Bill Cosby
William Henry Cosby Jr. is an American former comedian, actor, and media personality. Often deemed a trailblazer for African Americans in the entertainment industry, Cosby was a film, television, and stand-up comedy star, with his longest-running live-action role being that of Cliff Huxtable in the sitcom The Cosby Show. He also released several stand-up comedy albums and was a popular spokesperson in advertising for decades. Cosby was well known in the United States for his fatherly image and gained a reputation as "America's Dad".
Starting in 2014, dozens of allegations of sexual assault were made against him. By 2018, these had ended his career and sharply diminished his status as a pop culture icon.
Cosby began his career as a stand-up comic at the Hungry I nightclub in San Francisco in 1961, and primarily performed observational comedy in a conversational style. He released numerous standup specials starting with Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow...Right! and starred in the comedy film Bill Cosby: Himself. Cosby still holds the record for winning the most Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album, with seven wins. His acting career began with a starring role in the NBC secret-agent show I Spy, which broke new ground for African Americans when he made history by winning three Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Actor in a Drama Series, becoming the first black actor to do so.
Cosby made his film debut starring in Man and Boy followed by Hickey & Boggs, Uptown Saturday Night, Let's Do It Again, A Piece of the Action, Leonard Part 6, and Ghost Dad. He produced and starred in a series of television sitcoms such as The Bill Cosby Show, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and The Cosby Show as well as its spin-off A Different World, The Cosby Mysteries, and Cosby. He hosted Kids Say the Darndest Things. During his prolific career he advertised numerous products including the Jell-O ice pop treats Pudding Pop.
Over 60 women have accused Cosby of various offenses, including rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse and sexual harassment. Those allegations gained traction in 2014 after fellow comedian Hannibal Buress mentioned the allegations in a comedy set that went viral. Cosby has maintained his innocence. Although he had received numerous awards and honorary degrees, several of them were revoked following the allegations. Reruns of The Cosby Show and other programs featuring Cosby were pulled from syndication. In 2018, he was convicted of aggravated sexual assault against Andrea Constand. He was imprisoned until the conviction was vacated in June 2021 by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on the grounds that Cosby's 5th Amendment and 14th Amendment due process rights had been violated. In 2022, Cosby was found liable for having sexually assaulted Judy Huth when she was 16 years of age.
Early life and further education
William Henry Cosby Jr. was born on July 12, 1937, in Philadelphia. He is one of four sons of Anna Pearl, a maid, and William Henry Cosby Sr., who served as a mess steward in the U.S. Navy.Cosby was the class president as well as captain of both the baseball and track-and-field teams at Mary Channing Wister Public School in Philadelphia. Teachers noted his propensity for joking around instead of studying, and he described himself as the class clown. Cosby attended Philadelphia's Central High School, a magnet school and academically rigorous college prep school, where he ran track and played baseball, football, and basketball. He transferred to Germantown High School but failed the tenth grade.
In 1956, Cosby enlisted in the Navy and served as a hospital corpsman at the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia; at Naval Station Argentia in Newfoundland, Canada; and at the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland. He worked in physical therapy with Navy and Marine Corps personnel who were injured during the Korean War. He served until 1960 and became a petty officer 3rd class.
Cosby earned his high school equivalency diploma through correspondence courses and was awarded a track-and-field scholarship to Temple University in 1961. At Temple, he studied physical education while he ran track and played fullback on the college's football team. Cosby began bartending at a Philadelphia club, where he earned bigger tips by making the customers laugh. He then began performing on stage and left his university studies to pursue a career in comedy.
Cosby resumed his formal education in 1971. Temple University granted him his bachelor's degree on the basis of what it referred to as life experience. He then began graduate work at UMass Amherst, receiving his Master of Arts degree in 1972.
He returned to UMass Amherst, and in 1976, while producing Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, he earned his Doctor of Education degree. His dissertation was titled An Integration of the Visual Media Via 'Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids' into the Elementary School Curriculum as a Teaching Aid and Vehicle to Achieve Increased Learning.
Career
Stand-up comedy
Cosby lined up stand-up jobs at clubs in Philadelphia and then in New York City, where he appeared at The Gaslight Cafe beginning in 1961. He booked dates in cities such as Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. On July 28, 1964, he received national exposure on NBC's The Tonight Show. This led to a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records which, in 1964, released his debut LP, Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow...Right!, the first of a series of comedy albums. His album To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With was number one on Spin magazine's list of "The 40 Greatest Comedy Albums of All Time", calling it "stand-up comedy's masterpiece".Cosby's comedy genres included observational comedy, satire, surreal humor and deadpan. While many comics of the time were using the growing freedom of that decade to explore controversial and sometimes risqué material, Cosby was making his reputation with humorous recollections of his childhood. Many Americans wondered about the absence of race as a topic in Cosby's stories. As Cosby's success grew, he had to defend his choice of material regularly; as he argued, "A white person listens to my act and he laughs and he thinks, 'Yeah, that's the way I see it too.' Okay. He's white. I'm Negro. And we both see things the same way. That must mean that we are alike. Right? So I figure this way I'm doing as much for good race relations as the next guy."
