Bill Cosby

• 1. Introduction

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  Bill Cosby holds the record for the most Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album, with seven wins. To a vast television audience, he was also Cliff Huxtable, the father at the center of The Cosby Show. That role earned him a reputation as "America's Dad". Few entertainers have ever stood so high in American public life. Few have lost that standing so publicly.

  Over several decades, Cosby worked as a stand-up comic, an actor, a cartoon creator, a game-show and talk-show host, and a pitchman for household brands. Then dozens of women stepped forward with accusations, and the celebrated father figure became a defendant in court.

  How did a stand-up comic come to occupy that place in American life? What did he change about who could star on screen and sell products to a national audience? And how should anyone weigh his work now that his name carries a second meaning? The answers begin in Philadelphia, long before any camera arrived.

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• 2. Philadelphia Beginnings

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  William Henry Cosby Jr. was born on the 12th of July 1937 in Philadelphia, one of four sons. His mother, Anna Pearl, worked as a maid. His father, William Henry Cosby Sr., served as a mess steward in the U.S. Navy.

  At Mary Channing Wister Public School, young Cosby was class president and captain of both the baseball and track-and-field teams. Teachers noticed that he preferred joking around to studying, and he later called himself the class clown. At Central High School, a demanding college-preparatory magnet school, he ran track and played baseball, football, and basketball. He then moved to Germantown High School, where he failed the tenth grade.

  In 1956, Cosby enlisted in the Navy and trained as a hospital corpsman. His postings included Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, Naval Station Argentia in Newfoundland, and the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland. He worked in physical therapy with Navy and Marine Corps personnel who had been injured in the Korean War. He served until 1960 and left as a petty officer 3rd class.

  Back in civilian life, he earned a high school equivalency diploma through correspondence courses. In 1961, Temple University gave him a track-and-field scholarship. He studied physical education, ran track, and played fullback on the football team. Meanwhile he tended bar at a Philadelphia club, where he noticed that he earned bigger tips when he made customers laugh. Soon he was performing on stage himself, and he left his university studies behind.

  He did not leave the classroom for good, though. In 1971, Temple awarded him a bachelor's degree on the basis of what it called life experience. He started graduate work at UMass Amherst and received a master's degree in 1972. In 1976, while he was producing Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, he earned a Doctor of Education degree at the same university. His dissertation examined how that cartoon could serve as a teaching aid in elementary schools.

  The stage came first, however. In 1961, Cosby began his stand-up career at the Hungry I nightclub in San Francisco.

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• 3. Conversational Comedy

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  Starting in 1961, Cosby lined up stand-up jobs at clubs in Philadelphia and then in New York City, where he appeared at The Gaslight Cafe. He soon booked dates in Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. On the 28th of July 1964, he appeared on NBC's The Tonight Show and gained national exposure. A recording contract with Warner Bros. Records followed. His debut album, Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow...Right!, was the first of a long series of comedy albums.

  Spin magazine later ranked his album To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With number one on its list of "The 40 Greatest Comedy Albums of All Time". The magazine called it "stand-up comedy's masterpiece". His approach mixed observational comedy, satire, surreal humor, and deadpan delivery.

  In the 1960s, many comics were using the decade's growing freedom to explore controversial and sometimes risqué material. Cosby instead built his reputation on humorous recollections of his childhood. Many Americans wondered why race almost never appeared in his stories. He had to defend that choice regularly, and he once explained it this way: "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 concert film Bill Cosby: Himself. For most of it he sat in the center of the stage, rising only to underline a joke. Nearly every routine concerned the trials of parenting, often illustrated with anecdotes about his own family. Comedians and critics admired it, and some called it the greatest stand-up concert movie ever. Rolling Stone placed it at number 8 on its list of "The 25 Best Stand-Up Specials of All Time". Even so, the magazine admitted it was "damned near impossible to watch anything the tainted comedian has done" without thinking of the headlines that followed.

  On the 23rd of November 2013, Comedy Central aired Bill Cosby: Far from Finished, his first television stand-up special in 30 years. The last show of that tour took place on the 2nd of May 2015 at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta. Another special, Bill Cosby 77, was set for Netflix in 2014, but its release was canceled. His last known stand-up performance before his conviction took place at the LaRose Jazz Club in Philadelphia on the 23rd of January 2018. The cancellation came because of sexual assault allegations, some of which stretched back to the 1960s.

