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Bill Cosby Filmography
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Bill Cosby: Career
Cosby was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He joined the United States Navy in tenth grade and completed high school through correspondence courses. 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, and was discovered by Sheldon Leonard, who landed Cosby a break-out television role in I Spy (1965). Cosby won two Emmy Awards for his portrayal of an undercover CIA agent; it was also the first time an African-American actor starred in a weekly dramatic television series.
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.
Bill Cosby was a regular on the Captain Kangaroo show in the 1980s, presenting the "Picture Pages" segment which was later syndicated on its own.
He won several Grammy awards for comedy albums, had a top forty song ("Little Old Man") in 1969, and sang on a number of 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.
A colorful work of Cosby was his portrayal as a bigot in
Bill Cosby on Prejudice (1971).
Cosby earned a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts in 1977: his thesis 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 Sandra as a Princeton-educated lawyer is meant to show how good parenting and education of children leads to success. The Cosby Show also served as a vehicle to raise issues of drugs, illiteracy, teen pregnancy, and gang violence. He is now a leading educational philanthropist.
He hosted the television program, "Kids Say the Darndest Things", which aired from 1996 through 2002.
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 Mikail Markhasev was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with the attempted robbery and shooting of Ennis.
Cosby received Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.
In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
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Political views >>
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Latest Film News
Latest news on Bill Cosby
IssuesMcLaughlin: Obama "fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside"
On the edition of the syndicated program The McLaughlin Group that
aired the weekend of July 11-13, while
discussing recent comments
made by the Rev. Jesse Jackson about Sen. Barack Obama, host John McLaughlin said: "Question: Does
it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the
stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on
the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights
struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?"
Responding to McLaughlin's
question, panelist and Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Peter Beinart
said: "Who knows what Jesse Jackson is thinking? But that's a
completely unfair depiction of Barack Obama." Later in the discussion,
Michelle Bernard, president of the Independent Women's Forum, said:
"I want to go back to the point you made about whether or not Obama is an Oreo, because if Barack
Obama is an Oreo, then every member of this generation of African-Americans is
an Oreo, because we stand on the shoulders of the people who fought for our
rights, and all of us say that you cannot blame 'the man' or white
racism for everything that ails the black community."
From the July 11-13 edition of The McLaughlin Group:
McLAUGHLIN:
OK, let's nail this thing down, and here's a sample of what Jackson apparently sees as Obama disparaging
the black community.
OBAMA
[video clip]: If we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that too many
fathers are also missing. Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL.
Missing from too many lives and too many homes. They've abandoned their
responsibilities. They're acting like boys instead of men. And the
foundations of our family have suffered because of it. You and I know this is
true everywhere, but nowhere is it more true than in the African-American
community.
McLAUGHLIN:
Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who
fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a
white on the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil
rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for? Peter
Beinart.
BEINART:
Who knows what Jesse Jackson is thinking? But that's a completely unfair
depiction of Barack Obama, who -- the genius of Barack Obama is that he moves
seamlessly between the African-American world and the white world in a way that
even Bill Clinton couldn't possibly match. And the tragedy of this experience is that you know who's
spoken very eloquently for many, many years about personal responsibility in
the black community? Jesse Jackson. He of all people should recognize, in fact,
that what Barack Obama is saying is not contrary to the message of the civil
rights movement, it is keeping with that message.
McLAUGHLIN:
Now, let's nail it down a little bit more, for the sake of Jackson. The question is
this: Jackson's
point of contention is this -- this is the exit question. The point of
contention is that instead of Obama solely lecturing African-Americans on
parental duty, particularly fathers, he should also give equal attention to the
large, and many believe prejudicial, incarceration rate for blacks, their lack
of economic opportunities, and other public policy issues that limit choices for black
males. Why doesn't Obama hit that as hard as he hits individual parental
responsibility? That's what Jackson
is complaining about.
BEINART:
Barack Obama doesn't talk about jobs and health care? He talks about it
all the time. If you wanted to talk about the fact there were too many people
in prison, then you're asking him to do something that would lose him the
election.
McLAUGHLIN:
Oh. Oh. Oh.
BEINART:
That is politically -- that no serious political strategist -- he's a man trying
to win the presidency, John.
McLAUGHLIN:
He's exactly what Jeremiah Wright says he is: He will do whatever is
necessary to win.
BEINART:
He's a practical politician --
ELEANOR
CLIFT (Newsweek contributing
editor): This is a generational shift. Jesse Jackson Jr. put out a statement
basically saying, "Dad, time to leave the stage." There is a disconnect in terms
of style and tactics from the older civil rights generation to the generation
that Obama is from and that he's trying to attract.
McLAUGHLIN:
Does Jackson
have a legitimate point?
PAT
BUCHANAN (MSNBC political analyst): No, he doesn't.
McLAUGHLIN:
Why?
BUCHANAN:
I'll tell you why, John -- here's why. What Barack Obama is saying
is a message that needs to be heard. It's the Bill Cosby message. It is,
look, this is our responsibility, these are our families. The white society is
not responsible for our kids dropping out of schools or using drugs or going on
welfare. We are. What Jesse Jackson says is the white community's
responsible and they've got to solve our problems.
McLAUGHLIN:
Isn't this -- isn't this the oddity of the century where Barack Obama is
a conservative and Jesse Jackson is a liberal? Isn't that an oddity?
BUCHANAN:
Well, Jesse Jackson used to talk conservatively --
BERNARD:
It is an oddity, but I want to go back to the point you made about whether or not Obama is an Oreo, because if
Barack Obama is an Oreo, then every member of this generation of
African-Americans is an Oreo, because we stand on the shoulders of the people
who fought for our rights, and all of us say that you cannot blame "the
man" or white racism for everything that ails the black community.
McLAUGHLIN:
But what about changing public policy where it needs to be changed?
BUCHANAN:
Public policy isn't the problem.
[crosstalk]
BERNARD:
If I can finish my point. What Jesse Jackson came out and said when he gave his
quote-unquote apology the next day was, Barack Obama should be demanding more
government programs for African-Americans, and that's wrong.
CLIFT:
As Jack White, a former Time
magazine writer, says, that it's disorienting for the black community when "the man" might be the guy in the
Oval Office. And so everybody is making some adjustments here. But Barack Obama is
handling his role beautifully, and that is to relate to America as a broad
population.
Published: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:42:22 GMT - Source: Mediamatters.Org - Read the articleLiteratureCosby sweaters for auction
Now is your chance to spur the comeback of Cosby sweaters with an authentic Bill Cosby sweater that he sported on The Cosby Show in the 1980s. Three handsome styles are currently up for auction on eBay with proceeds going to the Hello Friend/Ennis William Cosby Foundation. Starting bid is $5000. Link (Thanks, Heather Sparks!)...
Published: Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:06:43 GMT - Source: Boingboing.Net - Read the articleEntertainmentCosby sweaters in charity auction
Sweaters worn by US comedian Bill Cosby on The Cosby Show are to be auctioned online to raise money for charity.
Published: Fri, 30 May 2008 15:29:51 GMT - Source: News.Bbc.Co.Uk - Read the article
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