Cosby, Bill

Source:

 African American National Biography

Cosby, Bill

(12 July 1937– ),

actor and comedian, was born William Henry Cosby Jr. in Germantown, Philadelphia, the son of William Henry Cosby Sr., a U.S. Navy mess steward, and Anna Pearl Cosby. Many of the vicissitudes of Cosby's childhood in the poverty-stricken Richard Allen housing projects would be transformed later into fodder for his hilarious comedy routines and television shows. As a youngster, Cosby worked many hours shining shoes and performing menial tasks at a local grocery. He attended the Germantown High School for Gifted Students, where he was elected captain of the track and football teams.

At age nineteen, Cosby dropped out of school and enlisted in the U.S. Navy, in which he served for four years (1956–1960). During his stint in the navy, he managed to earn his high school equivalency diploma through correspondence and studied physical therapy. In 1960, with four years of military service under his belt, Cosby received a scholarship to the College of Education at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he majored in physical education. At Temple, Cosby earned a living as a bartender at local nightclubs. Inspired by comedy pioneers like Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner—and having always casually told jokes to friends and teammates—Cosby decided to try his hand as a comedian. In 1962, after he had appeared at various coffeehouses in Philadelphia, the Gaslight Café in New York's Greenwich Village booked Cosby for an engagement. He received a glowing review in the New York Times. Encouraged, Cosby began polishing and honing his act with the help of his friend Roy Silver, who would eventually become his manager.

Bill Cosby in August 1972, starring in The New Bill Cosby Show. (AP Images.)

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In 1962 Cosby dropped out of school to focus more intensely on the comedy circuit. On 25 January 1964 he married Camille Hanks [Cosby], and the couple had five children: Erika, Erinn, Ennis, Ensa, and Evin. Cosby made his television debut in 1965 on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. The appearance brought him headlining engagements at popular nightclubs nationwide, including the hungry i in San Francisco, Mr. Kelly's in Chicago, the Flamingo in Las Vegas, and Harrah's at Lake Tahoe.

In sharp contrast to the explicit, anti-authoritarian routines of such contemporaries as George Carlin and Richard Pryor, Cosby's comedic style avoided cursing. He gained a reputation for his congenial anecdotes about everyday foibles and family issues. A master storyteller with a strong gift for physical comedy and exaggerated impersonations, Cosby became known as “the Negro comedian who doesn't use racial material” (Cohen, 64). He would record eighteen comedy records over the course of his career, including Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow (1963), To Russell, My Brother Whom I Slept With (1968), and My Father Confused Me, What Should I Do? (1977). These records captured the spirit of his live comedy routines, selling 12 million copies and, over time, earning him eight Grammy awards.

Cosby's flair for comedy brought him to the attention of the television producer Sheldon Leonard, who cast him, as Alexander Scott, opposite the white actor Robert Culp in the NBC adventure-comedy series I Spy (1965). Playing a Temple University graduate and a Rhodes Scholar able to speak seven languages, Cosby became the first black actor to land a continuing role in a network series. He won three Emmy awards during the show's immensely popular three-year run. His national visibility garnered him a weeklong stand-up engagement at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and in 1969 he took home his fourth Emmy for The Bill Cosby Special. A lifelong aficionado of black music and himself a jazz musician, Cosby became the president of the Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame in 1968.

In the following years Cosby struggled to maintain a hit on network television. He starred as a physical education teacher Chet Kincaid on The Bill Cosby Show (1968), which ran to lukewarm reviews for three years. In 1972 Cosby launched a comedy-variety show called The New Bill Cosby Show, which lasted only a year, until May 1973. A short-lived sitcom, Cos (1976), was excoriated by critics. In 1973 he fared substantially better by creating and providing voice-overs for a cartoon series, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Set in an inner city junkyard, the humorous show aimed to teach children creative solutions for everyday problems and ran for nearly eleven years.

In the 1970s Cosby cultivated his interests in education and child psychology to earn his bachelor's degree in Sociology from Temple University and a master's and doctorate in Education from the University of Massachusetts. He made guest appearances on children's television shows, such as The Electric Company, Captain Kangaroo, and Pinwheel. He launched a film career, starring in movies like Hickey and Boggs (1972), Mother Jugs and Speed (1976), California Suite (1978), and The Devil and Max Devlin (1981). Alongside his friend Sidney Poitier, Cosby starred in several successful crime-caper films: Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Let's Do It Again (1975), and A Piece of the Action (1977). In 1982 he starred in a feature film version of his comedy act, Bill Cosby: Himself.

