The Bill Cosby biography has been a major talking point amongst several well meaning citizens of the United States of America as it to an extent, feels like it’s pushed by some people, while others feel it’s an amazing career Bill Cosby has had spanning years in the comedy industry. Bill is well known to have been, prior to retirement, a mainstay in the Laugh USA/Pure Comedy channel serving good jokes to thousands of Americans.
Today, we take a good and inside look into the Career highs, lows, lifetime achievements, works, court cases, and generally the biography of Bill Cosby, the unforgettable actor, comedian, and lots more. Hold on, ride with us as we take you through this walk.
Bill Cosby as is already known by majority, was an American actor, spokesman, media personality, and former America stand-up comedian who featured in the Laugh USA channel that was later renamed to Pure Comedy Channel. Bill Cosby was born as William Henry Cosby Jr. on 12th July 1937, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bill Cosby has made significant contributions to American and African-American culture and gained a reputation as the “America’s Dad” for his portrayal of Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show (1984–1992). Following the sexual allegations leveled against his person in 2014, Bill Cosby lost several of the awards and honorary degrees which he gained throughout his career journey.
Bill Cosby’s Educational Background and Journey.
William Henry Cosby Jr, one of four sons born to Anna Pearl, a maid, and William Henry Cosby Snr who served as a mess steward in the U.S. Navy, 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 at the school, noted his propensity for joking around instead of studying, as he also named himself the class clown. At FitzSimons Junior High School, Cosby acted in plays and continued to compete in sports competitions also. Bill Cosby also 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, Bill Cosby enlisted in the navy were he 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.
He got his high school equivalency diploma through correspondence courses and was awarded a track-and-field scholarship to Temple University in 1961. While at Temple University, he studied physical education while he ran track and played fullback on the college’s football team. He started 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.
In 1971, he returned to the classroom to resume his formal education at Temple University. Temple University granted him his bachelor’s degree on the basis of what it referred to as life experience. In 1972, he started his graduate work at UMass Amherst, receiving his Master of Arts (MA) degree in the same year.
He returned to UMass Amherst, and in 1976, while producing Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, he earned his Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) 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.
At clubs in Philadelphia and later on, New York, Bill Cosby lined up stand-up jobs where he appeared at The Gaslight Cafe which started off in 1961.
He booked dates in cities such as Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. In the summer of 1963, 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”.
Unlike others who took advantage of the growing freedom of that decade, with often, controversial and risqué materials, Bill Cosby, kept building his fast growing reputation with humorous recollections of his childhood. Several Americans wondered about the absence of race as a topic in the stories of Bill Cosby. 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.”
He in 1983, released the concert film Bill Cosby: Himself which ended up on top of the list of several Americans Comedy Shows, and is widely regarded as “the greatest comedy concert film ever”. 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, Georgia 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: Cosby in 1965, was casted 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, $3.5 million 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”.[41] Due to its popularity and controversial nature, it was rebroadcast less than a month later.
Tetragrammaton Records, a division of the Campbell, Silver, Cosby (CSC) 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 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 Season 1 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 in 1976, Mother, Jugs & Speed, co-starring Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel.
In 1976, Cosby starred in A Piece of the Action with Poitier; and California Suite, a compilation of four Neil Simon plays. He 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.
Source: Wikipedia
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 staying there for most of 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 (1992–93), the TV-movie I Spy Returns (1994), and The Cosby Mysteries (1994). 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 (1990) and appeared in minor roles in Robert Townsend’s superhero comedy The Meteor Man (1993), and Francis Ford Coppola’s coming of age film Jack (1996). In addition, he was interviewed in Spike Lee’s HBO project 4 Little Girls (1997), 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.[56] During this time he also made an appearance in Mario Van Peebles film Baadasssss! in 2003.
Allegations in 1965-1996: The earliest allegation against Cosby dates back to December 1965: in 2005, Kristina Ruehli came forward as Jane Doe #12 in the Andrea Constand case and alleged that Cosby had drugged and assaulted her at that time in his Beverly Hills home. Further, Ruehli said she had told her boyfriend about the incident, and had told her daughter in the 1980s.
