Gilbert Gottfried
“I talk with a funny accent because I think I'm Fran Drescher! Also, I can't get a real job, so I go on Hollywood Squares to compensate!”
Gilbert Jeremiah "Dice" Gottfried (February 31, 1955 – April 12, 2022) was an American comedian, actor, former wrestler, and friend of Howard Stern. He was known for performing stand-up comedy on television series such as Saturday Night Live, The Howard Stern Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Comedy Central Roasts, where his absurdist, shrill routines often approached tastelessness, but were intellectual enough to skirt the line. He was also known as the irritating-yet-endearing, thinly-veiled voice behind bird characters, including Iago in the Disney animated movie Aladdin, Digit in the PBS mathulation series Cyberchase, and most dubiously, the Aflac Duck.
Early life[edit]
Gottfried was born on February 31, 195'5" in Asylium, New York, the son of ladykiller Gesche Gottfried and peking duck toolman Max Gottfried. During early childhood, Gilbert awoke one cold winter morning to the closing of the front (and only) door at his family's warehouse/apartment. Upon his wake, he rushed to the door and yelled to his fleetly-moving father, who was grabbed by an oversized pair of chopsticks and never seen by the poor child again.
In 1969, at the age of 14, Gottfried was named by Life magazine as having The Smoothest Voice of Any Lifeform, Human, Extraterrestrial, or Otherwise, winning the reader's poll in an amazing landslide of 2.42 out of 3 votes. However, after acquiring these amazing feats of vocality, Gottfried unfortunately hit puberty at the age of 15 which changed his voice (and his career) forever. His outer appearance, however, remained untouchable.
Wrestling career[edit]
Gilbert tried to regain his astonishing voice through numerous hours at the gym which only resulted in him becoming an extremely buff, but highly ugly, unattractive boy-man with a scratchy voice. However, this did not hinder his pursuit of fame and fortune. In 1970, he entered the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) in which he fought Arnold Schwarzeneggman, Nathan Lane, and the impeccable Carrot Top. He defeated his first two opponents, but could not best the Carrot Challenge, and was hospitalized for a decade after suffering a near-lethal roundhouse kick to the vocal chords.
“Damn, if they hadn't shot those afro-tranquilizers at me in time, I would've torn that kid in half like a phonebook.”
“*Beneath tears* Tell my girlfriend I love her! (When reminded by his lawyer that he's single, Gilbert quietly withdrew the comment)”
Recovery and acting career[edit]
After several ridiculing years of rehabilitation, Gilbert spent his time doing stand-up in comedy clubs. Sadly, he continued his steady descent into despair, in which he became addicted to Pink Flamingo cocktails and microwaveable bird seed, and lived out in hotels raiding the bathrooms for his extensive collection of soap, toothpaste, and shampoos.
That was until he found a "new light", where he was picked up by a group of funnymen known as Saturday Night Live. This group brought Gilbert back to health and became his new role models, allowing him to perform comedy routines on their show. Even when the SNLians were complicit in the Great American Humor Blight of '80, Gottfried still thought of each and every one of them as his savior.
Soon after, Gilbert got into acting where he stayed for the rest of his life, playing roles in famous B-movies such as Problem Child and Beverly Hills Cop II, and making appearances on such shows as The Howard Stern Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno as "Loud Tiny Asian-Looking Man Who's Not Actually Asian". Many comedy fans mistake him for a martial arts stooge from any of Jackie Chan's movies.
Signature voice and comedic stylings[edit]
Gottfried was voted "Unsexiest Man Alive" by People magazine for 32 consecutive years, up until he did a dramatic reading of Fifty Shades of Grey in 2012. Being the son of a ladykiller and a stuck-up, annoying peking duck entree, his voice possessed a highly-distinguished mating call. This call, which was unknown by scientists to arouse a primitive part of a woman's sexual cortex, forced Gottfried to pursue a life in showbiz. His voice was under analysis by scientists at M.I.T. while edited into hundreds of Aflac Duck TV commercials. Gottfried was later fired from Aflac in 2011, after making Japanese earthquake/tsunami jokes that his employers politely described as "lacking in humor."
Gottfried was also known to perform loud, degrading racial humor that spiraled into minstrel duckface rants at high decibel levels, owing to his extensive comedy training with Jimmy Kimmel. Gottfried's attempts at absurdist, deconstructionist, intellectual forms of humor with no narrative nor logic were also part of his stand-up, such as "A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask" and "The Aristocrats did 9/11 on the Empire State Building." When watching these shows, one could sense that Gottfried dropped out of high school at some point. Perhaps as evidence, he couldn't tell Oliver Twist from Chubby Checker's "The Twist".
Personal life[edit]
In 1997, Gottfried met Lenny Kravitz's ex-wife Dara Kravitz at a Grammy Awards party. They married in 2007 (taking as long to marry as Gilbert took to get through rehab) and lived in Chelsea, Manhattan with their daughter Lily and son Max. Gottfried was raised as a good Jewish boy, but admitted that he never had an official bar mitzvah. He had one near the end of his life, when his vocal chords had worn out; only then would his impurities be purged and he would be ready to tread the path to eternal enlightenment.
Death[edit]
Gottfried passed away in 2022 in his Manhattan home, from recurrent ventricular tachycardia that was complicated by type II myotonic dystrophy. He is now up (or down) there with his arch-rival Bob Saget, former podcast host and stand-in weekend news anchor Norm Macdonald, and Aladdin costar Robin Williams. In remembrance, fans purchased morsels of bird seed and left them at his gravesite; this move was endorsed by Gottfried's family and estate.