In 1984 Cosby created the comedy series The Cosby Show for NBC. The show followed the life and times of the obstetrician Heathcliff “Cliff” Huxtable; his wife, Claire, a lawyer; and their five children. Buoyed by sharp writing and universal story lines, the show broke all Nielsen records to emerge as the top-rated family show for most of its eight-year run. Winning numerous Emmy awards and NAACP Image awards, The Cosby Show helped revitalize the stagnant sitcom genre in the early 1980s.

The success of The Cosby Show also triggered long-standing debates about the direction of black representation in the media. Many critics felt that the show's vision of black upward mobility was little more than a fairy tale that misdirected popular attention away from the increasing socioeconomic and political decline of African Americans in the Reagan era. Cosby's stated goal in representing upwardly mobile African Americans was to show that “we have the same kinds of wants and needs as other American families” (Smith, 165).

The Cosby Show received a massive syndication deal in 1988 and was seen regularly on television. In 1988 Cosby also produced a television spin-off about life in an all-black college, called A Different World. Although his feature films during this period, such as Leonard Part VI (1988), Ghost Dad (1990), and Meteor Man (1993), were critically lambasted, Cosby would emerge as a literary powerhouse with successful books on family, aging, and relationships, such as Fatherhood, Time Flies, and Love and Marriage.

Cosby was recruited in the 1980s as a product spokesman for several major companies, including General Foods and Kodak. Along with his wife, the comedian also emerged as a humanitarian when he donated $20 million to Spelman College—the largest personal contribution ever given to a black college or university. Among his other charitable contributions were $1.3 million to be divided among Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, Florida A&M, Howard University in Washington, D.C., and Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, as well as $325,000 to Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. In the 1990s he became part owner of the New Jersey Nets basketball team. Cosby was drawn into the deal by the team's sponsorship of a trust fund benefiting inner-city youth. One of the highest paid African American performers, Cosby also announced his intention to buy NBC in the 1990s, which did not come to fruition.

Cosby's television ventures in the 1990s pale in comparison to the success of The Cosby Show. A remake of the Groucho Marx game show You Bet Your Life was a flop in 1992. The Cosby Mysteries, patterned after Angela Lansbury's Murder She Wrote, received a lukewarm response in 1994. In that same year Cosby appeared in the television movie I Spy Returns. Somewhat more successful was Cosby in 1996, a sitcom that placed the comedy legend in more familiar environs. Playing a retiree living in Queens, he was reunited with Phylicia Rashad, the actress who had played his wife on The Cosby Show. In 1996 Cosby appeared with Robin Williams in the film Jack, and in 2000 he produced Men of Honor, a movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carl Brashear, the first African American U.S. Navy diver. Cosby's easy rapport with children came to the fore in two television shows, Kids Say the Darnedest Things, which he hosted in 1998, and Little Bill (1999), for which he was executive producer.

Cosby's popular image was dented somewhat in the late 1990s, when a woman named Autumn Jackson claimed to be his illegitimate daughter and demanded money from him. Cosby admitted publicly that he had an affair in 1974 with Jackson's mother, Shawn Thompson Upshaw, and that he had been paying her money to remain quiet about the relationship. Nonetheless, the comedian denied paternity—even agreeing during the trial to take a paternity test. Jackson refused. She was later convicted of extortion. Then, in 1997, Cosby's twenty-seven-year-old son, Ennis, part of the inspiration for the character Theo in The Cosby Show, was murdered in Los Angeles by a man attempting to rob him. The man was later arrested and convicted.

In 2002 NBC ran a reunion special of The Cosby Show that brought the cast together in celebration of the longevity and good humor of a comedy legend. Beyond his well-documented—and much-needed—ability to make people laugh, however, Bill Cosby's greatest legacy may well be in his charitable contributions. In addition to providing several historically black colleges with much needed funds, Cosby and his wife, Camille, have established one of the world's greatest private collections of African American art. The Cosbys’ collection is intended to end the neglect of black artists, including Jacob Lawrence, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Elizabeth Catlett, and Augusta Savage, who were ignored or marginalized in their own time. In 2001 David Driskell, curator of the collection, published The Other Side of Color: African American Art in the Collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby, Jr. (2001). In recognition of his lifetime achievements, Cosby was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2002.

On May 17, 2004, Cosby gave a speech to the NAACP on the fiftieth anniversary of the historic Brown vs. Board of Education decision. He argued, with flourishes of comic brio, that there was a widespread failure in parenting, accountability, and leadership in segments of the black community.

In the aftermath of Cosby's speech, support and opprobrium were heard in almost equal measure. On one hand, he was congratulated on his courageousness, while on the other, criticized for failing to take into account social and economic deprivation. Yet, this was no departure from the norm for Cosby. It merely marked a new stage in his mission to educate (while entertaining) about the need for discipline and strong parenting.

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