Gilbert Jeremy Gottfried (February 28, 1955 – April 12, 2022) was an American stand-up comedian and actor. His persona as a comedian featured an exaggerated shrill voice, strong New York accent, and emphasis on crude humor. His numerous roles in film and television include voicing the scarlet macaw Iago in the Aladdin animated films and series, Digit LeBoid in Cyberchase, Kraang Subprime in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Aflac Duck. He was also known for his role as Mr. Peabody in the critically panned but commercially successful Problem Child film series.
Gottfried hosted the podcast Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast (2014–2022), which featured discussions of classic movies and celebrity interviews, most often with veteran actors, comedians, musicians, and comedy writers. The documentary Gilbert (2017) explored his life and career; it won the Special Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2017 deadCENTER Film Festival.
Early life
Gilbert Jeremy Gottfried was born on February 28, 1955, in the Coney Island section of the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the son of homemaker Lillian Zimmerman and hardware store owner Max Gottfried. His father and grandfather ran the store, above which the family lived. He was raised in a Jewish family but later said of his unusual upbringing, "I ate pork. We weren't that aware of the holidays or anything like that, but were aware of being Jewish. It's like I kind of knew that even though I was never bar mitzvahed and we didn't follow the holidays, I knew that if the Nazis came back, I'd be in the same train coach with everyone else." He was the younger brother of Karen and photographer Arlene Gottfried (1950–2017). From Coney Island, the family moved to Brooklyn's Crown Heights, followed by Borough Park.
Career
Gottfried's first routine on stage was at The Bitter End in Greenwich Village, during one of its Hootenanny Night events, when he was fifteen. His two sisters accompanied him, having thought the performances their brother did for the family were good enough for the stage and encouraged Gottfried to try it out. His early routines focused on impressions of old time actors and celebrities, including Boris Karloff and Humphrey Bogart. From there he worked the local comedy circuit and became known in the area as a "comedian's comedian", and started to perform edgier material when he got bored of his usual routines. One such incident occurred when Gottfried opened for singer Belinda Carlisle, which was attended by younger girls and their mothers: "I tried doing my regular act for about five minutes, then I just launched into the filthiest stuff I could think of. And the next day, I got a call from my agent saying 'Everybody there loved you', which is show business talk for, 'You're fired.'”
In 1980, Saturday Night Live was being retooled with a new staff and new comedians; the producers noticed Gottfried and hired him as a cast member for season 6. Gottfried's persona during SNL sketches was very different from his later characterization: he rarely spoke in his trademark obnoxiously screeching voice and never squinted. During his 12-episode stint, he was seldom used in sketches. Gottfried recalled that a low point was having to play a corpse in a sketch about a sports organist hired to play inappropriate music at a funeral. He did have one recurring character (Leo Waxman, husband to Denny Dillon's Pinky Waxman on the recurring talk show sketch, "What's It All About?") and two celebrity impersonations: David A. Stockman and Roman Polanski.
Gottfried in 1991
In April 1987, Gottfried headlined a half-hour comedy special that aired as part of the Cinemax Comedy Experiment series. It was followed by the sitcom pilot Norman's Corner, co-written by Larry David prior to creating Seinfeld, which saw Gottfried as the titular character. Gottfried played accountant Sidney Bernstein in the 1987 film Beverly Hills Cop II, in which he reunited with friend and fellow SNL alumnus Eddie Murphy. Also in 1987, Gottfried made his debut appearance on The Howard Stern Show. He went on to make numerous appearances on the radio show over the next 25 years.
Although not a regular, Gottfried appeared in The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys, as well as the voice of Jerry the Belly Button Elf on Ren and Stimpy. Three of his most prominent roles came in 1990, 1991, and 1992, when he was cast as the adoption agent Igor Peabody in Problem Child and Problem Child 2 and the parrot Iago in Aladdin. When asked how he prepared for the role, Gottfried said, "I did the whole DeNiro thing. I moved to South America! I lived in the trees!" Gottfried reprised the role in The Return of Jafar, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, the television series and various related media, such as Kingdom Hearts and House of Mouse. However, the character was ultimately recast to Alan Tudyk for the 2019 remake. He also voiced Berkeley Beetle in 1994's Thumbelina. He was the host of the Saturday edition of USA Up All Night for its entire run from 1989 to 1998.
