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Bill Cosby

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William Henry "Bill " Cosby, Jr., Ed.D (born July 12, 1937) is an American actor, comedian, television producer and activist.

File:Bill Cosby1.jpg
Bill Cosby as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show

He was the first African-American actor to star in a dramatic television series (I Spy, in which he co-starred with Robert Culp during the mid-1960s), and also became well-known for his stand-up comedy during the 1960s and 1970s. After I Spy he starred in other series, some of which were successful (such as the long-running cartoon Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids), while others were not. In the mid-1980s, his sitcom The Cosby Show was very popular (helping to rescue NBC from possible bankruptcy), and notable for being one of the first television programs to star an upper-class Black family. During the 1980s, Cosby was among the highest-paid guys in the United States.

In recent years, Cosby's reputation has been affected by his controversial statements regarding the advancement of the Black community, and (unproved) allegations of sexual harassment.

Career

Cosby was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to William Henry Cosby and Anna Pearl Hite. He began attending Central High School of Philadelphia, but dropped out in the tenth grade and joined the Navy, and completed high school through correspondence courses (GED). He served 4 years in the Navy, achieving the rank of Hospital Corpsman Third Class. During his service, he was stationed at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and played for the Quantico Marines football team and the Naval Hospital Bethesda basketball team. He was discharged in 1961. Later, he won an athletic scholarship to Temple University.

After working as a bartender for several years, he began his career as a stand-up comic, working the "chitlin circuit" for a time before his big break with the comedy album, Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow, Right!. Unlike many contemporary Afro-American comedians, Cosby told stories rather than jokes, often surrounding his Philadelphia childhood, particularly in tales about his little brother Russell and friends Old Weird Harold and Fat Albert. Unlike his contemporaries on the circuit, he avoided the use of harsh language. As a result, Cosby was deemed acceptable to white audiences which found these stories to be universal. He won fame for his performances and a series of best-selling record albums. His breakout routine was an imagined conversation between God and a skeptical Noah, which made its first appearance on his first vinyl release.

TV producer Sheldon Leonard landed Cosby a break-out television role in I Spy (1965), the first time an African-American actor starred in a weekly dramatic television series. Cosby won two Emmy Awards for his portrayal of undercover CIA agent Alexander Scott.

Beginning in 1968, Cosby recorded several hundred 5-minute comedy shorts titled The Bill Cosby Radio Program and sponsored by Coca-Cola for daily broadcast on Top 40 radio stations. The series introduced "The Brown Hornet," a parody of The Green Hornet that would resurface on Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.

Cosby then appeared in a series of shows named after himself: The Bill Cosby Show, The New Bill Cosby Show, the animated Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Cos, The Cosby Show, The Cosby Mysteries, and Cosby (based upon the British series One Foot In The Grave). He has producer, writer, director and even composer credits on many of his projects.

Cosby was a regular on the Captain Kangaroo show in the 1980s, presenting the "Picture Pages" segment which was later syndicated on its own.

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Cosbyology (2001)

He won several Grammy awards for his comedy albums, had a top forty song ("Little Old Man") in 1969, and sang on a number of albums. He won more Grammies for comedy than any other artist, winning every year from 1965 to 1970 and again in 1987. As of 2005, he had 3 gold- and 6 platinum-certified comedy albums. He has also written several humorous books about different aspects of life, based on his stand-up comedy such as Fatherhood and Love and Marriage. In fact, Fatherhood and Time Flies were the best selling non-fiction hardback books of 1986 and 1987, respectively.

Cosby has also made occasional forays into film acting, but the critical and popular success which came so abundantly to his stage and television work has not blessed his movie performances: His natural charisma has often been undermined by mediocre scripts in films like The Devil and Max Devlin (1981) and Ghost Dad (1990), and the notorious flop Leonard Part 6 (1987), although his work in ensemble casts in Uptown Saturday Night and Let's Do it Again, a pair of productions headed up by Sidney Poitier in the mid-1970s, received favorable reviews, as did his supporting role in Francis Ford Coppola's Jack (1996).

One of Cosby's more colorful performances was his portrayal as a bigot in Bill Cosby on Prejudice (1971).

His many commercial endorsements, made at the height of his popularity in the 1970s and '80s for products such as Jell-O, Texas Instruments, Eastman Kodak, and Coca-Cola, have been widely parodied.