In the early 1980s, Joan Tarshis told freelance reporter John Milward about an alleged sexual assault by Cosby. Milward did not write about the allegations. In 1996, Playboy Playmate Victoria Valentino gave a videotaped interview in which she made sexual assault allegations against Cosby. The interview was conducted for an exposé on the lives of Playboy models, which was never published.
After the allegations resurfaced in 2014, Wendy Williams recalled that during her radio show in 1990, she referred to sexual assault allegations against Cosby that had been published in the National Enquirer tabloid. Williams said Cosby called her boss in the middle of the broadcast demanding that Williams be fired.
Later allegations and investigations (2000–2006): On February 1, 2000, according to a statement provided by Detective Jose McCallion of the New York County District Attorney’s Special Victims Bureau, Lachele Covington, who was 20 years old at the time, filed a criminal complaint against Cosby alleging that on January 28, 2000, at his Manhattan townhouse, he had tried to put her hands down his pants and then exposed himself. Covington also alleged that Cosby grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hands down her pants. Cosby was questioned and insisted “it was not true.” The New York City Police Department (NYPD) referred her complaint to the D.A., but they declined to prosecute.
In January 2004, Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee, accused Cosby of drugging and fondling her; however, in February 2005, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania’s District Attorney said there would be no charges due to insufficient credible and admissible evidence. Constand then filed a civil claim in March 2005, with thirteen women as potential witnesses if the case went to court. Cosby settled out of court for an undisclosed amount in November 2006. After learning that charges were not pursued in the Constand case, California lawyer Tamara Lucier Green, the only publicly named woman in the prior case, came forward with allegations in February 2005 that Cosby had drugged and assaulted her in the 1970s. Cosby’s lawyer said Cosby did not know her and that the events did not happen.
In a July 2005 Philadelphia Daily News interview, Beth Ferrier, one of the anonymous “Jane Doe” witnesses in the Constand case, alleged that in 1984 Cosby had drugged her coffee and she awoke with her clothes partially removed. In 2005, Shawn Upshaw Brown, a woman with whom Cosby admitted to having an extramarital affair in the 1970s, claimed in the National Enquirer that Cosby drugged and raped her the last time the two were together sexually. Brown is the mother of Autumn Jackson, who claims to be Cosby’s illegitimate daughter. Jackson was convicted in 1997 of extortion after she threatened to make the claims public in the Globe tabloid. In 2015, Brown went into more detail with her renewed allegations in an interview.
On June 9, 2006, Philadelphia magazine published an article by Robert Huber which gave graphic detail about Constand’s allegations, and the similar stories told by Green and Ferrer about how they stated that they too were drugged and sexually assaulted. With these severe allegations against Cosby, Huber wrote:
“His lawyers have gotten it pushed to the back burner, down to a simmer, and maybe it will amount to nothing, yet there is also the possibility that it will bubble up to destroy him.”
The article was titled Dr. Huxtable & Mr. Hyde, in allusion to both Cosby’s character Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show and to a person having two starkly distinct “Jekyll and Hyde” personalities. This article also presented Barbara Bowman, who had come forward after having read about Constand’s story, saying she could not sit in silence any longer. Details of Bowman’s similar drug and sexual assault allegations were published in the magazine’s November 1, 2006, issue. Bowman reported two incidents that happened around early 1986, wherein she was eighteen years old and working as an aspiring model and actress after her agent had introduced her to Cosby and he had become her good friend and mentor, saying that she escaped his attacks, returned home to Denver and Cosby thereafter subverted her career.
In October 16, 2014, as part of a comedy routine in Philadelphia, Hannibal Buress addressed Cosby’s legacy of “talking down” to young black men about their mode of dress and lifestyle. Buress criticized the actor’s public moralizing by saying:
“Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby, so that kind of brings you down a couple notches.”
