Known for his raunchy and politically incorrect comedy, Gilbert Gottfried entertained and
shocked fans his entire career.
But there is far more to this comedian than you know.
Here is the untold truth of Gilbert Gottfried.
Gilbert Gottfried's accent and raspy voice are indicative of his birthplace — the New
York City borough of Brooklyn.
We’re talking his real voice here, that famous, loud Gilbert Gottfried voice was just
an act.
Although he grew up in Crown Heights, Gottfried noted that he and his siblings were actually
born in Coney Island, a neighborhood that has seen ups and downs throughout the 20th
century.
Coney Island today has been the center of a multi-million dollar real estate boom due
to its prime location on Brooklyn's waterfront.
It's also famous for its boardwalk and beach.
But in Gottfried's youth, the place looked very different.
European Jews settled the area and created the amusement mecca of the first half of the
20th century.
But by the time Gottfried was born, Robert Moses' urban renewal had replaced the amusement
parks with housing projects.
The building of housing projects triggered a collapse of the tight-knit Jewish middle-class
neighborhood.
The boardwalk was soon infested with crime, particularly drugs and gang violence.
Families now had cars and could drive to Long Island.
Gottfried's own family eventually left for Crown Heights, where his sister began her
famous career as a photographer.
Gilbert Gottfried looked up to his sister Arlene, who was five years his senior.
Gottfried described Arlene as a bit of a character.
She was a curious child who always wanted to discover the history of every place she
could find.
This included locales such as decaying Coney Island, sketchy nightclubs, or non-white neighborhoods.
At that time, Brooklyn was split along racial and ethnic lines.
Her curiosity led her to explore Brooklyn's neighborhoods, in particular Crown Heights'
Puerto Rican community, where she documented daily life among the people there.
His sister's greatest strength was the ability to bring alive places that people only saw
in pictures.
Among her greatest exploits was joining a Harlem Pentecostal Church choir in the '90s.
Few Jewish girls could claim to have accomplished this, but with her uniqueness and openness,
she clearly managed it.
His start in comedy
Arlene Gottfried was quite the unique sister, and definitely fearless when it came to new
and unfamiliar experiences.
Gilbert was a little different.
He enjoyed being a comedian and imitating celebrities, but early on he didn't have the
confidence to turn it into a career, fearing that it could end badly.
His sister's attitude convinced him to give it a try anyway.
At the tender age of 15, a young Gottfried and his two sisters took the subway to a Manhattan
comedy club for an open mic night.
Gottfried and Arlene had conflicting memories of the night, as neither could even agree
about which club they had gone to.
The open mic set revealed to Gottfried his calling.
The rest is history.
What began on that night in 1970s Manhattan eventually catapulted him to Saturday Night
Live in 1980 and national stardom.
But he never forgot the debt to his sister, and even after he became famous, he always
ensured that Arlene was on the guestlist for any performance.
Gottfried was born in a Jewish neighborhood and lived in Jewish neighborhoods for much
of his youth.
But despite being surrounded by Jews, he never considered himself religiously Jewish.
And when discussing his background, he always did so in his typical irreverent style.
Gottfried claimed that he never consciously rejected Judaism.
The practice was simply not part of his family life growing up.
He only attended synagogue for friends' Bar Mitzvahs or funerals, did not celebrate any
holidays, and he never had a Bar Mitzvah.
Never one to avoid poking fun at himself and his cultural and religious background, he
joked that he was afraid to visit Israel because he hated traveling, let alone to a place where
the "Jewish conspiracy" could get him.
Jokes aside, however, it seems that after marrying his wife Dara Kravitz and having
children, Gottfried began taking his Jewish identity a bit more seriously.
He had a Jewish wedding ceremony and was raising his children as Jews in Hebrew school.
Sometimes, Gottfried's life got him into stranger than fiction situations.
One such encounter involved neo-Nazis.
The comedian ended up on a list of influential Jews that was meant to prove a disproportionate
Jewish influence on American life.
Gottfried, as usual, was not only unoffended, he relished it.
He claimed that it was a compliment to his accomplishments as a comedian and offered
to send them a thank you letter.
And of course, there was an interesting show he did in Illinois.
Gottfried had a few Nazi enthusiasts show up in uniform to watch him.
The comedian gave them a "heil five" instead of a "high five" and proceeded to take selfies
with them.
Truly a strange and unorthodox moment for the Jewish comedian.
“You’re very good on stage.”
“Thank you. Heil five.”
In 2011, Comedy Central ran a roast of Donald Trump who at the time was considering challenging
Barack Obama for the presidency in 2012.
At the roast, celebrities such as Larry King, Snoop Dogg, and Marlee Matlin all took part,
but Gilbert Gottfried took center stage.
In his characteristic exaggerated New York voice, the comedian claimed that Trump did
not deserve to be called "the Donald."
Instead, he called Donald Trump "the 20th hijacker" for "doing so much damage to the
New York skyline."
Gottfried appeared to have gone too far, particularly with the 9/11 reference, as he elicited some
boos and gasps from the crowd.
