Bill Cosby
William Henry "Bill" Cosby Jr. is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. He was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is one of four sons born to Anna Pearl, a maid, and William Henry Cosby, Sr., who served as a sailor in the U.S. Navy. During much of Bill's early childhood, his father was away in the U.S. armed forces and spent several years fighting in World War II.
Bill was captain of the baseball and track and field teams at Mary Channing Wister Elementary School in Philadelphia, as well as the class president. Early on, teachers noted his propensity for clowning around rather than studying. At Fitz Simmons Junior High, Bill began acting in plays as well as continuing his devotion to playing sports. He went on to Central High School, an academically challenging magnet school, but his full schedule of playing football, basketball, baseball, and running track made it hard for him. In addition, Bill was working before and after school, selling produce, shining shoes, and stocking shelves at a supermarket to help out the family. He transferred to Germantown High School, but failed the tenth grade. Instead of repeating, he got a job as an apprentice at a shoe repair shop, which he liked, but could not see himself doing the rest of his life. Subsequently, he joined the Navy, serving at the Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, Naval Station Argentia, Newfoundland and at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.
While serving in the Navy as a Hospital Corpsman for four years, Bill worked in physical therapy with some seriously injured Korean War casualties,which helped him discover what was important to him. Then he immediately realized the need for an education, and finished his equivalency diploma via correspondence courses. He then won a track and field scholarship to Philadelphia's Temple University in 1961–62, and studied physical education while running track and playing fullback on the football team. Bill also joined the school's chapter of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.
He loved humor, and he called himself the class clown. Even as he progressed through his undergraduate studies, Cosby had continued to hone his talent for humor, joking with fellow enlistees in the service and then with college friends. When he began bar tending at the Cellar, a club in Philadelphia, to earn money, he became fully aware of his ability to make people laugh. He worked his customers and saw his tips increase, then ventured on to the stage.
Bill left Temple to pursue a career in comedy, though he would return to collegiate studies in the 1970s. He lined up gigs at clubs in Philadelphia and soon was off to New York City, where he appeared at The Gaslight Cafe starting in 1962. He lined up dates in Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. He received national exposure on NBC's The Tonight Show in the summer of 1963 which led to a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records, who released his debut LP Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow...Right!, the first of a series of popular comedy albums, in 1964.
While many comics were using the growing freedom of that decade to explore controversial, sometimes risqué, material, Bill was making his reputation with humorous recollections of his childhood. Many Americans wondered about the absence of race as a topic in Bill's stories. As his 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 1965, when he was cast alongside Robert Culp in the I Spy espionage adventure series, Bill became the first African-American co-star in a dramatic television series, and NBC became the first to present a series so cast. At first Bill 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. But the rest of the country was taken with the show's exotic locales and the authentic chemistry between the stars, and it became one of the ratings hits of that television season. I Spy finished among the twenty most-watched shows that year, and Bill would be honored with three consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.
During the run of the series, he continued to do stand-up comedy performances, and recorded a half-dozen record albums for Warners. He also began to dabble in singing, recording Silver Throat: Bill Cosby Sings in 1967, which provided him with a hit single with his recording of "Li'l Ole Man". He would record several more musical albums into the early 1970s, but he continued to record primarily stand-up comedy work.
He later starred in his own series, the situation comedy The Bill Cosby Show. He was one of the major characters on the children's television series The Electric Company for its first two seasons, and created the educational cartoon comedy series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, about a group of young friends growing up in the city. Bill has also acted in a number of films.
During the 1980s, Bill produced and starred in what is considered to be one of the decade's defining sitcoms, The Cosby Show, which aired eight seasons from 1984 to 1992. The sitcom highlighted the experiences and growth of an affluent African-American family. He also produced the spin-off sitcom A Different World, which became second to The Cosby Show in ratings. He starred in the sitcom Cosby from 1996 to 2000 and hosted Kids Say the Darndest Things for two seasons.
He has been a sought-after spokesman, and has endorsed a number of products, including Jell-O, Kodak film, Ford, Texas Instruments, and Coca-Cola, including New Coke. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included him in his book, the 100 Greatest African Americans.
In 1976, Bill earned a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Massachusetts. For his doctoral research, he wrote a dissertation entitled, "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".
Bill met his wife Camille Hanks Cosby while he was performing stand-up in Washington, D.C., in the early 1960s, and she was a student at the University of Maryland. They married on January 25, 1964, and had five children: daughters Erika Ranee, Erinn Chalene, Ensa Camille, and Evin Harrah, and son Ennis William. His son Ennis was shot dead while changing a flat tire on the side of Interstate 405 in Los Angeles on January 16, 1997. Bill maintains homes in Shelburne, Massachusetts, and Cheltenham, Pennsylvania.
Bill is well-known for his conservative socio-economic views and his humanitarian causes. But his relationship with God -- or lack thereof -- is an unknown. Please pray that the Lord will continue to draw Bill closer to Himself and if he doesn't have a relationship with Jesus that He would make that commitment.
- Heidi