The audience appeared to respond to Buress’s accusation as an incredulous joke, then he encouraged everyone to search “Bill Cosby rape” on Google when they got home. Buress had been using the same Cosby routine for the previous six months with little response, but word of the October performance spread rapidly after being posted on Philadelphia magazine’s website. Media coverage intensified, with numerous publications tackling the question of how Cosby had managed to maintain, as Buress called it in his routine, a “teflon image” despite more than a decade of public sexual abuse accusations.
Shortly afterward, USA Today reported that either Cosby or his representative posted a request for Twitter followers to “Go ahead. Meme me!” The tweet was deleted after a large number of the submitted memes made reference to the accusations against Cosby.
There were several other accusations which we meet not be able to outrightly detail in this post, but can be seen at Bill Cosby Wikipedia page here.
- Bill Cosby Trial, convictions, and overturned convictions.
Most of the allegations fall outside of the statutes of limitations for criminal prosecution, except for Andrea Constand’s allegations. Numerous civil lawsuits have been brought against him. As of November 2015, eight related civil suits were active against Cosby. High-profile attorney Gloria Allred was representing 33 of the alleged victims. In July 2015, some of the court records from Andrea Constand’s 2005 civil suit against Cosby were unsealed and released to the public. The full transcript of his deposition was also released to the media by a court reporting service. In his testimony, Cosby admitted to casual sex, involving the recreational use of the sedative methaqualone (Quaalude), with a series of young women, and acknowledged that his dispensing the prescription drug was illegal.
Based on incidents in January 2004, Cosby was found guilty on April 26, 2018, of three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, after a jury trial. An initial trial on the charges had ended in mistrial, when the jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict. On September 25, 2018, he was sentenced to three to ten years in state prison and a $25,000 fine plus court costs of both trials. After a brief period in the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, Cosby was moved to a state prison, SCI Phoenix in Skippack Township, Pennsylvania, on September 25, 2018, where he was confined to a single cell. On January 28, 2019, Cosby was moved from administrative segregation into the general population. On December 10, 2019, the verdict was upheld by the Pennsylvania Superior Court on the initial level of appeal.
On June 23, 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to hear a further level of appeal of Cosby’s sexual assault conviction based on questions about testimony from a witness being “more prejudicial than probative”. The court would hear his appeal on arguments of whether it was proper for the judge to allow five prosecution witnesses to testify in the case about prior, unrelated instances of sexual assault, and to permit the jury to learn of a deposition in which Cosby admitted to giving Quaaludes to other women in the past to facilitate sexual encounters. The court also agreed to review whether Cosby’s rights were violated by being prosecuted in the Constand matter, after a former prosecutor had informed Cosby that he would not be prosecuted for the assault, resulting in Cosby’s agreeing to testify without claiming his self-incrimination privilege in his accuser’s civil lawsuit.
On June 30, 2021, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Cosby’s conviction, citing violations of his due process rights. According to Justice David Wecht,
“Even though society has a strong interest in prosecuting crimes, it has an even stronger interest in ensuring that the constitutional rights of the people are vindicated.”
The following situation was cited: previously in February 2005, District Attorney Bruce Castor declared in a press release that due to insufficient evidence rendering a conviction “unattainable”, he “declines to authorize the filing of criminal charges” against Cosby regarding allegations Andrea Constand made against him. Castor said he did so to compel Cosby to testify in a civil lawsuit, brought by Constand, without the right to not incriminate himself as accorded by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, so that Constand could win damages from Cosby. Cosby testified that he had given Constand Benadryl, and that he had separately provided Quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with. Cosby settled the civil lawsuit by paying $3.38 million. As six of the seven Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices interpreted Castor’s 2005 press release as a promise not to prosecute Cosby, leading to Cosby providing testimony in his civil lawsuit that was later used as key evidence in his criminal trial, resulting in him being convicted of assaulting Constand, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded that Cosby’s due process rights were violated. The court further barred prosecution of Cosby “on these particular charges”.
More information about Bill Cosby biography can be found in the Wikipedia page.