Carlin, George

▪ 2009

George Denis Patrick Carlin 

      American comedian

born May 12, 1937, New York, N.Y

died June 22, 2008, Santa Monica, Calif.

began working in the late 1950s as a wise-cracking radio disc jockey and low-key stand-up comedian known for such whimsical routines as “Wonderful WINO” and the “Hippy Dippy Weatherman”; beginning in the 1970s, however, he transformed himself into a provocative and incisive antiestablishment comic icon. Carlin was most closely identified with the monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” in which he satirically analyzed the use and misuse of seven of the raunchiest obscenities in the English language (which were still banned on American commercial television and radio in 2008). Carlin was arrested in 1972 for performing the monologue onstage, but a judge dismissed the case. In 1973 New York City radio station WBAI-FM triggered a lawsuit by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after it aired a recorded version of the routine called “Filthy Words”; the landmark “Carlin case” was finally settled in 1978 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which gave the FCC the right to determine when to censor radio and TV broadcasts. Carlin released more than 20 comedy record albums and starred in 14 HBO cable TV specials, the last of which, It's Bad for Ya, aired in March 2008. As an actor, he usually played a character inspired by his own comic persona (notably in the short-lived situation comedy The George Carlin Show [1994]), with the notable exception of his stint in the 1990s as the amiable narrator (and onscreen host, Mr. Conductor) of the children's programs Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends and Shining Time Station. Carlin was honoured with the American Comedy Awards' Lifetime Achievement Award (2001) and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (2008). In 2004 cable TV's Comedy Central network ranked Carlin second on its list of the “100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time,” behind African American actor-comedian Richard Pryor and just ahead of the legendary Lenny Bruce.

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