George Carlin was born 85 years ago today.
A stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, actor and writer/author, Carlin was noted for his black humor as well as his thoughts on politics, the English language, psychology, religion and various taboo subjects.
Carlin and his "Seven Dirty Words" comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a 5 – 4 decision by the justices affirmed the government's power to regulate what they considered indecent material on the public airwaves.
The first of his 14 stand-up comedy specials for HBO was filmed in 1977. From the late 1980s, Carlin's routines focused on socio-cultural criticism of modern American society. He often commented on contemporary political issues in the United States and satirized the excesses of American culture.
Carlin was a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show during the three-decade Johnny Carson era, and hosted the first episode of Saturday Night Live. His final HBO special, It's Bad for Ya, was filmed less than four months before his death. In 2008, he was posthumously awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Born in Manhattan, Carlin was the second son of Mary (Beary), a secretary, and Patrick Carlin, a national advertising manager for the New York Sun. He was of Irish descent and raised a Roman Catholic. He called himself Irish Catholic.
Carlin grew up on West 121st Street, in a neighborhood of Manhattan which he later said, in a stand-up routine, he and his friends called "White Harlem," because that sounded a lot tougher than its real name of Morningside Heights.
Carlin spent many summers at Camp Notre Dame on Spofford Lake in Spofford, New Hampshire. He regularly won the camp's drama award, and specified that after his death a portion of his ashes be spread at the lake.
Carlin later joined the United States Air Force and was trained as a radar technician. He was stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana. He did not complete his Air Force enlistment.
Labeled an "unproductive airman" by his superiors, Carlin was discharged on July 29, 1957. During his time in the Air Force he was court-martialed three times, and also received many disciplinary punishments.
In 1959, Carlin and Jack Burns began as a comedy team when both were working for radio station KXOL in Fort Worth, Texas. After successful performances at Fort Worth's beat coffeehouse, The Cellar, Burns and Carlin headed for California in February, 1960 and stayed together for two years as a team before moving on to individual pursuits.
Within weeks of arriving in California in 1960, Burns and Carlin put together an audition tape and created The Wright Brothers, a morning show on KDAY in Hollywood. The comedy team worked there for three months, honing 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.
Carlin was present at Lenny Bruce's arrest for obscenity. As the police began attempting to detain members of the audience for questioning, they asked Carlin for his identification. Telling the police he did not believe in government-issued IDs, he was arrested and taken to jail with Bruce in the same vehicle.
In this period, he also perfected what is perhaps his best-known routine, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," recorded on Class Clown. On July 21, 1972, Carlin was arrested after performing this routine at Milwaukee's Summerfest and charged with violating obscenity laws.
The case, which prompted Carlin to refer to the words for a time as "the Milwaukee Seven," was dismissed in December of that year. The judge declared that the language was indecent, but Carlin had the freedom to say it as long as he caused no disturbance.
In 1973, a man complained to the Federal Communications Commission after listening with his son to a similar routine, "Filthy Words," from Occupation: Foole, broadcast one afternoon over WBAI, a Pacifica Foundation FM radio station in New York City. Pacifica received a citation from the FCC for violating regulations that prohibit broadcasting "obscene" material.
The U.S. Supreme Court 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 (ending 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 web pages organized by subject and embracing his "Incomplete List Of Impolite Words.”
Carlin hosted the premiere broadcast of NBC's Saturday Night Live, on October 11, 1975, the only episode to date in which the host did not appear (at his request) in sketches.
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. He later revealed that he had suffered the first of three heart attacks during this layoff period. His first two HBO specials aired in 1977 and 1978.
Carlin had a history of cardiac problems spanning several decades. He twice underwent angioplasty to reopen narrowed arteries. In early 2005, he entered a drug rehabilitation facility for treatment of addictions to alcohol and Vicodin.
He died on June 22, 2008 at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California of heart failure. He was 71 years old.
Here, Carlin does his classic monologue “Who Really Controls America”