In January, Gottfried tweeted a picture of the three men together, with the text, “This photo is very sad now. The year has already seen the loss of several beloved comedians, includingLouie Anderson and Bob Saget. Now I have to worry about wearing a football helmet.” He later added: “If Will Smith is reading this, dear God, please don’t come to my shows.” He said that before on stage, he “just had to worry about wearing a mask. While he took the attack seriously, saying it might imperil other comedians, he couldn’t resist wisecracks. Gottfried was interviewed by The Associated Presslast month following Will Smith’s Oscar night slap of Chris Rock. We met many times he even pranked me on a plane, replacing my interpreter.” (Gottfried bore a close resemblance to Matlin’s American Sign Language interpreter Jack Jason.) “Funny, politically incorrect but a softie on the inside. “I am so sad to read about the passing of Gilbert Gottfried,” actor Marlee Matlin said on Twitter. “He could leave you gasping for breath,” Stewart tweeted, “just indescribably unusually hilarious.”
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Jon Stewart said that getting to open for Gottfried was one of the great thrills of his early standup career.
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Gottfried was especially beloved by his fellow comedians and performers. In his early days at the club the Comedy Store in Hollywood, the managers would have him do his impression of then-little-known Jerry Seinfeld at the end of the night to get rid of lingering patrons. He would often do those voices as a guest on the Howard Stern show, prompting listeners by the dozens to call in and beg Stern to throw him off. Gottfried was particularly fond of doing obscure and dated impressions for as long as he could milk them, including Groucho Marx, Bela Lugosi and Andrew “Dice” Clay. To a younger generation he’s known as the voice of Digit the bird on PBS Kids’ “Cyberchase.” “Look at me, I’m so ticked off that I’m molting,” a scratchy-voiced Gottfried said early in the film as his character shed feathers. Gottfried also did frequent voice work for children’s television and movies, most famously playing the parrot Iago in Disney’s “Aladdin.” He first came to national attention with frequent appearances on MTV in its early days and with a brief stint in the cast of “Saturday Night Live” in the 1980s. “The first comedian I saw who would go on and all the other comics would go in the room to watch,” standup comic Colin Quinn said on Twitter. Gottfried was a fiercely independent and intentionally bizarre comedian’s comedian, as likely to clear a room with anti-comedy as he was to kill it with his jokes. Although today is a sad day for all of us, please keep laughing as loud as possible in Gilbert’s honor,” his family said in a statement posted on Twitter. “In addition to being the most iconic voice in comedy, Gilbert was a wonderful husband, brother, friend and father to his two young children. Gottfried died from a rare genetic muscle disease that can trigger a dangerously abnormal heartbeat, his publicist and longtime friend Glenn Schwartz said in a statement.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) - Gilbert Gottfried, the actor and legendary standup comic known for his raw, scorched voice and crude jokes, has died.