin, was somewhat wild and rebellious. Using his own persona as a springboard for his new comedy, he was presented by Ed Sullivan in a performance of "The Hair Piece" and quickly regained his popularity as the public caught on to his style.

Starting in 1972, singer-songwriter Kenny Rankin was Carlin's label-mate on Little David Records, and Rankin served many times as Carlin's musical guest or opening act during the early 1970s. The two flew together in Carlin's private jet; Carlin says that Rankin relapsed into using cocaine while on tour since Carlin had so much available. FM & AM proved very popular and marked Carlin's change from mainstream to counterculture comedy. The "AM" side was an extension of Carlin's previous style, with zany but relatively clean routines parodying aspects of American life. The "FM" side introduced Carlin's new style, with references to marijuana and birth control pills, and a playful examination of the word "shit".

In this period, Carlin perfected his well-known "seven dirty words" routine, which appears on Class Clown as follows: "'Shit', 'piss', 'fuck', 'cunt', 'cocksucker', 'motherfucker', and 'tits'. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war." On July 21, 1972, Carlin was arrested after performing the routine at Milwaukee's Summerfest and charged with violating obscenity laws. The case, which prompted Carlin for a time to call the words the "Milwaukee Seven", was dismissed in December when the judge declared that the language was indecent but that Carlin had the freedom to say it as long as he caused no disturbance. In 1973, a man complained to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after listening with his son to a similar routine, "Filthy Words", from Carlin's Occupation: Foole, which was broadcast one afternoon on radio station WBAI. The FCC cited Pacifica for violating regulations that prohibit broadcasting "obscene" material. The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the FCC action by a vote of 5 to 4, ruling that the routine was "indecent but not obscene" and that the FCC had authority to prohibit such broadcasts during hours when children were likely to be among the audience.

The controversy increased Carlin's fame. He eventually expanded the "dirty words" theme with a seemingly interminable end to a performance, finishing with his voice fading out in one HBO version and accompanying the credits in the Carlin at Carnegie special for the 1982–83 season, and a set of 49 webpages organized by subject and embracing his "Incomplete List of Impolite Words". On stage, during a rendition of this routine, Carlin learned that his previous comedy album FM & AM had won a Grammy. Midway through the performance on the album Occupation: Foole, he can be heard thanking someone for handing him a piece of paper. He then exclaims "shit!" and proudly announces his win to the audience. Over his career, Carlin was arrested seven times for reciting the "Seven Dirty Words" routine.

Carlin hosted the premiere broadcast of NBC's Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975. In accordance with his request, he did not appear in its sketches. The next season, 1976–77, he appeared regularly on CBS Television's Tony Orlando & Dawn variety series. Carlin unexpectedly stopped performing regularly in 1976, when his career appeared to be at its height. For the next five years, he rarely performed stand-up, although it was at this time that he began doing specials for HBO as part of its On Location series. Carlin did 14 specials, including 2008's It's Bad for Ya. He later revealed that the first of his three heart attacks occurred during this layoff period. His first two HBO specials aired in 1977 and 1978.

1980–1987: HBO and film

In 1981, Carlin returned to the stage, releasing A Place for My Stuff and returning to HBO and New York City with the Carlin at Carnegie TV special, which was filmed at Carnegie Hall and aired during the 1982–83 season. Carlin continued doing HBO specials every year or two over the following decade and a half. All of Carlin's albums from this time forward are from his HBO specials. He hosted SNL for the second time on November 10, 1984, this time appearing in several sketches.

Carlin began to achieve prominence as a film actor with a major supporting role in the 1987 comedy hit Outrageous Fortune, starring Bette Midler and Shelley Long. Playing drifter Frank Madras, he poked fun at the lingering effect of the 1960s counterculture.

1988–1989: Changes in material and tone

Beginning in 1988, Carlin evolved and adopted both a new appearance and a new direction. As he did in his first change of direction in the early 1970s, Carlin blended his old and new styles by bringing in politics and disdain for society with nihilist humor while using some of the previous material direction of pointing out the odd things people all do and continued his fascination with language, but with disdain for its current uses by society. This led to darker material and an aggressive tone over the next two decades.