Cosby earned a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts in 1977: his dissertation concerned the use of the Fat Albert series as a teaching aid. He has attempted to integrate education with television in some projects, such as Picture Pages, where Cosby taught children how to draw in a series of shorts aired by PBS. Notably, he structured the 80's Cosby family to represent children at all ages, and the addition of daughter Sondra (Sabrina Le Beauf) as a Princeton graduate and aspiring law student is meant to send the message that good parenting and education of children leads to success. The Cosby Show also addressed social issues, such as drugs, illiteracy, teen pregnancy, and gang violence.

Cosby is now a leading educational philanthropist.

He hosted the television program Kids Say the Darndest Things, which aired from 1996 through 2000.

He is married to Camille Hanks and they have four daughters. Their only son Ennis Cosby, aged 27, was murdered on January 16, 1997, while changing a flat tire in Los Angeles, California. On March 12, 1997, his assailant, Mikail Markhasev, was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with attempted robbery and murder. He was convicted on July 7 1998 and is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Cosby, as of 2005 maintains a home in Shelburne, Massachusetts.

Honors

  • Cosby received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Cincinnati during the 2001 graduation ceremony.
  • Cosby received an Honorary Doctorate from West Chester University of Pennsylvania during the 2003 graduation ceremony.
  • In a British 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

Political views

  • Bill Cosby's sociopolitical views, especially about the African-American community, are complex and have often been reduced to a simplistic representation. He has a long history of endeavors to advance African-Americans, which he sometimes tries to accomplish by being critical of African-Americans. He opposes Affirmative Action on the pretense that it does the African American community more harm than good.
  • The media was not very accepting of Cosby's Pound Cake Speech with Richard Leiby of the Washington Post saying "Bill Cosby was anything but politically correct in his remarks Monday night at a Constitution Hall bash commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision,"(Leiby, Richard).
  • He was the first bigtime entertainer to cancel an appearance in Cincinnati after a boycott was called in response to the 2001 Cincinnati Riots. His support of this cause encouraged other stars to follow.
  • Cosby has been critical of African-Americans regarding those who hold low standards and allowing fatherless single parent households, high crime rates, and high illiteracy rates. He encouraged a more proactive effort from African-Americans to reduce those problems. He expanded upon his remarks in San Jose, California during an event to promote the Read-2-Lead Classic. The way his speeches were portrayed by popular media provoked a great deal of anger from some African-Americans.

The Pound Cake Speech

In May 2004 after receiving an award at the celebration of the 50th Anniversary commemoration of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which was the U.S. surpreme courts decision that outlawed school segregation (Wu, Frank H.), Cosby made public remarks critical of those Blacks who he believed were putting higher priorities on sports and fashion than on education and self-improvement. He has made a plea for African American families to educate their children on the many different aspects of American culture(Baker). According to Washington Times, he has had a long history of endeavors to advance African Americans (DeBose, Brian). When his address was reported by the national media, the headlines implied that Cosby was placing the blame of socioeconomic disparity solely on African-Americans. In "Pound Cake" Cosby asks that African American parents begin teaching their children better morals at a younger age. He directed this address to the leaders in the lower and middle economic classes of the African American community.

According to USA Today, Cosby is not alone in asking blacks to own up to problems. Other leaders such as Jesse Jackson, along with Cosby, are willing to publicly say that some blacks are their own worst enemy (Segregated Expectations).

Cosby told reporters of the Washington Times, "Parenting needs to come to the forefront. If you need help and you don't know how to parent, we want to be able to reach out and touch" (DeBose, Brian).

Regardless of the content of the speech, the U.S. national media focused on limited content and, without any national opinion polls or quantitative study, declared his speech was divisive and suggested that Cosby was addressing all blacks. Here are some examples of the headlines that were sent out nationally reporting the speech:

"Bill Cosby has more harsh words for black community" San Francisco Chronicle July 1 2004
"Bill Cosby Remarks Divide Black Community" Black America Web, May 31 2004 (Associated Press)

There were other lead-in paragraphs that suggest a huge division:

CHICAGO — Bill Cosby went off on another tirade against the black community Thursday, telling a room full of activists that black children are running around not knowing how to read or write and "going nowhere." Fox News, Friday, July 02, 2004 (Associated Press)

Using those headlines and descriptions the national media characterized Cosby as being elitist and suggested he was speaking derisively against all blacks. The media ensured his remarks chastizing the Black communities were all-inclusive but noticibly did not include his scathing remarks about Christians and the police, as well as praise for the efforts of the Black Muslim organization and its effectiveness. Cosby later appeared on WBUR to comment on his speech, his various remarks and African-Americans generally.

