For Cosby, personally, it was a golden time: his comedy career was soaring, he was starring in a TV crime-drama, and he’d become a father. Offstage, however, the nation was working its way through the Civil Rights Movement and for Cosby, that created a stronger urge to help his “people.” As much as possible, he insisted on hiring more African-Americans backstage, and assisted many in their show-business careers. He was also fierce about education (he had once wanted to be a teacher), and created children’s programming with that in mind.
In 1984, having heard that Bill Cosby was open to the possibility of a sitcom, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner asked for a meeting. They had something in mind for a different kind of comedy.
Cosby had some ideas of his own…
Reading “Cosby: His Life and Times” is kind of like visiting your childhood on paper. Who among us hasn’t felt like we’ve always known Fat Albert and the Huxtable family? Who didn’t want to run away and live with Cliff and Claire?
Not many, I’d guess, and that’s why readers will be surprised at what author Mark Whitaker uncovered. Not only are we treated to the good in Cosby’s life, but Whitaker includes the warts, both onstage and off, as well as the what-ifs within Cosby’s career—and I just couldn’t get enough of it. What if, for instance, Cliff Huxtable had been a limo driver?
(“Cosby: His Life and Times” by Mark Whitaker, c.2014, Simon & Schuster, $29.99/$35.95 Canada, 544 pages.)
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