Cosby was born on July 12, 1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is one of four sons of Anna Pearl (nee Hite), a maid, and William Henry Cosby Sr., who served as a mess steward in the U.S. Navy. During much of Cosby's early childhood, his father was away from home in Navy service and especially during WWII. As a student, he described himself as a class clown.

Cosby left Temple to pursue a career in comedy. He lined up standup jobs at clubs in Philadelphia and then in New York City, where he appeared at The Gaslight Cafe beginning in 1961. He booked dates in cities such as Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. In the summer of 1963, he received national exposure on NBC's The Tonight Show. This led to a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records, who, in 1964, released his debut LP Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow...Right!, the first of a series of comedy albums. His album To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With was number 1 on Spin Magazines list of "The 40 Greatest Comedy Albums of All Time", calling it "stand-up comedy's masterpiece".  While many comics of the time were using the growing freedom of that decade to explore material that was controversial and sometimes risque, 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. Right? So I figure this way I'm doing as much for good race relations as the next guy."  In 1983, he released the concert film Bill Cosby: Himself; it is widely regarded as "the greatest comedy concert film ever". Younger, well-established comics like Jerry Seinfeld have credited Cosby as an innovator both as a practitioner of the genre of standup comedy, as well as a person who paved the way for comics to break into sitcom television. Seinfeld said of Cosby: "He opened a door for all of us, for all of the networks to even consider that this was a way to create a character, was to take someone who can hold an audience just by being up there and telling their story. He created that. He created the whole idea of taking a quote-unquote 'comic' and developing a TV show just from a persona that you see on stage." Comedian Larry Wilmore also saw a connection between Bill Cosby: Himself and the later success of The Cosby Show, saying: "It's clear that the concert is the template for The Cosby Show."  Cosby performed his first TV standup special in 30 years, "Bill Cosby: Far From Finished", on Comedy Central on November 23, 2013. Cosby's last show of the "Far From Finished" tour was performed at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta, Georgia on May 2, 2015.  In 2014, Cosby was set to release his new standup special Bill Cosby 77 on Netflix. The release of the film was canceled due to allegations of sexual assault.

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