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• 4. Television Breakthroughs

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  In 1965, NBC cast Cosby opposite Robert Culp in the espionage series I Spy. It became the first weekly dramatic television series to feature an African American in a starring role. Cosby and network executives worried that some local affiliates would refuse to carry it. At the start of the 1965 season, four stations in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama declined the show. Viewers were drawn in by the exotic locations and the natural chemistry between the two stars, and I Spy finished among the twenty most-watched shows that year. In 1966, Cosby won the first of three consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. He was the first African American to earn an Emmy for acting. Accepting his third, he said: "Let the message be known to bigots and racists that they don't count!"

  During the series, Cosby kept performing stand-up and recorded half a dozen albums for Warner Bros. Records. In 1967 he recorded Silver Throat: Bill Cosby Sings. In June 1968, Billboard reported that he had turned down a five-year, $3.5 million renewal offer from the label. He planned to leave that August and record for his own label. That label was Tetragrammaton Records, part of the Campbell, Silver, Cosby Corporation, a Los Angeles production company. Cosby founded it with his manager Roy Silver and the filmmaker Bruce Post Campbell. The company produced films and records, including his television specials and the Fat Albert cartoon special and series.

  In July 1968, Cosby narrated the CBS documentary Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed, about how black people were portrayed in popular culture. Andy Rooney wrote the Emmy-winning script. Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson called it one of "the rare exceptions when Cosby took off the gloves and blinders, to discuss race in public with candor and discernment". The program proved popular and controversial enough to be rebroadcast less than a month later.

  The Bill Cosby Show arrived in 1969 and ran for two seasons. Cosby played a physical education teacher at a Los Angeles high school. Critics were only modestly impressed, but the show finished eleventh in the ratings in its first season. Cosby cast African American performers such as Lillian Randolph, Moms Mabley, and Rex Ingram. He also clashed with NBC by refusing to add a laugh track, because he believed viewers could find the humor for themselves.

  The 1970s brought a crowded schedule. For the PBS series The Electric Company, Cosby recorded segments that taught reading skills to young children. In 1972, a variety series, The New Bill Cosby Show, lasted only a season. More successful was the Saturday-morning cartoon Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, which he hosted and based on his own childhood. It ran from 1972 to 1979, then continued under new titles. In film, Cosby joined Sidney Poitier and other African American actors to make successful comedies as a counterweight to the violent blaxploitation films of the era. Those comedies were Uptown Saturday Night in 1974, Let's Do It Again in 1975, and A Piece of the Action in 1977. In 1976 he also starred in Mother, Jugs & Speed with Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel.

  His greatest television success came in September 1984, with the debut of The Cosby Show. Cosby co-produced the series, held creative control, and involved himself in every part of production. Many plots grew out of ideas he floated in meetings with the writers. Like the Huxtables, Cosby and his wife Camille were college-educated and financially successful, and they had five children. On screen he played an obstetrician. Much of the material in the pilot and first season came from Bill Cosby: Himself. Comedian Larry Wilmore said: "It's clear that the concert is the template for The Cosby Show." The sitcom debuted near the top of the ratings and earned five consecutive No. 1 ratings during its eight-season run. Cosby also produced the spin-off A Different World, which aired from 1987 to 1993.

  Not every project worked. In 1987, Cosby produced the spy spoof Leonard Part 6 and wrote its story. During production he realized it was not what he wanted, so he publicly denounced the film and warned audiences to stay away. After The Cosby Show ended in 1992, he revived the Groucho Marx game show You Bet Your Life for a season. In 1996, he returned to CBS in Cosby, again opposite Phylicia Rashad, as Hilton Lucas, an older man hunting for a new job after being downsized. Madeline Kahn played Rashad's business partner. Kids Say the Darndest Things began as a CBS special on the 6th of February 1995 and became a series that ran from January 1998 to June 2000. Cosby also created Little Bill, a preschool series drawn from his Philadelphia childhood, which debuted on Nickelodeon in 1999. In December 2004, the feature film Fat Albert reached theaters, with Cosby appearing as himself.

  The biggest sales pitch of his career, though, had started back in 1965, long before any of these shows, with a brand of cigars.

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• 5. Selling Pudding Pops

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  White Owl cigars gave Cosby his first advertising job in 1965. His agent approached the company after Cosby's appearances on The Tonight Show and before I Spy debuted. Cosby told his agent, Norman Brokaw of the William Morris Agency, that he liked the company's tagline, "We're going to get you." He later recalled that no commercials then showed a black person holding something or buying a product. In his words, "the absence of pictures, in retrospect, said a lot". Despite the stigma among advertisers about using a black spokesperson, sales of the cigars rose. An entry in the Ad Age Encyclopedia argued that audiences accepting Cosby and Robert Culp as equals on I Spy made it possible for advertisers to show black and white people together in commercials.

