William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr., Ed.D. (born July 12 1937) is an American comedian, actor, television producer, activist, and luminary. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a vanguard role in the 1960s action show I Spy. He later starred in his own series, The Bill Cosby Show, in the late 1960s. He was one of the major characters on the children's television show The Electric Company for its first two seasons, and created the humorous educational cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, about a group of young friends growing up in the city. Cosby also acted in numerous films, although none has received the acclaim of his television work.

During the 1980s, Cosby produced and starred in what is considered one of the decade's defining sitcoms, The Cosby Show, which aired from 1984 to 1992. The sitcom featured an upper-middle class African-American family without resorting to the kinds of stereotypes previously seen among African-Americans in prime-time television. While some argued that The Cosby Show ignored the issues of racial inequity still prevalent in society, many agreed that it showcased positive role models.

Cosby was active in showbusiness in the 1990s, starring in Cosby, which first aired in 1996, and hosting Kids Say the Darndest Things, which began in 1998, as well as making more movies. He has also continued appearing on the stand-up circuit. His material consists mainly of anecdotal tales, often dealing with his upbringing and raising his own family, and he is known for having a clean, family-friendly routine.

His good-natured, fatherly image has made him a popular personality and earned him the nickname of "America's Dad", and he has also been a sought-after spokesman for products like Jello Pudding, and the defunct retail chain Service Merchandise.

Cosby was the captain of the baseball and track & field teams at Mary Channing Wister Elementary School in Philadelphia, as well as the class president. Early on, though, teachers noted his propensity for clowning around rather than studying. At Fitz-Simmons Junior High, Cosby 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, not to mention his dedication to joking in class, made it hard for him. In addition, Cosby 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. cosby/bio/BILL_COSBY.pdf" target="_blank">William Morris Agency, retrieved May 31 2006 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 and at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

Cosby is a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity.

While serving in the Navy as a Hospital Corpsman for four years, Cosby worked in physical therapy with some seriously injured Korean War casualties, which helped him discover what was important to him. He immediately realized the need for an education, and finished his equivalency diploma via correspondence courses. id=3713&source_type=A" target="_blank">Kennedy Center, retrieved May 31, 2006 He then won a track and field scholarship to Philadelphia's _Temple University in 1961, blank">ESPER, retrieved May 31, 2006 and studied physical education while running track and playing fullback on the _football team. However, he had continued to hone his talent for humor, joking with fellow enlistees in the service and then with college friends. When he began tending bar 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. blank">Verve Records, retrieved May 31, 2006

Cosby left Temple as a sophomore to pursue a career in comedy. His parents were not pleased, but 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 was discovered by actor Carl Reiner, who enjoyed Cosby's brand of humor. Later, the university would grant him his bachelor's degree on the basis of "life experience." Cosby's career took off quickly, and he lined up dates in Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington DC, among others. He received national exposure on NBC's Tonight Show in the summer of 1963 and released Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow ... Right!, the first of a series of popular comedy albums in 1964. He was able to return to finish his BA from Temple and received an MA and Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts in 1972 and 1977, respectively. Cosby's Ed.D dissertation was 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.

While many comics were using the growing freedom of that decade to explore controversial, sometimes risqué material, Cosby was making his reputation with humorous recollections of his childhood. Many Americans wondered about the absence of race as a topic in Cosby's stories. As Cosby's 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..... So I figure I'm doing as much for good race relations as the next guy."

The Bill Cosby Show was an American situation comedy that aired for two seasons on NBC from 1969 until 1971. There were 52 episodes made in the series. It marked Cosby's first solo foray in television, after his co-starring role in I Spy.

In this light-hearted comedy, Bill Cosby played the role of Chet Kincaid, physical education teacher at a Los Angeles high school, bachelor, and average cool guy trying to earn a living, helping people out along the way. Many of the episodes involved Kincaid in various situations at the high school with his students and fellow teachers. In some episodes, Kincaid was asked to substitute, and fill in as an algebra or English teacher.

Cosby was not afraid to have Kincaid comically endure the results of some questionable decisions. In one episode, Kincaid was the Driver's Education instructor trying to teach a nervous student how to drive. Leaving the student at the wheel, he went to get safety cones from the car's trunk, to lay out a course for the lesson. The student accidentally backed up, dumping Kincaid into the trunk and driving around the parking lot backwards with Kincaid's legs dangling from the car.

In another episode, Kincaid is filming his football team's practice for the first time. Standing on the field, camera to his eye, he calls for his team to run a running 'sweep' play; the team questions the request, but Kincaid insists. The play he has called for sends the ball-carrier directly through where Kincaid is standing, and we see the result as the camera sees it—the players charging into view, a sudden tilt of the lens upward to view only sky, and then the helmeted heads of the concerned team circling around their trampled coach.

Other episodes involved younger children, and some episodes involved family and adult characters. Different guest stars also appeared in various episodes throughout the series. One memorable show featured veteran African-American comedians Mantan Moreland and Moms Mabley as Kincaid's married—and feuding—uncle and aunt.

The show's theme song, "Hikky Burr," was written by Cosby and Quincy Jones, with Cosby providing the vocals. A new version of the theme was recorded for later seasons.

The show did not use a laugh track, which at the time was unique for a half-hour situation comedy. (Other humorous shows had begun airing without laugh tracks, but these fell more under the emerging TV genre of comedy-drama than did this show.) The Bill Cosby Show was not the average, laugh-out-loud type of sitcom. The episodes were humorous, but the show emphasized intelligent character studies and plausible, real-life situations. The plot of many episodes centered on a lesson in life learned, which was explained in the classic Cosby style.

In 1984, Cosby returned to NBC with a similarly named sitcom entitled The Cosby Show. The popularity of that sitcom led to reruns of this one being picked up on the CBN Cable Network (now known as ABC Family).