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Stand-up comic
- Cosby began his career as a stand-up comic at the hungry i nightclub in San Francisco during the 1960s. Throughout the decade, he released several standup comedy records which consecutively earned him the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album from 1965 to 1970.
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Cosby began his career as a stand-up comic at the hungry i nightclub in San Francisco during the 1960s. Throughout the decade, he released several standup comedy records which consecutively earned him the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album from 1965 to 1970.
Sep 25, 2018 · Mid-1960's. Sunni Welles. (Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images) Sunni Welles alleges at a March 27, 2015, news conference that Cosby raped her twice when she was an aspiring singer in the...
- Overview
- Early life and career
- TV success: Fat Albert and The Cosby Show
- Sexual assault allegations
Bill Cosby was a comedian, an actor, and a producer who played a major role in the development of a more positive portrayal of African Americans on television. He was accused by more than 50 women of sexual assault over many decades, and in 2018 he was convicted (later overturned) of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman.
Where was Bill Cosby born?
Bill Cosby was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 12, 1937.
Where did Bill Cosby go to college?
After Bill Cosby was discharged from the U.S. Navy, he received an athletic scholarship to Temple University in Philadelphia in 1961. He left Temple during his second year to pursue an entertainment career at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village in New York City.
Why was Bill Cosby sent to jail?
Cosby left high school without earning his diploma and joined the U.S. Navy in 1956. While enlisted he passed a high-school equivalency exam, and after his discharge he received an athletic scholarship to Temple University in Philadelphia in 1961. During his sophomore year he left Temple to entertain at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, New York City, where he began to establish a trademark comedic style characterized by a friendly and accessible stage persona and a relaxed, carefully timed delivery. During the 1960s Cosby toured major U.S. and Canadian cities, commanding ever-higher performance fees. In 1965 he made his first appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
Britannica Quiz
Cosby’s first acting assignment, in the espionage series I Spy (1965–68), made him the first Black actor to perform in a starring dramatic role on network television. His portrayal of a Black secret agent won him three Emmy Awards and helped to advance the status of African Americans on television. Cosby’s subsequent projects for television included the series of Bill Cosby Specials (1968–71, 1975), the situation comedy The Bill Cosby Show (1969–71), the variety show The New Bill Cosby Show (1972–73), and the successful cartoon Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972–84, 1989). He appeared in numerous commercials and on children’s shows such as Sesame Street and Electric Company. He also made several feature films, which enjoyed limited success.
Cosby’s most-successful work was The Cosby Show, which appeared on NBC from 1984 to 1992 and was one of the most-popular situation comedies in television history. The Cosby Show depicted a stable, prosperous Black family—Cosby’s character was a doctor whose wife was a lawyer—and avoided racial stereotypes. The show had broad cross-cultural appeal and won several major awards. After the show ended, he starred in the series Cosby (1996–2000), in which his Cosby Show costar Phylicia Rashad again played his wife.
Allegations of past sexual assaults by Cosby gained increasing media coverage in the United States in the early 21st century. In 2005 he was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand the previous year; at the time of the alleged incident, she was working at Temple University. Later in 2005 District Attorney Bruce L. Castor, Jr., announced that he would not charge Cosby, citing insufficient evidence. The comedian then gave a deposition in a civil suit brought by Constand, and in 2006 he settled out of court, paying her more than $3 million. That case spurred a number of other women to go public with their own stories of drug-induced sexual assault by Cosby, and in February 2014 a series of media interviews with some of his alleged victims made headlines. Those allegations and a much-viewed video of an October performance by comedian Hannibal Buress in which he called Cosby a rapist prompted even more women to accuse Cosby of past sexual misconduct. While he had not faced charges related to the new accusations, his reputation was so damaged by them that both NBC and Netflix pulled planned Cosby projects in November 2014.
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In the following months the total number of women who accused Cosby of either attempting to drug them, drugging them, or drugging and raping them ballooned to more than 50. Cosby vehemently denied the accusations and publicly labeled some of his accusers as liars. He was subsequently sued by those women for defamation. In July 2015 court documents related to the 2005 civil suit against Cosby were unsealed, and it was revealed that he admitted at the time to having obtained prescription sedatives to give to women with whom he wanted to have sex.
In December 2015 a new district attorney in Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, charged Cosby with felony aggravated indecent assault for the 2004 incident involving Constand, just days before the statute of limitations was set to expire. In 2016 Cosby’s legal team sought to have the case thrown out, alleging that Castor had actually declined to file charges as part of a deal in which Cosby agreed not to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the civil trial. Although Castor later supported the defense’s claim, no written agreement existed, and Constand and her lawyers stated that they had no knowledge of such a deal. The criminal trial against Cosby was allowed to proceed, and it ultimately included his 2005 testimony. In 2017 the trial ended in a hung jury and a mistrial after six days of jury deliberation without a unanimous decision. A retrial began in April 2018, and that same month he was found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Constand. In September he received a sentence of 3 to 10 years in prison. Cosby appealed the verdict, and in June 2021 his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, which ruled that there was an enforceable agreement between Castor and Cosby. The court ordered the comedian’s release and barred a retrial.
Cosby’s legal issues continued, however. In 2014 Judy Huth had filed a civil suit against the comedian in California, alleging that he had sexually assaulted her in 1975, when she was 16 years old. (In that state the statute of limitations is extended for cases involving allegations of child molestation.) The trial began in 2022, and the jury ruled in Huth’s favour. Cosby was ordered to pay $500,000 in compensatory damages.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Cosby has been accused by over 60 women of rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and sexual harassment. The earliest incidents allegedly took place in the mid-1960s.
AllegedvictimAlleged OffenseYearLocationBarbara Bowman1986New York City;Atlantic City, New JerseyAttempted assault1980sNew York CitySexual Assault1971New York CityKristina RuehliRape1965Los Angeles, CaliforniaRise to Comedy Stardom. Bill Cosby’s ascent to comedy stardom in the early 1960s was nothing short of remarkable. Armed with a unique comedic style that emphasized clean, relatable humor and captivating storytelling, Cosby quickly set himself apart from his contemporaries in the world of stand-up comedy.
Sep 25, 2018 · STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images. His comedy career began in the early 1960s. In 1963, he released his first comedy album. Hulton Archive/Getty Images. He married Camille Hanks in 1964. The couple had...
Jan 20, 2022 · In the 1960s, when Martin Luther King Jr. was advocating for a world where Black and white could live together, Cosby was doing his part to make that a reality by...