  In 1974, Cosby began promoting Jell-O pudding for General Foods. He said that the comedian Jack Benny, whose radio program the brand sponsored, had been its only previous spokesman. Kate Smith, Lucille Ball, and Andy Griffith had also pitched it. Cosby's early commercials were created at the Young & Rubicam agency by Curvin O'Reilly. They could not run on children's television, because celebrity endorsements were prohibited in advertising aimed at children. Sales grew right away after a long decline. In 1979, General Foods introduced Pudding Pops, its first frozen dessert, and with Cosby as spokesman it sold US$100 million in its first year. After the company added Gelatin Pops and frozen Fruit Bars, frozen dessert sales reached $300 million. In the mid-1980s, Cosby promoted a holdable gelatin snack called Jigglers, and sales rose seven percent in the first year.

  Coca-Cola hired him too. He appeared in its 1979 campaign, "Have a Coke and a Smile," and made a guest appearance that year at the Great Get-Together, a major bottlers' convention. In 1982 he returned for "Coke Is It," a series of commercials mocking the Pepsi Challenge. His other clients included Del Monte, Ford Motor Company, the American Red Cross, Texas Instruments, E. F. Hutton, Kodak, and the 1990 United States census. Studies in the 1980s found him the "most familiar" and "most persuasive" spokesperson. Cosby himself said that these contracts, more than his television series, were the main source of his wealth. In an industry slow to accept diversity, he was one of the first black people to appear in the United States as an advertising spokesperson, and he was known for his appeal to white consumers.

  His Jell-O partnership outlasted several changes of advertising agency and the 1989 merger of General Foods into Kraft. In 1998, he was present when the brand lit its first billboard in New York's Times Square. In 1999, his 25th year as spokesman, he made his last appearance in its advertising, and the company distributed 120,000 copies of his Little Bill picture books to American public libraries. He still returned for events. In 2001, he appeared at the Utah State Senate when it designated Jell-O the official state snack. In 2010, he came back as executive producer of the "Hello Jell-O" campaign, and the brand sponsored his weekly web show OBKB, a children's interview series similar to Kids Say the Darndest Things. By 2002, his time with Jell-O was considered the longest-standing celebrity endorsement in American advertising history. In 2011, the Advertising Hall of Fame gave him its President's Award for Contributions to Advertising.

  Cosby has not appeared in an advertising role since 2014, when his sexual assault allegations became widely publicized.

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• 6. Accusations Surface

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  The earliest accusation on record dates 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 his Beverly Hills home. She said she told her boyfriend at the time and told her daughter in the 1980s. In the early 1980s, Joan Tarshis told the freelance reporter John Milward about an alleged assault, but he did not write about it. In 1990, the radio host Wendy Williams referred on air to allegations that had been published in the National Enquirer. She recalled that Cosby phoned her boss in the middle of the broadcast and demanded that she be fired. In 1996, the former Playboy Playmate Victoria Valentino gave a videotaped interview making allegations against him. It was recorded for an exposé on the lives of Playboy models that was never published.

  On the 1st of February 2000, Lachele Covington, then 20 years old, filed a criminal complaint alleging sexual misconduct at his Manhattan townhouse four days earlier. Cosby was questioned and insisted "it was not true". Police referred the complaint to the district attorney, who declined to prosecute.

  In January 2004, Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee, accused Cosby of drugging and fondling her. In February 2005, the district attorney of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, announced there would be no charges because of insufficient credible and admissible evidence. Constand then filed a civil claim in March 2005, with thirteen women prepared as potential witnesses. After learning that no charges were filed, the California lawyer Tamara Lucier Green came forward in February 2005 with allegations that Cosby had drugged and assaulted her in the 1970s. His lawyer said Cosby did not know her and that the events never happened. In July 2005, Beth Ferrier, one of the anonymous Jane Doe witnesses, told the Philadelphia Daily News that Cosby had drugged her coffee in 1984. Cosby settled Constand's civil case out of court in November 2006 for an undisclosed amount.

  Philadelphia magazine kept the story alive. On the 9th of June 2006, it published Robert Huber's article "Dr. Huxtable & Mr. Hyde", which detailed Constand's allegations and the similar accounts from Green and Ferrier. Huber warned that Cosby's lawyers had pushed the matter "down to a simmer", but that it might "bubble up to destroy him". Barbara Bowman, who said she could no longer stay silent after reading Constand's story, also spoke out. She described two incidents in early 1986, when she was eighteen, and said Cosby later damaged her career.