1989–1997: TV series and more films

In 1989, he gained popularity with a new generation of teens when he was cast as Rufus, the time-traveling mentor of the title characters in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. He reprised the role in the sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991), and in the first season of the cartoon series.

In 1991, Carlin had a major supporting role in the film The Prince of Tides, which starred Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, as the gay neighbor of the main character's suicidal sister.

That same year, Carlin became the second American narrator of the children's television series Thomas & Friends, narrating the first through the fourth season. He played Mr. Conductor on the PBS show Shining Time Station until 1996, replacing Ringo Starr on both programs. According to Britt Allcroft, who developed both shows, on the first day of the assignment, Carlin was nervous about recording his narration without an audience, so the producers put a stuffed teddy bear in the booth.

Carlin's Jammin' in New York, a new HBO special in 1992, highlighted the directional change he had been honing the last few years. Critics applauded the show and he continued down this path of more serious subjects and nihilistic tone for the remainder of his life. Carlin opined that this show was his favorite.

In 1993, Carlin began a weekly Fox sitcom, The George Carlin Show, playing New York City taxicab driver George O'Grady. The show, created and written by The Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon, ran for 27 episodes, through December 1995. In Last Words, Carlin wrote of The George Carlin Show, "I had a great time. I never laughed so much, so often, so hard as I did with cast members Alex Rocco, Chris Rich, Tony Starke. There was a very strange, very good sense of humor on that stage ... [but] I was incredibly happy when the show was canceled. I was frustrated that it had taken me away from my true work." Carlin was honored at the 1997 Aspen Comedy Festival with a retrospective, George Carlin: 40 Years of Comedy, hosted by Jon Stewart. His first hardcover book, Brain Droppings (1997), sold nearly 900,000 copies and spent 40 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.

2000–2008: Final HBO specials

Carlin later said that there were other, more pragmatic reasons for abandoning his acting career in favor of standup. In an interview for Esquire magazine in 2001, he said, "Because of my abuse of drugs, I neglected my business affairs and had large arrears with the IRS, and that took me eighteen to twenty years to dig out of. I did it honorably, and I don't begrudge them. I don't hate paying taxes, and I'm not angry at anyone, because I was complicit in it. But I'll tell you what it did for me: it made me a way better comedian. Because I had to stay out on the road and I couldn't pursue that movie career, which would have gone nowhere, and I became a really good comic and a really good writer."

In 2001, Carlin was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 15th Annual American Comedy Awards. In 2003, Representative Doug Ose introduced a bill (H.R. 3687) to outlaw the broadcast of Carlin's "seven dirty words", including "compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms)". The bill omitted "tits", but included "asshole", not one of Carlin's original seven words. It was referred to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution in 2004 and was tabled.

Carlin performed regularly as a headliner in Las Vegas, but in December 2004, his run at the MGM Grand Las Vegas was terminated after an altercation with his audience. After a poorly received set filled with dark references to suicide bombings and beheadings, Carlin complained that he could not wait to get out of "this fucking hotel" and Las Vegas; he wanted to go back east, he said, "where the real people are". He continued: "People who go to Las Vegas, you've got to question their fucking intellect to start with. Traveling hundreds and thousands of miles to essentially give your money to a large corporation is kind of fucking moronic. That's what I'm always getting here is these kind of fucking people with very limited intellects." An audience member shouted, "Stop degrading us!" Carlin responded, "Thank you very much, whatever that was. I hope it was positive; if not, well, blow me." He was immediately fired, and soon thereafter his representative announced that he would begin treatment for alcohol and prescription painkiller addiction on his own initiative.

After his 13th HBO special on November 5, 2005, Life Is Worth Losing, Carlin toured his new material through the first half of 2006. Topics included suicide, natural disasters, cannibalism, genocide, human sacrifice, threats to civil liberties in the U.S., and his theory that humans are inferior to other animals. In the 2006 Pixar animated film Cars, Carlin voiced Fillmore, an anti-establishment hippie VW Microbus with a psychedelic paint job and the license plate "51237" (Carlin's birthday in m/dd/yy format). In 2007, he voiced the wizard in Happily N'Ever After, his last film.