Gottfried was a recurring guest star during the Tom Bergeron era of The Hollywood Squares and became the central figure in a bizarre episode that aired October 1, 1999. In this episode, the two contestants made nine consecutive incorrect guesses, six of which were to be game-deciding questions asked to Gottfried. Magician Penn Jillette, who was a guest alongside his magic partner Teller on the same episode, berated a contestant earlier for giving an incorrect guess by shouting, "You fool!" Gottfried himself then began to use the phrase, with most of the other stars (including Bergeron himself) eventually joining in with every successive wrong guess, beginning with the second question he was asked. As a consequence, it took the episode's entire half hour to play only one game. Appropriately, the episode became known as the "You Fool!" episode. Gottfried was fired from Hollywood Squares after this incident.
Gottfried provided the voice of the duck in the Aflac commercials and Digit in Cyberchase, as well as the crazed dentist Dr. Bender and his son Wendell in The Fairly OddParents, and Mister Mxyzptlk (pronounced "Mikz-yez-pit-lik") in Superman: The Animated Series. He reprised his role as Mxyzptlk in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, Justice League Action, and Lego DC Super-Villains. He also played a nasty wisecracking criminal genius named Nick Knack in two episodes of Superboy (he also co-wrote an issue of Superboy: The Comic Book, which featured Nick Knack's origin). Gottfried made regular appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
In 2004, Comedy Central featured Gottfried's stand-up material for Shorties Watchin' Shorties. Gottfried was part of an online advertising campaign for Microsoft's Office XP software, showing, in a series of Flash-animated cartoons, that the Clippy office assistant would be removed. In 2006, Gottfried topped the Boston Phoenix's tongue-in-cheek list of the world's 100 Unsexiest Men. In April 2006, Gottfried performed with the University of Pennsylvania's Mask and Wig Club in their annual Intercollegiate Comedy Festival. Also in 2006, he made an appearance on the Let's Make a Deal portion of Gameshow Marathon (as a baby in a large high chair, he says "Hey Ricki, I think I need my diaper changed!"), and in the Dodge Viper in the big deal (where he tells the contestants "What were you thinking?!" because neither one picked it). He also guest-starred in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as Santa Claus in the one-hour Christmas Special. He voiced Rick Platypus in an episode of My Gym Partner's a Monkey entitled "That Darn Platypus".
He appeared as Peter's horse in an episode of Family Guy entitled "Boys Do Cry" (in which Peter Griffin is enthused to learn that Gottfried is providing the horse's voice). He also guest-starred in Hannah Montana as Barny Bittmen. In January 2009, Gottfried worked again with David Faustino for an episode of Faustino's show Star-ving. In 2011, Gottfried appeared in the episode "Lost Traveller" on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Leo Gerber, a sarcastic computer professional working for the NYPD's Technical Assistance Response Unit, which producer Warren Leight said could become a recurring character. Gottfried read a section from the hit book Fifty Shades of Grey in a June 2012 YouTube video, which was created with the aim of using Gottfried's trademark voice to make fun of the book's graphic sexual content.
In 2011, Gottfried published his only book, Rubber Balls and Liquor.
In 2013, Gottfried became a member of "Team Rachael" on the second season of Food Network's Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off. In March that year he appeared on ABC's Celebrity Wife Swap. He swapped wives with Alan Thicke. He was also a commentator on truTV Presents: World's Dumbest....
Gottfried in 2016
On May 28, 2014, Sideshow Network premiered Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast, an interview series where Gottfried and his co-host Frank Santopadre discussed classic movies and talk to "Hollywood legends and behind-the-scenes talents" who shaped Gottfried's childhood and influenced his comedy. His first guest was Dick Cavett.
Gottfried was the third contestant fired during the fourteenth season of the NBC reality show The Celebrity Apprentice. In 2016 he played the 'Pig Man' in a comedy/fantasy film Abnormal Attraction.
In 2017 he appeared as himself in Episodes, where a contestant on a fictional TV endurance game show is penalized with "48 hours of Gilbert Gottfried".