  All the while, Cosby was speaking out as a moral critic. In May 2004, at a gathering for the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education at Constitution Hall in Washington, he criticized African Americans who put sports, fashion, and "acting hard" ahead of education, self-respect, and self-improvement. The remarks became known as the Pound Cake speech. He repeated the message at a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition meeting on the 1st of July, urging parents to teach their children better morals at a younger age. In 2005, Michael Eric Dyson answered with a book titled Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? He argued that Cosby overlooked deteriorating schools, stagnating wages, and chronic underemployment. Cornel West defended Cosby, saying he spoke "out of great compassion".

  On the 16th of October 2014, a decade after the Pound Cake speech, comedian Hannibal Buress turned that lecturing into a punchline. Performing in Philadelphia, Buress mocked Cosby for talking down to young black men about their clothes and lifestyle. Then he said: "Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby, so that kind of brings you down a couple notches." The audience seemed to take it as an incredulous joke, and Buress told everyone to search "Bill Cosby rape" on Google when they got home. He had used the same routine for six months with little response. This time, a recording posted on Philadelphia magazine's website spread rapidly. Publications asked how Cosby had kept what Buress called a "teflon image" through more than a decade of public accusations. Soon after, USA Today reported that Cosby or his representative had tweeted a request for followers to post memes of him. The tweet was deleted after many memes referenced the accusations.

  In November 2014, Joan Tarshis came forward again, and a stream of other women followed. They included the model Janice Dickinson, the actress Louisa Moritz, Carla Ferrigno, Therese Serignese, Valentino, Sarita Butterfield, Michelle Hurd, and eleven others. Their accounts covered the years 1965 to 2004. Charlotte Laws wrote in Salon about a friend she said Cosby assaulted. In Vanity Fair, the model Beverly Johnson said he drugged her during a 1986 audition. In January 2015, Cindra Ladd said he drugged and assaulted her in 1969. In May 2015, Lili Bernard said he assaulted her in the early 1990s. On the 27th of July 2015, New York magazine's cover showed 35 women in chairs, with one chair left empty. Eleven more women declined to be photographed. Vox noted that the stories spanned more than five decades and were remarkably similar, often involving a cup of coffee or an alcoholic drink that might have been spiked. On the 17th of September 2015, A&E broadcast Cosby: The Women Speak, with thirteen accusers interviewed. By the 24th of October, nearly sixty women had made claims.

  Cosby has repeatedly denied the allegations. In November 2014, he said of them: "I don't talk about it." In May 2015, he said: "I have been in this business 52 years and I've never seen anything like this." His attorney said Cosby "does not intend to dignify these allegations with any comment". Reruns of The Cosby Show and other programs were pulled from syndication by many organizations. Twenty-five colleges and universities rescinded honorary degrees. In July 2015, the group PAVE launched a WhiteHouse.gov petition asking President Barack Obama to revoke the Presidential Medal of Freedom that George W. Bush had given Cosby in July 2002. Obama answered a reporter: "There's no precedent for revoking a medal. We don't have that mechanism." He added that giving someone a drug without their knowledge and then having sex with that person without consent is rape.

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• 7. Courts and Verdicts

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  Almost all the accusations against Cosby fell outside the statutes of limitations for criminal charges, and Constand's was the exception. The women turned to civil courts instead, and the attorney Gloria Allred represented 33 of them. In one civil case, a judge justified unsealing documents by pointing to the "stark contrast between Bill Cosby, the public moralist and Bill Cosby, the subject of serious allegations concerning improper (and perhaps criminal) conduct". In July 2015, records from Constand's 2005 civil suit were unsealed, and the full transcript of Cosby's deposition was released. In that testimony, he admitted to casual sex with a series of young women involving the sedative methaqualone, known as Quaalude. He also acknowledged that his handing out of the prescription drug was illegal.

  On the 26th of April 2018, a jury found Cosby guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand. An earlier trial on the same charges had ended in a mistrial, because jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict. On the 25th of September 2018, he was sentenced to three to ten years in state prison and fined $25,000, plus the court costs of both trials. After a brief stay in the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, he was moved the same day to SCI Phoenix in Skippack Township, Pennsylvania, where he was held in a single cell. On the 28th of January 2019, he was moved from administrative segregation into the general population. On the 10th of December 2019, the Pennsylvania Superior Court upheld the verdict.

  On the 23rd of June 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to hear a further appeal. It would consider whether the trial judge was right to let five prosecution witnesses describe earlier, unrelated assaults. It would also consider whether the jury should have learned of the deposition in which Cosby said he had given Quaaludes to other women. A third question was whether his rights were violated when he was prosecuted after a former prosecutor had told him he would not be charged.