But the unapologetic comedian took it as a compliment, claiming he had not lost his ways.
Gottfried would encounter the future president again in 2014.
On "Late Night with Seth Meyers," he noted that he had been on "The Apprentice," though
he didn't last long.
Gottfried later claimed in a separate interview that Trump was nice to him, but they did not
interact much.
This would contrast with comments Gottfried made on another Meyers episode in which he
criticized the president during the 2016 campaign.
When Donald Trump declared his interest in running for president at his roast in 2011,
the audience, full of New York high society, cheered him.
Four years later, the situation had completely changed.
Trump had decided to run as a Republican, and many of his old acquaintances in New York
turned on him.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump was frequently compared to Hitler.
Former Mexican president Vicente Fox and comedian Bill Maher expressed such sentiments.
Gilbert Gottfried called him "Hitler without the warmth" on Seth Meyers' talk show.
"Gilbert, I'm proud of you.
That's good, Gilbert."
"Thank you, mein Fuhrer."
He viewed the billionaire's campaign as a sort of joke that he thought would die out,
not expecting his message to resonate among a large segment of the American public.
In 2018, Gottfried again discussed Trump.
In the El Paso Times, he said that he wished he had been nicer to Trump while he was on
"The Apprentice."
After all, had he known Trump was going to be president, he might have gotten a cabinet
position.
This was no doubt a joke, and Gottfried has rarely discussed his politics openly.
But given his comments about Trump, it seems safe to assume he wasn't a fan.
Gottfried was known for his politically incorrect brand of shock humor, but sometimes he went
too far even for his own audiences.
In a 1980s routine about meeting Jackie Kennedy, he asked the former first lady if she remembered
where she was in Dallas on the day of the assassination.
In 2001, a crowd booed him for saying that he could not find a direct flight because
it "had to stop at the Empire State Building."
This was a 9/11 reference a mere three months after the tragedy.
"One guy yelled out, 'Too soon'.
Which I thought meant I didn't take a long enough pause between the setup and punchline."
He made a similar set of jokes about the 2008 tsunami in Japan which cost him his job as
the Aflac duck.
While these jokes might have ended Gottfried's career today, the comedian never apologized
for any of them.
Gottfried always argued that comedy is either funny, offensive or both.
It doesn't work unless the comedian is willing to cross lines of social propriety, and a
successful joke will make some laugh and others squirm.
But in the case of 9/11, it seems that some topics are better left off-limits.
In 2021, the COVID-19 vaccines became available for various age groups.
But in places like St. Clair County in Illinois, demand began to drop and injection centers
began to shut down.
So to try and revitalize uptake, the county hired a few celebrities to do cameos encouraging
residents to take their shots.
One of them was former St. Louis Cardinals' shortstop Ozzie Smith, a good messenger for
a county that borders St. Louis.
The other one was Gilbert Gottfried.
His cameo was nothing particularly special.
He told residents to get their shots at the local fairground since it was "a matter of
life and death."
Its message's effectiveness is unclear.
The St. Clair EMA Herb Simmons claimed that it had created some interest, but the data
suggest that overall, the message did not change much.
According to the St. Clair vaccine uptake chart, there was no spike in vaccinations
after the two celebrities spoke, but rather a modest increase over time as more age groups
were eligible to receive it.
Gottfried has never been considered the Prince Charming of the entertainment world.
In fact, the Chicago Tribune voted him the unsexiest man in America back in 2006.
So what earned him this dubious distinction?
Chicago Tribune editors found that the sex appeal of "the parrot-voiced, pickled-face
comic" was basically non-existent.
The editors cautioned that unsexy did not necessarily mean ugly, since Brad Pitt and
a handful of other celebrities made the list too, as did Al-Qaeda terrorist Osama Bin Laden.
Gottfried reveled in his achievement — mostly.
He was thrilled to have beaten out Osama Bin Laden, claiming that the Al-Qaeda leader probably
smelled terrible but was still considered slightly sexier than he was.
The only complaint was that he beat out fellow comedian Carrot Top.
Otherwise, he turned the list into a mini comedy routine as he stressed that he intended
to keep the top spot against possible competition going forward.
Gilbert Gottfried remained true to his character even as he was suffering from his heart problems.
In his final Instagram post, he took what many interpreted as a friendly potshot at
his friend Chris Rock.
Rock had made national headlines after actor Will Smith slapped him onstage at the Oscars
over a joke the former had made about his wife.
On the Instagram post in question, Gottfried invited his fans to give their opinions on
the incident.
But he also, with his characteristic humor, seemed to be poking fun at Rock by asking
the following: Was the incident worse than having to listen to Chris Rock telling a joke
in the first place?
The responses to the question, which was also posted on Twitter, varied from serious to
silly.
Given that Gottfried also posted a picture of himself with Chris Rock, it seems that
he could have been supporting the comedian rather than skewering him.
Or perhaps doing both, as he so often tended to do.
Either way, he went out with a bang.
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