In 1983, Cosby released the live comedy performance film Bill Cosby: Himself, in which he gave his views ranging from marriage to parenthood. The film also showcased Cosby's conversational style of stand-up comedy; for most of the performance, Cosby was seated center-stage, only getting up to emphasize a joke. Nearly all of Cosby's routine in the film concerned the trials and tribulations of parenting, frequently illustrated with anecdotes involving his own family. Many of the comedic routines presented in the film were precursors to Cosby's most popular sitcom, The Cosby Show. The film was well regarded by comedians and critics, with some calling it "the greatest stand up concert movie ever." Rolling Stone placed Cosby's concert film Bill Cosby: Himself as number8 on its list of "The 25 Best Stand-Up Specials of All Time", acknowledging the significance of the film while still saying: "Yes, it's damned near impossible to watch anything the tainted comedian has done and not think of the headlines, the heckling, the revelations and what is, by any definition, monstrous behavior." They also placed Cosby at number8 on their list of "The Best Stand-up Comics of All Time", saying: "Bill Cosby is not likely to perform again; listening to his records will never have that gentle, sweet sense of nostalgia for anyone; and while it is impossible to disconnect the performer from the man, scrubbing his name from the annals of stand-up would be impossible."
Cosby performed his first TV stand-up special in 30 years, Bill Cosby: Far from Finished, on Comedy Central on November 23, 2013. His last show of the "Far from Finished" tour was performed at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta on May 2, 2015. In 2014, Cosby was set to release his new standup special Bill Cosby 77 on Netflix. The release of the film was canceled due to allegations of sexual assault against Cosby. His last known standup performance prior to his conviction was held at the LaRose Jazz Club in Philadelphia on January 23, 2018.
Television and film
In 1965, Cosby was cast alongside Robert Culp in the I Spy espionage adventure series on NBC. I Spy became the first weekly dramatic television series to feature an African American in a starring role. At first, Cosby and NBC executives were concerned that some affiliates might be unwilling to carry the series. At the beginning of the 1965 season, four stations declined the show; they were in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. Viewers were taken with the show's exotic locales and the authentic chemistry between the stars. It became one of the ratings hits of the season. I Spy finished among the twenty most-watched shows that year, and Cosby was honored with three consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. When accepting his third Emmy for the show, Cosby told the audience: "Let the message be known to bigots and racists that they don't count!"During the series' run, Cosby continued to do stand-up comedy performances and recorded half a dozen record albums for Warner Bros. Records. He also began to dabble in singing, recording Silver Throat: Bill Cosby Sings in 1967. In June 1968, Billboard magazine reported that Cosby had turned down a five-year, $3.5million contract renewal offer and would leave the label in August that year to record for his own record label.
In July 1968, Cosby narrated Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed, a CBS documentary addressing the representation of black people in popular culture. Andy Rooney wrote the Emmy-awarded script for Cosby to read. Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson said it was one of "the rare exceptions when Cosby took off the gloves and blinders, to discuss race in public with candor and discernment". Due to its popularity and controversial nature, it was rebroadcast less than a month later.
Tetragrammaton Records, a division of the Campbell, Silver, Cosby Corporation—the Los Angeles–based production company founded by Cosby, his manager Roy Silver, and filmmaker Bruce Post Campbell—produced films as well as records, including Cosby's television specials, the Fat Albert cartoon special and series, and several motion pictures. CSC hired Artie Mogull as President of the label. Tetragrammaton was fairly active during 1968–69 but ceased trading during the 1970s.
Throughout the 1960s Cosby pursued a variety of additional television projects and appeared as a regular guest host on The Tonight Show and as the star of an annual special for NBC. In 1969, he returned with another series, The Bill Cosby Show, a situation comedy that ran for two seasons. Cosby played a physical education teacher at a Los Angeles high school. While only a modest critical success, the show was a hit with ratings, finishing eleventh in its first season. Cosby was lauded for using African American performers such as Lillian Randolph, Moms Mabley, and Rex Ingram as characters. According to commentary on the Season1 DVDs for the show, Cosby was at odds with NBC over his refusal to include a laugh track in the show, as he felt viewers had the ability to find humor for themselves when watching a TV show.
For the PBS series The Electric Company, Cosby recorded several segments teaching reading skills to young children. Cosby resumed his formal education in 1971; he began graduate work at UMass Amherst. In 1972, he was back in prime time with a variety series, The New Bill Cosby Show. However, this show lasted only a season. More successful was a Saturday-morning cartoon, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, hosted by Cosby and based on his own childhood. That series ran from 1972 to 1979, then ran as The New Fat Albert Show in 1979, and finally ran as The Adventures of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Cosby would use his experience producing Fat Albert in his educational endeavors; his dissertation for his Ed. D. at UMass Amherst discussed the use of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids as a teaching tool in elementary schools.
