Standup comic George Carlin, best known for his defense of free speech in his most famous routine Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television, died Sunday night.
Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, confirmed his rep.
He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas. He was 71.
“He was a genius and I will miss him dearly,” Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, said.
Carlin has said he always tried to “sense where the line was, and cross it.”
In 1972, at a show in Milwaukee, he did his Seven Words routine and was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace. He was later freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent and citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.
When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government’s authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.
“So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,” he said earlier this year.
Carlin hosted the debut episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975. He wrote on his website that he was “loaded on cocaine all week long.” Carlin also appeared on The Tonight Show more than 100 times.
Carlin is survived by his second wife Sally Wade, and his daughter Kelly Carlin McCall. His first wife, Brenda, died of cancer in 1997.
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