For many years, you spent every Thursday night in the living room of a friend—and you never left your easy chair.
Those Thursday nights were appointments you wouldn’t think of missing, and you always left with a smile. The Huxtable family was just like your family. And in the new book “Cosby: His Life and Times” by Mark Whitaker, you’ll learn what that TV show almost was, and more.
William Henry Cosby, Jr. was born into a storytelling family.
Though his father was mostly absent, young Cosby was heavily influenced by his paternal grandfather, a spiritual man who loved telling Bible stories. Cosby sometimes had a hard time understanding his grandfather’s Southern accent, but the elder man’s methods of holding an audience stuck with him forever.
After dropping out of high school, and once home from a stint in the Navy (where he worked in the Hospital Corps and got his GED), Cosby left Philadelphia and headed to New York City. There, he slept on the storeroom floor of a Greenwich Village club, and performed on a rickety stage beneath a leaky ceiling. Eventually, it paid off: word got around that he was a funny guy, one who didn’t rely on profanity or racial material to get laughs. Cosby soon had a manager, a wife, and a seat next to Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.
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