On June 10, 2018, Gottfried appeared in a special segment of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver where, for UK viewers only, a segment about the UK's law restricting broadcast of debates from the Houses of Parliament was replaced by five minutes of him reading "3-star Yelp reviews" along with host John Oliver telling the audience "you brought this on yourself because of your stupid law". He returned on November 18, 2018, in the show's last episode of the year to read out extracts from the Brexit agreement, again for UK viewers only. He had previously performed as "the real voice of Jared Kushner" in dubbed film clips on the show.
On July 31, 2019, Gottfried appeared as a guest in episode 170 of the Angry Video Game Nerd. On January 10, 2022, he guest-starred as God on the season finale of Smiling Friends.
Style and legacy
Danny Gallagher of the Dallas Observer wrote that "Gottfried has one of the most original formulas in the history of comedy", adding, "You don't just laugh at the punchline when Gilbert Gottfried tells a joke. You laugh at the setup. You laugh at his comments about the joke. You even laugh at the segues between his jokes." Eric Falwell wrote of his influence in The Atlantic: "Gottfried's work as a stand-up shaped many comics today, whether they would say as much or not. He was a figure who ... pushed stand-up to move beyond the realm of the merely observational and create space for the absurd."
Gottfried was known for speaking in a loud and grating voice, which was not his natural speaking voice. Mark Binneli of Rolling Stone described Gottfried as a "squinting, squawking mass of contradictions", noting his status as "one of America's filthiest stand-ups" while simultaneously being "one of the most successful voice-over artists in children's entertainment". He was also known for joking about recent tragedies, prompting fellow comedian Bill Maher to dub him the "King of Too Soon". In a July 2012 op-ed for CNN, he wrote, "I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like it's crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like it's laughing. Nowadays, we would say, 'How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.'"
Incidents
1991 Emmy Awards performance
At the 43rd Primetime Emmy Awards, Gottfried told a series of masturbation jokes in reference to Paul Reubens's arrest for masturbating in an adult movie theater. Viewers in the Eastern time zone saw the entire set live, but Fox censored the broadcast for the West Coast delay. Fox issued an apology, calling the jokes "irresponsible and insulting". Gottfried said that producers stated he would not be invited back, and Rolling Stone wrote that the monologue resulted in his blacklisting.
9/11 joke and The Aristocrats
During his monologue at a Friars Club roast of Hugh Hefner three weeks after the September 11 attacks, Gottfried joked that he had intended to catch a plane but could not get a direct flight because "they said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first". This was one of the first public examples of 9/11 humor. Audience members responded with hisses and a cry of "too soon!" Realizing he had lost the audience "bigger than anybody has ever lost an audience", Gottfried abandoned his prepared remarks and launched into the famous Aristocrats joke, which won back the audience. Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza used Gottfried's monologue as a segment in their 2005 film The Aristocrats.
Aflac firing
In March 2011, Gottfried tweeted twelve jokes about the earthquake disaster in Japan. Aflac, which does 75% of its business in Japan, responded by dismissing Gottfried from voicing its mascot and announcing a casting call for his replacement. He was replaced by Daniel McKeague (who did an impression of Gottfried) on April 26, 2011.
Personal life
In 1992, Gottfried suffered from a burst appendix and was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery. His doctors informed him that had another hour passed without treatment, he would have died.
In the late 1990s, Gottfried met Dara Kravitz at a Grammy Awards party. They were married in 2007 and had a daughter named Lily and a son named Max, both were named after his parents. He was a longtime resident of the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.
Gottfried was known for his frugality. He often walked instead of using public transportation, because he did not want to pay the fares; illustrator Drew Friedman also recalled that Gottfried would visit his apartment unannounced in the late 1980s to watch films on his VCR, because he did not want to buy one himself.
Death
On April 12, 2022, at the age of 67, Gottfried died in Manhattan from recurrent ventricular tachycardia, complicated by type II myotonic dystrophy. He had been hiding his condition from the public.
Gottfried was scheduled to appear as special guest at Ebertfest film festival to discuss documentary film about him, Gilbert. In the aftermath of his death, Ebertfest announced it would be dedicating their 2022 event to the memory of Gottfried and Sidney Poitier.
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