1. Bill Cosby released several stand-up comedy albums and was a popular spokesperson in advertising for decades.
104 Facts About Bill Cosby
1. 2.
Bill Cosby was well known in the United States for his fatherly image and gained a reputation as "America's Dad".
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Bill Cosby began his career as a stand-up comic at the Hungry I nightclub in San Francisco in 1961, and primarily performed observational comedy in a conversational style.
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Bill Cosby released numerous standup specials starting with Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow.
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Bill Cosby still holds the record for winning the most Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album, with seven wins.
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Bill Cosby's acting career began with a starring role in the NBC secret-agent show I Spy, which broke new ground for African Americans when he made history by winning three Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Actor in a Drama Series, becoming the first black actor to do so.
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Bill Cosby produced and starred in a series of television sitcoms such as The Bill Cosby Show, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and The Cosby Show as well as its spin-off A Different World, The Cosby Mysteries, and Cosby.
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Reruns of The Bill Cosby Show and other programs featuring Bill Cosby were pulled from syndication.
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Bill Cosby was imprisoned until the conviction was vacated in June 2021 by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on the basis of Cosby's 5th Amendment and 14th Amendment due process rights having been violated.
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Bill Cosby is one of four sons of Anna Pearl, a maid, and William Henry Cosby Sr.
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Bill Cosby 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.
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Bill Cosby 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.
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Bill Cosby transferred to Germantown High School but failed the tenth grade.
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In 1956, Bill Cosby enlisted in the Navy and 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.
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Bill Cosby worked in physical therapy with Navy and Marine Corps personnel who were injured during the Korean War.
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Bill Cosby served until 1960 and became a petty officer 3rd class.
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Bill Cosby earned his high school equivalency diploma through correspondence courses and was awarded a track-and-field scholarship to Temple University in 1961.
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Bill Cosby began bartending at a Philadelphia club, where he earned bigger tips by making the customers laugh.
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Bill Cosby then began performing on stage and left his university studies to pursue a career in comedy.
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Bill Cosby then began graduate work at UMass Amherst, receiving his Master of Arts degree in 1972.
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Bill Cosby's 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.
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Bill Cosby lined up stand-up jobs at clubs in Philadelphia and then in New York City, where he appeared at The Gaslight Cafe beginning in 1961.
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Bill Cosby booked dates in cities such as Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington, DC In the summer of 1963, he received national exposure on NBC's The Tonight Show.
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Records which, in 1964, released his debut LP, Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow.
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Bill Cosby's last show of the "Far from Finished" tour was performed at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta on May 2,2015.
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Bill Cosby's last known standup performance prior to his conviction was held at the LaRose Jazz Club in Philadelphia on January 23,2018.
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In 1965, Bill Cosby was cast alongside Robert Culp in the I Spy espionage adventure series on NBC.
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Bill Cosby began to dabble in singing, recording Silver Throat: Bill Cosby Sings in 1967.
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In June 1968, Billboard magazine reported that Cosby had turned down a five-year, $3.5million contract renewal offer and would leave the label in August that year to record for his own record label.
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In July 1968, Bill Cosby narrated Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed, a CBS documentary addressing the representation of black people in popular culture.
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Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson said it was one of "the rare exceptions when Bill Cosby took off the gloves and blinders, to discuss race in public with candor and discernment".
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In 1969, he returned with another series, The Bill Cosby Show, a situation comedy that ran for two seasons.
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Bill Cosby played a physical education teacher at a Los Angeles high school.
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Bill Cosby was lauded for using African American performers such as Lillian Randolph, Moms Mabley, and Rex Ingram as characters.
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Bill Cosby resumed his formal education in 1971; he began graduate work at UMass Amherst.
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Bill Cosby was a regular on children's public television programs starting in the 1970s, hosting the "Picture Pages" segments that lasted into the early 1980s.
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Plots were often based on ideas that Bill Cosby suggested while in meetings with the writing staff.
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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.
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In 1987, Bill Cosby attempted to return to film with the spy spoof Leonard Part 6.
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Later in the 1980s, Bill Cosby served as an advisor to the Los Angeles Student Film Institute.
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Also in 1996, he started up a new show for CBS, Bill Cosby, again co-starring Phylicia Rashad, his onscreen wife on The Bill Cosby Show.
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Bill Cosby was hired by CBS to be the official spokesman of its Detroit affiliate WWJ-TV during an advertising campaign from 1995 to 1998.
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Bill Cosby hosted a CBS special, Kids Say the Darndest Things, on February 6,1995, which was followed after as a full-season show, with Bill Cosby as host, from January 9,1998, to June 23,2000.
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In 2001, Bill 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.
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In May 2007, Bill Cosby spoke at the commencement of High Point University.
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Bill Cosby was one of the first black people to appear in the United States as an advertising spokesperson.
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Bill Cosby was known for his appeal to white consumers in the second half of the 20th century, in an industry seen as slow to accept diversity.
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Bill Cosby's agent approached them in 1965, before the debut of I Spy, but after several appearances on the late-night talk program The Tonight Show, a signifier of success in American comedy.
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In 1974, Bill Cosby began promoting Jell-O pudding for General Foods.
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Bill Cosby said comedian Jack Benny, whose program the brand sponsored, was the only previous spokesman for Jell-O, but Kate Smith, Lucille Ball, and Andy Griffith have pitched the brand.
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Bill Cosby was engaged to promote the flagging Jell-O gelatin product line in the mid-1980s, when General Foods introduced a holdable Jell-O product called "Jigglers".
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Bill Cosby appeared in commercials for Coca-Cola's 1979 campaign, "Have a Coke and a Smile," and made a guest appearance at the Great Get-Together, a major bottlers' convention held that year.