Carlin's last HBO stand-up special, It's Bad for Ya, aired live on March 1, 2008, from the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, California. Themes included "American bullshit", rights, death, old age, and child-rearing. He repeated the theme to his audience several times throughout the show: "It's all bullshit, and it's bad for ya".

Personal life

In August 1960, while touring with comedy partner Jack Burns in Dayton, Ohio, Carlin stopped at a roadside diner, where he met waitress Brenda Hosbrook. They began dating and were married at her parents' home in Dayton on June 3, 1961. Their only child, Kelly Marie Carlin was born June 15, 1963, and would later become a radio host. Carlin and Hosbrook renewed their wedding vows in Las Vegas in 1971.

Their marriage was often marred by his cocaine use and her alcoholism, the latter of which worsened when Carlin's mother came to stay with them and would secretly pour Hosbrook drinks while derogating him. When Hosbrook was hospitalized due to her drinking, she told Carlin that she would not return home if his mother was there. He immediately went home, booked his mother a flight to New York, and took her to the airport. The couple soon addressed their addiction issues; the marriage improved so much that Kelly later said it felt like it had been rebooted. Hosbrook died of liver cancer on May 11, 1997, one day before her husband's 60th birthday.

Carlin met comedy writer Sally Wade six months after Brenda's death and said it was "love at first sight", but told her he was hesitant to act on his feelings so soon after being widowed. He discussed needing to be alone, potentially for up to a year, before being ready to date again. They had no contact for eight months and she assumed he had moved on, but then he called to ask her out. They wed in a private, unregistered ceremony on June 24, 1998, and remained married until Carlin's death.

In 2008, Carlin said that using cannabis, LSD, and mescaline had helped him cope with life. He also said several times that he had battled addiction to alcohol, cocaine, and Vicodin, and spent some time in a rehab facility in 2004. During the taping of his stand-up special Life Is Worth Losing on November 5, 2005, he said he had been sober for 341 days.

After being raised as a Catholic, Carlin outspokenly rejected religion, frequently criticizing and mocking it in his routines. When asked if he believed in God, his response was, "No, there's no God—but there might be some sort of an organizing intelligence, and I think to understand it is way beyond our ability."

Death

Carlin had a history of heart problems, including heart attacks in 1978, 1982, and 1991. He also had an arrhythmia requiring an ablation procedure in 2003, a significant episode of heart failure in 2005, and two angioplasties on undisclosed dates. In the 2022 documentary George Carlin's American Dream, Jerry Hamza—Carlin's manager from 1980 until his death—said Carlin underwent many heart surgeries in a short period toward the end of his life. Carlin's publicist Jeff Abraham said that he once lifted his shirt after coming to a gig from the hospital to show Abraham his torso, whereupon Abraham said it looked like a science project.

On June 22, 2008, at age 71, Carlin died from heart failure at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. His death occurred one week after his final performance at The Orleans Hotel and Casino. In accordance with his wishes, his body was cremated and his ashes scattered in front of various New York City nightclubs and over Spofford Lake in New Hampshire, where he had attended summer camp as an adolescent. His will stated that there was to be no funeral and that he wished only for his widow and daughter to host a small gathering at his home for loved ones to share stories of him.

Legacy

Influences

Carlin's influences included Danny Kaye, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Nichols and May, Jerry Lewis, the Marx Brothers, Mort Sahl, Spike Jones, Ernie Kovacs, and the Ritz Brothers. His daughter Kelly said in 2022 that he took more acting roles in the latter half of his career because he "never gave up on the Danny Kaye dream".

Comedians who have claimed Carlin as an influence include Adam Ferrara, Bill Burr, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K., Lewis Black, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, Liz Miele, Patrice O'Neal, Colin Quinn, Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg, Russell Peters, Bo Burnham, Jay Leno, Ben Stiller, Kevin Smith, Chris Rush, Rob McElhenney, and Jim Jefferies.

