Legendary comedian Gilbert Gottfried died at age 67

Gilbert Gottfried, the actor and legendary comedian known for his hoarse, singed voice and rude jokes, passed away at the age of 67.

Gottfried died of recurrent ventricular tachycardia due to myotonic dystrophy type II, a disorder that affects the heart, his publicist and friend Glenn Schwartz said in a statement.

“In addition to being the most iconic voice in comedy, Gilbert was a wonderful husband, brother, friend and father of her two young children. Although today is a sad day for all of us, keep laughing as loud as possible in honor of Gilbert,” his family said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Gottfried was a fiercely independent and intentionally bizarre comedian of comedians, as prone to clearing a room with anti-comedy as he was to kill with his jokes.

He first gained national attention with frequent appearances on MTV in its early days and with a brief stint on the cast of Saturday Night Live in the 1980s.

Gottfried also did frequent voice work for television and children's films, the most famous being the role of the parrot Iago in Disney's Aladdin.

He especially liked to make dark, old-fashioned prints as long as he could squeeze them, including Groucho Marx, Bela Lugosi and Andrew “Dice” Clay.

In his early days at The Comedy Store club in Hollywood, managers asked him to do his imitation of the then little-known Jerry Seinfeld at the end of the night to get rid of persistent customers.

Gottfried was especially loved by his fellow comedians and performers.

“I am very sad to read about the passing of Gilbert Gottfried,” actress Marlee Matlin said on Twitter. “Funny, politically incorrect but soft inside. We met many times; he even played a joke on me on a plane, replacing my interpreter.”

Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander tweeted that “Gilbert Gottfried made me laugh at times when laughter wasn't easy. What a gift!”

Gottfried was born in Brooklyn, the son of a hardware store owner and a housewife. He began doing amateur comedy at the age of 15.

“Gilbert's kind of humor was blatant, shocking and often offensive, but the man behind the jokes was quite the opposite,” said Frank Santopadre, Gottfried's friend and co-host of the podcast, in a statement. I met a person who was sweet, sensitive, surprisingly shy and full of a childish sense of joy and wonder.”

Gottfried is survived by his wife Dara, his sister Karen, their 14-year-old daughter Lily and their 12-year-old son Max.

The last public comment he made was on Will Smith's controversy at the 2022 Oscars: “What is the worst crime here? The physical assault on Chris Rock or the Chris Rock joke? That's all, pure and simple. He made a joke.”

(With information from AP)

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