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Bill Cosby returned as Coca-Cola's spokesperson in its 1982 "Coke Is It" campaign, a series of commercials mocking the Pepsi Challenge.
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Bill Cosby continued to be a Jell-O spokesman through the 1990s.
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Bill Cosby was present for the lighting of the brand's first billboard in New York's Times Square in 1998.
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Bill Cosby distributed 120,000 copies of his picture book series, Little Bill, into American public libraries.
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Bill Cosby appeared at the Utah State Senate in 2001 to designate Jell-O the official state snack, and made a promotional visit to the Jell-O Gallery in 2004.
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In 2010, Bill Cosby returned to Jell-O as executive producer for the company's "Hello Jell-O" campaign.
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Williams said Bill Cosby called her boss in the middle of the broadcast demanding that Williams be fired.
60.
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 Bill 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.
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Covington alleged that Bill Cosby grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hands down her pants.
62.
In January 2004, Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee, accused Bill 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.
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Bill Cosby settled out of court for an undisclosed amount in November 2006.
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Bill Cosby's lawyer said Bill Cosby did not know her and that the events did not happen.
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Charlotte Laws wrote a November 2014 article published by Salon accusing Bill Cosby of assaulting a friend of hers, with whom she subsequently had lost contact.
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Bill Cosby got away with it because he was hiding behind the image of Cliff Huxtable.
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Bill Cosby has repeatedly denied the allegations and maintained his innocence.
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Reruns of The Bill Cosby Show and other shows featuring Bill Cosby have been pulled from syndication by many organizations.
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In July 2015, some of the court records from Andrea Constand's 2005 civil suit against Bill Cosby were unsealed and released to the public.
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On January 28,2019, Bill Cosby was moved from administrative segregation into the general population.
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On June 30,2021, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned Bill Cosby's conviction, citing violations of his due process rights.
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Castor said he did so to compel Bill 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 Bill Cosby.
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Bill Cosby was released from prison on the same day that his conviction was overturned.
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Bill Cosby had served nearly three years before Pennsylvania's Supreme Court overturned his conviction.
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Bill Cosby's attorney filed a response in late January 2022, urging the Supreme Court to decline review.
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Bill Cosby created the whole idea of taking a quote-unquote 'comic' and developing a TV show just from a persona that you see on stage.
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Joan Tarshis, who had accused Bill Cosby of raping her, within a Salon.
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Bill Cosby wants our nation to be what it proclaims itself to be: a democracy.
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Bill Cosby has been married to the former Camille Hanks since January 25,1964.
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Bill Cosby hosted the Los Angeles Playboy Jazz Festival from 1979 to 2012.
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Bill Cosby has become an active member of The Jazz Foundation of America.
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Bill Cosby is a supporter of his alma mater, Temple University, particularly its men's basketball team, the Temple Owls, whose games Bill Cosby frequently attended prior to his arrest.
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Bill Cosby is a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity; he was initiated in the fraternity's Beta Alpha Alpha graduate chapter in White Plains, New York, in 1988, and served briefly on the board of directors for the CDC Foundation.
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In 2016, Bill Cosby's attorneys reported that he is legally blind.
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Plans for the comeback included a comedy tour that would go from the United States to Canada to London, with Bill Cosby's team having contacted a number of promoters and comedy clubs about performance opportunities.
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Bill Cosby pleaded for African American families to educate their children on the many different aspects of American culture.
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Bill Cosby further described those who needed attention as blacks who "had forgotten the sacrifices of those in the Civil Rights Movement".
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Dyson suggested that Bill Cosby's comments "betray classist, elitist viewpoints rooted in generational warfare".
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Bill Cosby is trying to speak honestly and freely and lovingly, and I think that's a very positive thing.
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Bill Cosby stood his ground against criticism and affirmed that African American parents were continuing to fail to inculcate proper standards of moral behavior.
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Bill Cosby has been critical of conservative Republican politicians in regard to their views on socioeconomic and racial issues.
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Bill Cosby received various awards and numerous honorary degrees for his work as a standup comedian and actor in both television and film including five Primetime Emmy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, two Daytime Emmy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards.
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Bill Cosby received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W Bush in 2002, and the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award in 2003.
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Bill Cosby received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1977.
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On May 3,2018, Bill Cosby was expelled as a member of the Actors Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, along with Roman Polanski and Harvey Weinstein, due to their breach of the academy's standards of conduct.
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Bill Cosby had a starring role in the television secret-agent show I Spy opposite Robert Culp, and made history when Bill Cosby won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1966, making him the first African American to earn an Emmy Award for acting.
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Cosby's acting career continued as he starred in the sitcom The Bill Cosby Show, which ran for two seasons from 1969 to 1971.
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In 1972, using the Fat Albert character developed during his stand-up routines, Bill Cosby created, produced, and hosted the animated comedy television series Fat Albert and the Bill Cosby Kids which ran until 1985, centering on a group of young friends growing up in an urban area.
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Bill Cosby starred in the original cast of The Electric Company alongside Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman from 1971 to 1973.
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The sitcom highlighted the experiences and growth of an affluent African American family, and Bill Cosby gained a reputation as "America's Dad" for his portrayal of Cliff Huxtable on the sitcom.
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Bill Cosby produced the spin-off sitcom A Different World, which aired from 1987 to 1993.
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Bill Cosby then created and produced the animated children's program Little Bill.
103.
Bill Cosby released a number of albums, including live recordings of his stand-up comedy as well as studio albums of both vocal and instrumental music.
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Bill Cosby charted a number of times on the Billboard Hot 100, including the 1967 single "Little Ole Man " from his album Silver Throat: Bill Cosby Sings.