Comedian George Carlin Has Died At Age 71

It’s been a tough time for fans of the Entertainment world recently. Over the past few weeks we’ve lost Sydney Pollack, Stan Winston and Tim Russert. Yesterday, we lost comedian George Carlin. He was 71 years old.

I’ve never been a huge George Carlin fan, though I had a friend who loved the guy. I enjoyed watching him in the occasional movie or TV appearance. In my mind he’s probably best remembered from the Bill & Ted movies.

Carlin has been in the business since 1960. His stand-up routine “Seven Words That Can Never Be Said on Television” is not only one of the most famous comic routines ever, it also led to a landmark 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

Carlin worked consistently throughout his career and was actually the host of the very first “Saturday Night Live” telecast in 1975. During the course of his career he produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, several TV shows and appeared in several movies.

He won four Grammy Awards, each for best spoken comedy album, and was nominated for five Emmy awards. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

According to his publicist, Jeff Abraham, Carlin passed away on Sunday. The “New York Times” is reporting the cause of death was heart failure.

The “Times” has a pretty good write-up on Carlin which you can read here.

For those who have never heard Carlin’s “Seven Words” bit, you can view it below. I don’t think it’s the original, but I’m not sure. Be warned, it’s obviously not safe for work.