After years of Wilson winning the contests, Carlin finally beat him. For the Saturday night talent shows, a young George would do monologues. Carlin and the longtime SNL director Dave Wilson had gone to summer camp together as kids. He was "loaded on cocaine all week long" leading up to October 11, 1975, when he performed stand-up and introduced the inaugural episode's musical guests, Billy Preston and Janis Ian. HE WAS THE FIRST-EVER HOST OF SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, BUT DIDN'T REMEMBER THE EXPERIENCE. When he finished his performance, he exited, stage right, and handed the drugs off to a band. What the six cops didn't realize was that Carlin had cocaine in his pocket moments before they got to him.ĭuring the show, Carlin's wife came up on stage to bring him a pitcher of water, and to inform him that he should go offstage to the right, because police were waiting on the left. HIS ARREST OVER SAYING THE SEVEN DIRTY WORDS WAS ALMOST A LOT WORSE.Ĭarlin was arrested in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1972 for obscenity after giving a stand-up performance at Summerfest. Carlin claimed he overheard her saying to his uncle that she believed George needed a psychiatrist. When he was 13, his mother found them in the wallet. He wrote down the "most colorful" profanities he heard in his neighborhood and put them in his pocket. HE HAD A LIFELONG INTEREST IN CURSE WORDS. He was court-martialed again after falling asleep during a simulated combat drill.
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He was court-martialed once after celebrating the Brooklyn Dodgers winning the 1955 World Series by downing cooking wine and telling off his tech sergeant. He smoked pot he had mailed to him from New York on the base the others did not recognize the smell. HE WAS COURT-MARTIALED (MORE THAN ONCE) IN THE AIR FORCE.Ĭarlin worked as a radar technician on B-47s at Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base. One read, "He thinks he's a comedian." 4. Jablonski at one point read old detention slips he had issued Carlin. Despite the fears of some in the alumni association, Carlin kept his act clean, and Jablonski enjoyed the tribute. Jablonski-the very man who threw him out. In 1983, Carlin performed at a Hayes school fundraiser in honor of Msgr. His scholastic career included stealing money from the visiting team's locker room during a basketball game, and getting caught telling kids on the playground he had heroin. In an interview with Playboy, Carlin admitted that he was failing subjects and running away from home for days at a time while he attended Hayes. Unlike Regis Philbin, Martin Scorsese, and Don DeLillo, Carlin didn't graduate from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx-because he was expelled. HE WENT TO THE SAME HIGH SCHOOL AS MARTIN SCORSESE, REGIS PHILBIN, AND DON DELILLO. He makes funny faces, he talks in funny accents and he can do very, very intricate vocal pieces."' 3. "I kind of looked at that and thought, 'Gee, I can do that. "Danny Kaye was my childhood dream when I was 10, 11," Carlin said of the actor/singer/dancer/physical comedian/musician. GROWING UP, HE WANTED TO BE LIKE DANNY KAYE.
"He could talk your donkey's ear off."Ĭarlin's grandfather, a New York City police officer, wrote out Shakespeare's tragedies in longhand for fun. He won a nationwide Dale Carnegie public speaking contest in 1935 with his speech "The Power of Mental Demand." "He had a real line of sh*t, boy," Carlin said of his father.
George's father, Patrick, was an advertising manager for the New York newspaper The Sun. Here are some facts about the comedian/actor/author in honor of what would have been his 80th birthday. From being described as a "significant social satirist" in a Supreme Court ruling regarding indecency to serving as the conductor in Shining Time Station, Carlin touched the lives of generations of fans. Over the course of his long and storied career, the legendary comedian released more than 20 albums, recorded more than a dozen HBO comedy specials, and challenged both conventional American thinking and governmental procedure. George Carlin did more than make people laugh-he made them think.