During the 1970s, Cosby and other African-American actors, including Sidney Poitier, joined forces to make successful comedy films to counter the violent "blaxploitation" films of the era, such as Uptown Saturday Night in 1974, Let's Do It Again in 1975, and A Piece of the Action in 1977. He also starred in Mother, Jugs & Speed, co-starring Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel in 1976. In 1978, he starred in California Suite, a compilation of four Neil Simon plays.
Cosby also hosted Cos in 1976. In addition, he produced an hour-long variety show featuring puppets, sketches, and musical numbers. It was during this season that ABC decided to take advantage of this phase of Cosby's career, by joining with Filmation producers of Fat Albert to create live-action segments starring Cosby, for the 1972 animated film Journey Back to Oz; it subsequently aired in syndication. Cosby was also a regular on children's public television programs starting in the 1970s, hosting the "Picture Pages" segments that lasted into the early 1980s.File:Bill Cosby Reminds Us That We Can All Be Scientists.jpg|thumb|226x226px|Cosby wearing a sweater in 1990, similar to the ones he wore on The Cosby Show in the role of Cliff Huxtable
Cosby's greatest television success came in September 1984 with the debut of The Cosby Show. Cosby, an advocate for family-oriented humor, co-produced the series, held creative control and involved himself in every aspect of production. Plots were often based on ideas that Cosby suggested while in meetings with the writing staff. The show had parallels to Cosby's actual family life: like the characters Cliff and Clair Huxtable, Cosby and his wife Camille were college-educated and financially successful, and they had five children. On the show, Cosby played the role of an obstetrician. Much of the material from the pilot and first season of The Cosby Show was taken from his video Bill Cosby: Himself, released in 1983. The series was an immediate success, debuting near the top of the ratings and having five consecutive No. 1 ratings in its eight-season run.
In 1987, Cosby attempted to return to film with the spy spoof Leonard Part 6. Although Cosby himself was the producer and wrote the story, he realized during production that the film was not going to be what he wanted and publicly denounced it, warning audiences to stay away. The film was however marked the first project for Columbia to be greenlighted by studio executive David Puttman. Later in the 1980s, Cosby served as an advisor to the Los Angeles Student Film Institute.
After The Cosby Show went off the air in 1992, Cosby embarked on a number of other projects, which included a revival of the classic Groucho Marx game show You Bet Your Life, the TV movie I Spy Returns, and The Cosby Mysteries. In the mid-1990s, he appeared as a detective in black-and-white film noir-themed commercials for Turner Classic Movies. During this time, he reunited with Sidney Poitier starring in Ghost Dad and appeared in minor roles in Robert Townsend's superhero comedy The Meteor Man, and Francis Ford Coppola's coming of age film Jack. In addition, he was interviewed in Spike Lee's HBO project 4 Little Girls, a documentary about the 1963 racist bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama which injured 22 people, killing four girls.
Also in 1996, he started up a new show for CBS, Cosby, again co-starring Phylicia Rashād, his onscreen wife on The Cosby Show. Cosby co-produced the show for Carsey-Werner Productions. It centered on Cosby as Hilton Lucas, an iconoclastic senior citizen who tries to find a new job after being downsized and, in the meantime, gets on his wife's nerves. Madeline Kahn co-starred as Rashād's goofy business partner Pauline. Cosby was hired by CBS to be the official spokesman of its Detroit affiliate WWJ-TV during an advertising campaign from 1995 to 1998. Cosby also hosted a CBS special, Kids Say the Darndest Things, on February 6, 1995, which was followed after as a full-season show, with Cosby as host, from January 9, 1998, to June 23, 2000. After four seasons, Cosby was canceled. Its last episode aired April 28, 2000. Kids Say the Darndest Things was terminated the same year.
A series for preschoolers, Little Bill, created by Cosby as a semi-biographical representation of his childhood growing up in Philadelphia, made its debut on Nickelodeon in 1999. The network renewed the popular program in November 2000. In 2001, Cosby's agenda included the publication of a new book, as well as delivering the commencement addresses at Morris Brown College, Ohio State University, and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Also that year, he signed a deal with 20th Century Fox to develop a live-action feature film centering on the popular Fat Albert character from his 1970s cartoon series. Co-written and executive produced by Cosby, Fat Albert was released in theaters in December 2004. Cosby makes an appearance in the film as himself.
In May 2007, Cosby spoke at the commencement of High Point University. In the summer of 2009, Cosby hosted a comedy gala at Montreal's Just for Laughs, the largest comedy festival in the world. During this time he also made an appearance in Mario Van Peebles film Baadasssss! in 2003.