Cosby again came under sharp criticism, and again he was largely unapologetic for his stance. He made similar remarks during a speech on July 1 at a Rainbow Coalition meeting commemorating the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. During that speech, he admonished Blacks for not assisting or concerning themselves with the individuals who are in crime or have counter-productive aspirations. He further described those who needed attention as "Blacks (who) had forgotten the sacrifices of those in the Civil Rights Movement. The talk was interrupted several times by applause and received praise from leaders such as Jesse Jackson.

Cosby and jazz

Since his youth in 1950s Philadelphia, Cosby has been a fan and supporter of jazz music. He hosted at his home the 1983 wedding of jazz innovator Miles Davis and actress Cicely Tyson, and on The Cosby Show he wrote the fathers of both Cliff Huxtable and his wife to be aged jazz musicians. Cosby has stated, many times in his stand up shows, that "kids these days don't know what the jazz is all about".

Controversy

  • In 1997, Cosby was the target of allegations from Autumn Jackson, a young woman who claimed she was his daughter. In court, Cosby testified that he had sex once with Jackson's mother, when he was already married to his wife. Cosby further admitted he gave financial support to Jackson's mother. Cosby said he told Jackson he would be a father figure to her, but that he was not her father. Autumn Jackson was later convicted on extortion charges.
  • In January 2005 a woman alleged she was drugged and fondled by Cosby in May 2004. In a statement from Cosby's publicist, Cosby's attorney said, "the charges are categorically false and we have no further comment." Pennsylvania authorities found "insufficient credible and admissible evidence" to support the woman's claims, according to Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor.
  • In February 2005 a second woman, California lawyer Tamara Green (nee Lucier), came forward alleging that in the 1970s she was drugged and groped by Cosby. Cosby's attorney has denied any merit to the allegations, stating "Mr. Cosby does not have any knowledge of a woman named Tamara Green or Tamara Lucia."

    While prosecutors have declined to press charges against Cosby, the first accuser has filed a federal civil suit against the performer. Attorneys for the woman suing Bill Cosby for sexual assault claim that at least ten other women are prepared to testify about "prior similar sexual assaults and/or drugging incidents" perpetrated by the comedian.

TV Series

Books

  • Fatherhood (1986) - ISBN 0425097722
  • Time Flies (1987) - ISBN 0553277243
  • Love and Marriage (1989) - ISBN 0553284673
  • Childhood (1991) - ISBN 0399136479
  • Kids Say the Darndest Things (1998) - ISBN 0553581260
  • Congratulations! Now What? A Book for Graduates (1999) - ISBN 0786865725
  • Cosbyology: Essays and Observations from the Doctor of Comedy (2001) - ISBN 0786868104
  • I Am What I Ate...and I'm Frightened!!! (2003) - ISBN 0060545739
  • Friends of a Feather (2003) - ISBN 0060091479

Trivia

  • Cosby is an avid cigar smoker, which he attributes to his comedy idol Groucho Marx.
  • Cosby likes fountain pens [1].
  • Cosby is also a member of Omega Psi Phi.
  • Cosby continues to speak at seminars to high school students around the U.S. about the benefits of community college.
  • Like Bob Newhart and Brian Regan, Cosby does not use profanity in his act (one exception being his segment about cocaine from Bill Cosby Himself, which includes one well-placed swear).
  • Cosby has been spoofed in some episodes of animated comedies like The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy and The Boondocks.
  • Aries Spears, a former member of the Mad Tv cast has parodied Bill Cosby numerous times on the show often making fun of his way of talking and the facial expressions he usually makes.

References

  • Baker Jr., Ray L. "The Self Hate Crimes of Bill Cosby." 12, January 2005. <abesha.com>
  • DeBose, Brian. "Cosby urges leaders to aid black families." The Washington Times. September 9, 2004
  • Leiby, Richard. "Publications with a Cannes-Do Attitude." Washington Post. 19 May 2004: 3.
  • Morano, Marc. "Bill Cosby was hounded by President Nixon." World Entertainment News Network. 1 May 2000. 2 Mar 2006. www.imdb.com
  • "Segregated Expectations" USA Today. May 15 2003: 12.
  • Wu, Frank H. "Brown at 50: Keeping Promises." Black Issues in Higher Education. May 20 2004: 49
 
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