The pop culture icon is a dying breed, thanks to an increasingly compartmentalized entertainment world. You might know who Sam Ronson is, but do your parents? Your little sister can name all of the “High School Musical” actors. But can you?
In the 1980s and ’90s there were actors, singers and comedians that everyone knew, regardless of your age, race or other demographics. People you and your parents welcomed into your living rooms every week.
People like Bill Cosby.
He’s an author, standup comedian and social activist, but Cosby is known to anyone that grew up between 1984 and 1992 as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, as real to many of us as members of our own families. As youngsters, we didn’t care that “The Cosby Show” was reviving the almost-dead sitcom genre. We didn’t care that the show depicted an upper-middle class African American family. Simply, it was a show that was OK to watch with your parents, presenting situations that were sometimes poignant but always funny. The preaching was kept to a minimum, but there was an underlying message of parents taking responsibility for their children — an important part of Cosby’s work today.
This year, “The Cosby Show” celebrated its 25th anniversary.
SITCOM SUCCESS
“When [NBC President] Brandon Tartikoff decided to put it on the air, I hoped to put across a message of parents taking the house back on television,” Cosby, 71, said during a lengthy phone interview with the Weekender. “I had seen so many shows, sitcoms, where the parents looked like absolute nincompoops, and the kids, at age 11, 12, 13, whatever, were in charge of the house, and that wasn’t what I was seeing in my home and other homes where parenting was going on. So I just wanted to stay on with numbers that would keep us on.”
Cosby, who will perform two shows at the F.M. Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre Saturday, April 25, said part of the plan with “The Cosby Show” was to appeal to children without being childish.
“The other thing that was interesting was how television also — when I say television, I mean the human beings running it — with advertising and then I believe media was moving to take over the 8 o’clock timeslot with 12-year-olds,” Cosby said. “Not a 12-year-old mentality or education, but with 12-year-olds and their personality wants, their hormonal, outside-of-the-home interests, and we came at a time when the public loved what we were doing, and ‘Family Ties’ followed us, so it was No. 1 and 2.”
Cosby noted that the success of his shows and similar shows — he mentioned “Family Ties” several times — did not spawn copycats. It instead led to a backlash.
“What they were doing was, the other networks were aiming at us and saying to the public, ‘These shows are not real,’” he said. “‘We will show you real behavior,’ and the real behavior they were showing was ‘Married With Children,’ then they brought Bart Simpson, which started out with some kid making all kinds of sounds, and when you study Bart Simpson, he probably would be a good case for some kid with a learning problem, and no one was detecting it, and he was acting through that.
“And then came ‘Roseanne,’ and that too was the antithesis. ‘This is the real.’ So you had this lady who talks this way and those people are going to be a real family, so they are aiming at us even though they are produced by my partners.”
Cosby decided to end “The Cosby Show” after the 1992 season.
“I said the eighth year is going to be the end of this,” Cosby said. “Not that I had run out of gas, but with the current family I thought that was it. We had said everything. I’ve said everything pertaining to the talent that is available.
“In that eight years, I was very, very happy. I love Phylicia Rashad [who played his wife] very much. Eight years, never one argument, never one moment where either one of us had to step back and take a deep breath.”
‘THE WAY I SEE IT’
While TV is where Cosby became an international household name, it is on the stage in front of a live audience where he got his start and where he still feels most at home.
“When I appear and that audience is there,” he said, “I am the sole writer, performer, director and editor. So there’s no one I can blame, but by the same token I can go at any pace, I can stop, I can move. And there’s nobody to think about — did I leave someone in the dust? That’s pure, the mind of Cosby, and what’s also very, very wonderful is I get to say it the way I see it and feel it.”
Forty-seven years into his standup career, Cosby still approaches each performance with an improvisational spirit. Asked what type of material he’ll do in Wilkes-Barre, he said, “I don’t know.”
“[Recently] I was in Durham, N.C.,” said Cosby. “I went out and I had a piece that I wanted to open with. My work is narrative, so I stay linear so I can jump off, come back, and at one point in the first 20 minutes I lit up about five different subjects and had to go back to address all of them, because each one, each subject that I started with a thought that came, and that’s the way I work, because I say something, and then the thought will come, and maybe that thought will be fresh or maybe it will be something that ties in, and then I will look at the audience, feeling ‘OK, let me stop here and explain this because I just established something, words or a word.’ And there may be words or things that I have never said. It just depends, because I leave things open, but I’m still traveling at a performance speed.”
HOT DOGGIN’ IT
Born in Philadelphia in 1937, Cosby earned a track scholarship to Temple University, where he also played football. He left Temple to pursue comedy.
In 1965, he became the first African American to star in a TV drama when he landed a lead role in “I Spy.” After a series called “The Bill Cosby Show,” Cosby went back to school, earning a master’s of arts from the University of Massachusetts despite never completing his bachelor’s degree studies.
Cosby then created, produced and hosted “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids,” an animated series that ran from 1972 to 1984.
After “The Cosby Show,” he returned in the ’90s with “The Cosby Mysteries,” “Cosby” (again alongside Rashad) and “Kids Say The Darndest Things.”
Earlier this month, the Kennedy Center announced Cosby had been selected to win this year’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He earned a Kennedy Center Honor in 1998 as well, and in 2002, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest honor for civilians.
He broke sales records with his books “Fatherhood” and “Time Flies.” He also wrote “Love and Marriage,” “Childhood,” “Congratulations! Now What?,” “Friends of a Feather: One of Life’s Little Fables,” “I Am What I Ate … and I’m Frightened!!!,” and most recently, “Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors.”
Known as a pitchman for Kodak and Jell-O, Cosby broke down another barrier when he became the first African American to be a major product spokesman.
One product he’s never officially endorsed but indulges in each time he visits Wilkes-Barre are hot dogs from Abe’s on South Main Street.
Cosby lowered his voice to a whisper when he was asked about Abe’s.
“Shh … Mrs. Cosby is watching,” he said. “I go in there and they lay out 250 hot dogs, and I go down the line, and I make a choice of two of them. And they’ll prepare them and put onions and a teaspoon of chili. In the dressing room, I’ll eat ’em and open up a bottle of Evian and a high-blood-pressure pill.”
Finishing his hot dog story with his wife of 45 years none the wiser, Cosby laughed mischievously.
It’s a slow, deliberate laugh, an infectious trademark that’s hearty and naughty at the same time.
It’s a laugh Cosby surely deserves, returning the favor after decades of drawing the same reaction from millions of audience members the world over.
w
“An Evening with Bill Cosby,” Saturday, April 25, 6 and 9 p.m. at F.M. Kirby Center, Public Square, Wilkes-Barre. Tickets: $35 and $49.50 at Kirby box office, Ticketmaster outlets, Ticketmaster.com and charge-by-phone. Info: www.kirbycenter.org, www.billcosby.com
| Tweet | Follow @wkdr |
|
|