  On the 30th of June 2021, the court overturned the conviction, citing violations of Cosby's due process rights. Justice David Wecht wrote: "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 decision turned on a press release from February 2005. In it, District Attorney Bruce Castor declined to authorize charges against Cosby, saying a conviction was "unattainable". Castor said he did this to compel Cosby to testify in Constand's civil lawsuit without the protection of the Fifth Amendment, so that she could win damages. Cosby then testified that he had given Constand Benadryl and had separately provided Quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with. He settled the civil suit by paying $3.38 million. Six of the seven justices read Castor's release as a promise not to prosecute, and they concluded that the testimony it produced should not have been used in the criminal trial. The court also barred prosecution of Cosby on those particular charges. He walked out of prison the same day, after serving nearly three years. In November 2021, the district attorney asked the Supreme Court of the United States to review the decision. On the 7th of March 2022, that court declined.

  Cosby's legal troubles continued after his release. In 2014, Judy Huth had sued him in California, alleging that he sexually assaulted her in 1975, when she was 16. The trial began in 2022, and the jury ruled in her favor, ordering Cosby to pay $500,000 in compensatory damages. In 2023, Donna Motsinger filed a separate suit alleging that he drugged and sexually assaulted her in 1972. In a deposition, Cosby reportedly named Dr. Leroy Amar as the person who gave him the Quaaludes he used on Motsinger. In March 2026, Cosby was ordered to pay Motsinger $19.25 million.

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• 8. Legacy and Private Life

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  Before 2014, Jerry Seinfeld credited Cosby as an innovator in stand-up and as the person who made it possible for comics to break into sitcom television. Seinfeld said Cosby "created that", the idea of building a television show around the persona a comic shows on stage. Cosby's trophy shelf reflected that influence. He won five Primetime Emmy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, two Daytime Emmy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1977, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002, and the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award in 2003.

  In 2018, several of those honors were taken back. The Kennedy Center Honor he received in 1998 was rescinded, as was the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor he received in 2009. On the 3rd of May 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expelled him from its Actors Branch, along with Roman Polanski and Harvey Weinstein, for breaching its standards of conduct.

  Joan Tarshis, who accused Cosby of raping her, compared his damaged legacy to that of O. J. Simpson. She predicted that people would not remember him first as a great comedian. In 2015, Ebony magazine devoted a cover story to the allegations and to the question of whether Bill Cosby could be separated from Cliff Huxtable. Its cover showed the Huxtable family in a photograph with a cracked frame. In late 2018, several radio stations pulled the Christmas song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" amid complaints about its lyrics. Susan Loesser, daughter of its composer Frank Loesser, blamed Cosby for the backlash, saying he was "ruining it for everybody". The 2022 premiere of Law & Order's 21st season centered on the murder of an entertainer whose conviction had been overturned in a way that resembled Cosby's case. Also in 2022, W. Kamau Bell released the Showtime documentary We Need to Talk About Cosby, built from conversations with comedians, journalists, and survivors. Days before its premiere, a representative for Cosby issued a statement that said he "vehemently denies all allegations waged against him".

  Cosby has been married to Camille Hanks since the 25th of January 1964. They have five children: Erika, born in 1965, Erinn, born in 1966, Ennis, who lived from 1969 to 1997, Ensa, who lived from 1973 to 2018, and Evin, born in 1976. Ennis, their only son, was murdered on the 16th of January 1997 while changing a flat tire beside Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. Ensa died of renal disease on the 23rd of February 2018, while waiting for a kidney transplant. The couple have three grandchildren.

  Since 1967, Cosby and his wife have collected more than three hundred works of African-American art. A selection went on display in 2014 in an exhibit called "Conversations" at the National Museum of African Art, and the show drew controversy because of the allegations. His love of jazz ran just as deep. Known as a jazz drummer, he hosted the Los Angeles Playboy Jazz Festival from 1979 to 2012. He also played bass guitar alongside Jerry Lewis and Sammy Davis Jr. on Hugh Hefner's 1970s talk show. He joined the Jazz Foundation of America in 2004 and often hosted its annual benefit, A Great Night in Harlem, at the Apollo Theater. Before his arrest, he frequently attended games of the Temple Owls, the men's basketball team of his alma mater. In 2016, his attorneys reported that he was legally blind, and later interviews placed the loss of his eyesight in 2015.

  After his release from prison in 2021, Cosby was reported to be planning a comeback. The plans included a comedy tour from the United States to Canada and London, a five-part docuseries about his legacy and his time in prison, and a book. By September of that year, reports said he had put the comeback on hold because of continuing legal problems.

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