The Carlin Warning

After Carlin's seven dirty words routine and subsequent FCC v. Pacifica Foundation Supreme Court ruling in 1978, broadcasters started to use the "Carlin Warning" to remind performers of the words they could not say during a live performance.

Tributes

Upon Carlin's death in 2008, HBO broadcast 11 of his 14 HBO specials from June 25 to 28, including a 12-hour marathon block on the HBO Comedy channel. NBC scheduled a rerun of the first episode of Saturday Night Live, which Carlin hosted. Both Sirius Satellite Radio's "Raw Dog Comedy" and XM Satellite Radio's "XM Comedy" channels ran a memorial marathon of Carlin recordings the day after he died. Sirius XM Satellite Radio has since devoted an entire channel to Carlin, Carlin's Corner, featuring all his comedy albums, live concerts, and works from his private archives. Larry King devoted his June 23 show to a Carlin tribute, featuring interviews with Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Maher, Roseanne Barr, Lewis Black, Carlin's brother, Patrick Jr., and his daughter, Kelly. On June 24, The New York Times printed an op-ed piece on Carlin by Jerry Seinfeld. Cartoonist Garry Trudeau paid tribute in his Doonesbury comic strip on July 27.

Four days before Carlin's death, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts named him its 2008 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor honoree. He became its first posthumous recipient on November 10, 2008. Comedians honoring him at the ceremony included Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Lily Tomlin (a past winner of the prize), Lewis Black, Denis Leary, Joan Rivers, and Margaret Cho. Louis C.K. dedicated his stand-up special Chewed Up to Carlin, while Lewis Black dedicated the second season of Root of All Evil to him.

For years, Carlin had been compiling and writing his autobiography, to be released in conjunction with a one-man Broadway show tentatively titled New York Boy. After his death, his collaborator on both projects Tony Hendra edited the autobiography for release as Last Words. The book, chronicling most of Carlin's life and future plans including the one-man show, was published in 2009. The abridged audio edition is narrated by Carlin's brother Patrick Jr. In 2011, Carlin's widow Sally Wade published The George Carlin Letters: The Permanent Courtship of Sally Wade, a collection of previously unpublished writings and artwork by Carlin interwoven with Wade's chronicle of their decade together. The subtitle is a phrase on a handwritten note that Wade found next to her computer upon returning home from the hospital after his death. In 2008, Kelly Carlin announced plans to publish an "oral history", a collection of stories from Carlin's friends and family. She later said the project had been shelved in favor of completion of her own project, an autobiographical one-woman show called A Carlin Home Companion: Growing Up with George.

On October 22, 2014, part of West 121st Street in Morningside Heights was renamed "George Carlin Way". Moneyball screenwriter Stan Chervin announced in 2018 that a biopic of Carlin was being written.

George Carlin's American Dream, a documentary about Carlin's life, was released on HBO Max on May 20, 2022. It is directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, and produced by Carlin's daughter Kelly. In a Netflix stand-up special released in 2022, The Hall: Honoring the Greats of Stand-Up, Carlin was inducted into the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York.

Internet hoaxes

Many quotations have been falsely attributed to Carlin, including various joke lists, rants, and other pieces. The website Snopes, which debunks urban legends and myths, has addressed these hoaxes. Many of them contain material that runs counter to Carlin's viewpoints; some are especially hostile toward racial groups, gay people, women, the homeless, and other targets. Carlin was aware of this and debunked the quotes, writing on his website, "Here's a rule of thumb, folks: nothing you see on the Internet is mine unless it comes from one of my albums, books, HBO specials, or appeared on my website. [...] It bothers me that some people might believe that I would be capable of writing some of this stuff."

In 2011, "Weird Al" Yankovic referenced the hoaxes in his song "Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me" with the lyric, "And by the way, your quotes from George Carlin aren't really George Carlin."

Written works

Audiobooks

• Brain Droppings
• Napalm and Silly Putty
• More Napalm & Silly Putty
• George Carlin Reads to You (Compilation of Brain Droppings, Napalm and Silly Putty, and More Napalm & Silly Putty)
• When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?