Age, Biography, and Wiki
George Denis Patrick Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, in New York City. He passed away on June 22, 2008, at the age of 71. His career as a comedian began in the late 1950s and flourished throughout the 1960s and 1970s, with notable routines like "Seven Dirty Words".
| Occupation | Stand-up Comedians |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 12 May 1937 |
| Age | 88 Years |
| Birth Place | New York City, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Taurus |
| Country | U.S |
| Date of death | 22 June, 2008 |
| Died Place | Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
Height, Weight & Measurements
While specific details about George Carlin's height and weight are not widely documented, he was known for his later iconic appearance, which included a beard and long hair.
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.
Carlin hosted the premiere broadcast of NBC's Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975. Per 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; he did 14 specials, including 2008's It's Bad for Ya. 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.
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Dating & Relationship Status
George Carlin was married to Sally Wade from 1961 until their divorce in 1997. He then married Suzanne McElroy in 1998, remaining married until his death in 2008.
He had an older brother, Patrick Jr. (1931–2022), who had a major influence on his comedy and was sometimes directly involved. In his autobiography Last Words, he wrote about a fantasy of Ireland he often had when his first wife was alive: "The southeastern parts so that it would be a little warmer, and the two of us there, close enough to Dublin that you could go buy things you needed." Carlin's maternal grandfather was an NYPD police officer who wrote out the works of William Shakespeare by hand for fun. Carlin's parents separated when he was two months old due to the alcoholism of his father, who Carlin said was "never around". His mother raised him and his brother on her own. When Carlin was eight years old, his father died.
Carlin said that he picked up an appreciation for effective use of the English language from his mother, though they had a difficult relationship and he often ran away from home. He grew up on West 121st Street in Manhattan's Morningside Heights neighborhood, which he and his friends called "White Harlem" because it "sounded a lot tougher than its real name". He attended Corpus Christi School, a Catholic parish school of the Corpus Christi Church in Morningside Heights. One of Carlin's closest childhood friends was Randy Jurgensen, who became one of the most decorated homicide detectives in NYPD history. His mother had a television set, a new technology few people owned at the time, and Carlin became an avid fan of the pioneering late-night talk show Broadway Open House. He went to the Bronx for high school, but was expelled from Cardinal Hayes High School after three semesters at age 15. He briefly attended Bishop Dubois High School in Harlem and Salesian High School in Goshen. He spent many summers at Camp Notre Dame in Spofford, New Hampshire, where he regularly won the camp's drama award; upon his death, some of his ashes were scattered at Spofford Lake per his request.
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 (born June 15, 1963), became 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 Carlin. 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, just one day before her husband's birthday.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Brenda Hosbrook (m. 1961-1997) Sally Wade (m. 1998) |
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Net Worth and Salary
At the time of his death, George Carlin's net worth was estimated to be around $10 million. His annual income peaked at about $250,000 in the late 1960s, which is equivalent to approximately $2.2 million today.
Career, Business, and Investments
Carlin's career was marked by his bold and provocative style, which often challenged societal norms. He was a successful comedian, actor, and author, winning four Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album. His income came from stand-up performances, TV appearances, book sales, and comedy albums. Although there are no records of specific business investments, his estate continues to earn from his enduring legacy in entertainment.
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 Carlin's 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 became a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show, initially with Jack Paar as host, and then with Johnny Carson. Carlin became one of Carson's most frequent substitutes during his three-decade tenure. Carlin was also cast in Away We Go, a 1967 CBS comedy 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.
In this period, Carlin perfected his well-known "seven dirty words" routine, which most notably 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 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 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 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."
Carlin performed regularly as a headliner in Las Vegas, but in 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. At the first tour stop, at the Tachi Palace Casino in Lemoore, California, he said the appearance was his "first show back" after a six-week hospitalization for heart failure and pneumonia. 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". When asked on Inside the Actors Studio what turned him on, he responded, "Reading about language". When asked what made him proudest of his career, he cited the fact that his books had sold close to a million copies.
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".
Social Network
Given that George Carlin passed away in 2008, he does not have an active presence on social media. However, his work and legacy continue to be celebrated by fans and discussed extensively online.
Carlin idolized Danny Kaye and wanted to be just like him. His career plan was to work his way up through various performing occupations to eventually become a comedic actor like Kaye, and although he eventually realized he did not possess the skills to be a top-notch actor, he constantly referred in interviews to his sad realization of not being able to attain his boyhood dream. Near the end of his life, he took more acting roles as he never really gave up on his lifelong dream.
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.
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 HamzaCarlin's manager from 1980 until his deathsaid 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 of a heart attack 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. Per 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.
Education
There is limited information available about George Carlin's formal education. He dropped out of high school and began his career in radio and television at a young age.
Conclusion
George Carlin's impact on comedy and entertainment remains significant, with his insightful critiques and innovative routines continuing to inspire new generations of comedians. Despite his passing, his legacy endures, and his net worth at the time of his death reflected his successful career in comedy and beyond.
