Tragic losses.
Career-ending jokes.
A rare and incurable disease.
Gilbert Gottfried made millions laugh, but his life was filled with tragedy.
When Gilbert Gottfried started out doing stand-up in clubs around New York City, he got the
chance to join the cast of "Saturday Night Live," which has since become a launching
pad for topline celebs from Eddie Murphy and Bill Murray to Tina Fey and Kristen Wiig.
But in 1980, joining the ensemble was seen as the kiss of death.
He explained on The Joe Rogan Experience that audiences couldn't stand the new cast, saying:
"Well, [producer] Lorne Michaels left and the original cast left, so people hated the
show before it even got on the air."
"There were news stories and articles saying, 'How dare they.
This is sacrilege.'"
Gottfried added that he never had a good time at "SNL," with a young cast and a group of
writers desperate to match the magic of a time when predecessors like Dan Aykroyd and
Gilda Radner had late-night audiences in the palm of their hands.
By the end of "SNL"'s disastrous sixth season, NBC fired the entire cast and producer, and
Gottfried's brief tenure on SNL came to an end.
Ask any standup about the most important element of a joke, and they'll likely tell you that
timing is everything.
But how soon can a comic tell a joke about a recent tragic event?
Gottfried was at a Friars Club Roast of Hugh Hefner in New York roughly two weeks after
the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, when he dropped a one-liner that stunned the
room.
"I have to catch a flight to California.
I can't get a direct flight.
They said they had to stop at the Empire State Building first."
The laughs shrunk to a murmur, until a spectator yelled out "Too soon!"
Ten years later, a similarly tasteless joke cost Gottfried a career opportunity.
In 2011, he tweeted several offhand comments about the deadly earthquake and tsunami in
Japan that had killed thousands of people and caused a meltdown in a nuclear reactor.
One tweet he posted and later deleted read:
"Japan is really advanced.
They don't go to the beach.
The beach comes to them."
Needless to say, the insensitive jokes opened the floodgates for an angry response from
social media users.
"I like to get the internet to hate me right away."
Also unimpressed was Georgia-based insurance corporation Aflac, which had Gottfried under
contract to provide the voice for its iconic duck.
Michael Zuna, Aflac's senior vice president and chief marketing officer, announced it
had fired the comedian and was searching for a replacement in a release that said:
"Gilbert's recent comments about the crisis in Japan were lacking in humor and certainly
do not represent the thoughts and feelings of anyone at Aflac."
It wasn't long before Gottfried issued a statement of apology that read:
"I sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by my attempt at humor regarding the tragedy
in Japan.
I meant no disrespect, and my thoughts are with the victims and their families."
Gilbert Gottfried never said very much about his parents.
Interestingly his father and mother's names, Max and Lilly, are the names Gilbert and wife
Dara gave to their kids, so evidently they had some positive effect on his upbringing.
Additionally, Gilbert claimed both his parents supported his venture into comedy.
But he had a great deal in common with his sister Arlene, with whom he shared a unique
outlook on the world: he with his comedic insight, and she with how she pictured life
through a camera lens.
She developed an eye that caught the attention of the city's arts community and eventually
enjoyed a number of gallery exhibitions.
When their mother became sick, Arlene took photographs of her decline as a coping mechanism,
saying in the documentary "Gilbert:"
"That's how I knew how to cope with it, by taking pictures […] that's how I dealt with
the pain."
Tragically, Arlene was diagnosed with cancer soon after she published her photo essay.
Gilbert accompanied his sister to cancer treatments, but she died from the disease at age 66.
One of Gilbert Gottfried's closest friends was fellow comedian Norm Macdonald, who shared
the same affinity for offensive humor.
They were both fired from "Saturday Night Live" and were also in heavy demand on the
roast circuit.
So, when Macdonald died of leukemia in September 2021, Gottfried expressed his profound sadness
at the loss.
Soon after the comedian died, Gottfried wrote a heartbreaking tribute on Instagram, accompanied
by a throwback image of the two alongside Bob Saget and Jeff Ross.
His caption read,
"This photo was taken after I was a guest on Norm's show.
At dinner the laughs just continued nonstop.
He will be missed.
RIP Norm Macdonald."
Another of Gottfried's close friends was Bob Saget.
When Saget passed away while on tour earlier in 2022, Gilbert Gottfried took a while to
come to grips with the bad news surrounding one of his best friends.
A mutual friend broke the devastating news to Gottfried.
"It's a day later.
I'm still waiting for the punchline to happen, to say 'No, it was all a joke."
Gilbert Gottfried tragically passed away on April 12, 2022.
The celebrated comedian was apparently suffering from myotonic dystrophy type II, a form of
muscular dystrophy, for some time.
It's not surprising to doctors, who say the disease progresses very slowly in the body.
Dr. Elizabeth McNally, a director at the Northwestern University Center for Genetic Medicine, to
MSNBC:
"People can have symptoms for quite a while even before they notice it."
The disease is not only rare and incurable, it may not even be diagnosed until victims
are in their middle years.
Symptoms like breathing problems and chest pains are likely to be confused with more
age-related ailments.
Gottfried's family released a statement on his Instagram account which read in part:
"We are heartbroken to announce the passing of our beloved Gilbert Gottfried after a long
illness.
In addition to being the most iconic voice in comedy, Gilbert was a wonderful husband,
brother, friend and father to his two young children."