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>> next, mark whitaker talks about the life and grip of bill cosby. including mr. cosby's political activism since the 1960s, it's education, philanthropy and the cosby effect which mr. whitaker says played an important role in the election of president obama. mr. whitaker spoke at the st. louis county library in missouri. this is just under one hour. >> thanks so much out of me. so invariably when i talk about this book, people say bill cosby, he's so funny. are you going to be funny? well, i've got to warn you about a comedian. but i will tell you one of bill cosby's favorite jokes. it takes place at the gates of heaven, the pearly gates on a day when so many people have arrived that there isn't room for everybody. so \saint/st.\{-l}street peter

announces to all these people waiting in line that he's going to have a little contest, and that is going to ask everybody to write down the question for god. and if god cannot answer the question, you would get him. one after another come up, right down question, st. peter takes it in, get back, got it should be questioned to go back to the line. finally, an elderly couple who passed away on the same day come to the front of the line. a right and the question and give it to st. peter. he comes back he says okay, the two of your in. everybody else look at them and said, wait a second, what makes you so special? what did you ask god? they said we just asked him when our kids are going to get their act together. [laughter] now what's interesting about,

even more interesting about the story is bill cosby told me that joke. he told me he found it on the internet, so even bill cosby isn't above sometimes lifting material. but in the original joke, the word was not act together, it was another word which you can imagine. however, bill cosby who as you know is famous for not only being one of the finest people on the planet but having done all these years, decided he didn't really need the expletive in the joke. it would be just as funny without it, and he took it out and he still gets great laughs with that story. anyway, as gary said i've spent most like for as a journalist, at a magazine and on television.

most of that time covering hard news of subjects, politics, international relations, business and so forth. so people ask me, well why do you want to write a book about bill cosby? well, like bill cosby i started out as a child, and actually it was when i was nine that my mother brought home, at least my first bill cosby film it it was called wonderfulness. and i come from an interracial family. my dad goes past without was black, my mother is white. she still living. and they had split up three years earlier. we were living in los angeles and my mother had taken my younger brother and me back to

the east coast, and we settled in this old town in massachusetts where she got a job teaching college, where there were no people of color. my dad kind of dropped out of our lives. we didn't hear much from them. so all of a sudden he was this handsome young black man about my dad's age joyously writing a go cart on the cover of the album telling these alleged stories about having his tonsils out and smearing the kitchen floor with joel to keep the chicken heart monster way. and like so many people of that era in the '60s who heard his comedy album. i thought they were letters. i laughed until i cried. i wasn't completely aware of this at the time that i think now when i look back on it, he was also a black male figure that i could identify with. then i found out he also was

stored on ice by, and despite the fact it was automatic clock, past my bedtime, i asked my mother to watch. there he was a completely different character, cool, spy, sort of mysterious and so forth. so at that point in my life bill cosby was quite personally meaningful to me. than 20 years later in the '80s, i was just getting married and starting a family when the cosby show came on the air. my wife and i loved the show. i thought it was very, very funny, but also as kind of a model for what the kind of family we wanted to have a. so i have personal reasons for being interested in bill cosby but as a journalist i was also fascinated by him as sort of a figure in our cultural and social history, not only as a

pioneer, somebody who opened doors again and again, wrote the first comedian to not be labeled just a negro comedian. the first dark, african-american star up on television, pioneer of children's television with his early guest appearances on "sesame street" and the electric company and then albert. -- fat albert. the most successful you all remember advertising pitchman in the country in the '70s and 80s with the jell-o ads and coca-cola and ford and so forth, and that was all even before the cosby show. but then as you although, in the last, after a career where he did not bring race and politics into his comedy, and often was criticized for that, and the

last 10 years he's become a very outspoken, very controversial or some very strong stances he has taken about trends in the black community. so i really wanted to know, where did this come from, and were all out of you sees been expressing recently views he is at all a long? sort of what drove him and what was his vision of the kind of social impact that he was going to have? plus nobody had done it. he was rare in a figure of his significance and prominence in that no one had really written a serious in depth biography. so i decided i wanted to do it. and that i discovered why nobody had written it, and in depth

biography. i met him a few times. i didn't know him well, but sort of, to sort greet him when he appeared on television networks that i worked for. but i did know alvin, a harvard psychiatrist who was an adviser on the cosby show and is a good friend of bill and camille cosby's. so i called him and i made my pitch for why i felt bill cosby would great subject for a book. and he agreed with, eddie offered to speak to cosby on my behalf. a week later he called back and said i don't think i can help you. just trust issues. then i got a call from his lawyer telling me, we understand that you working on a book.

fine, we're not going to try to stop you but just so you, you will not get any cooperation. anyway, i decided to go ahead anyway, and started as reporters are trying to do, reporting around the subject when he can't take, talking to people who would talk to me, doing a lot of research. and every once in a while i would reach out to cosby's publicist just to tell them that i was still working away. and after a year of reporting on my own, i started getting these e-mails from cosby's publicist saying that there were things that come he calls him mr. see, \mr.{-|}\mister c. wanted me to be aware of, articles have been written. of course, because of been working on it for years i have read all of those and i reported

back. so i don't know whether they were testing me to see what i was doing my homework, but then after a few months of that i got another call from a lawyer who said mr. cosby wants to speak with you. unless it is a good come is a bad? he said i'm not going to speak for him but he's going to be in touch with you. he's on the road performing. expect a phone call at some point. so another month and half goes by, i don't hear anything. finally, one day i was just leaving cnn, mike job as managing editor, and i was still in my office and might assistant rushes to my office and says bill cosby is on the phone. so i pick up the phone and the first words out of his mouth are, congratulations. i said, what you congratulate me for? he said, mark, all of a sudden we're good friends, he says, i have a process when i write my

comedy routine called loading the boat and i'm going to help you load your boat. now, what he was calling that day to do was to give me the name of some people from early on in his life in philadelphia where he was born and went to college, temple, who he thought i should interview and i might not otherwise be aware of, or if i was wouldn't talk to me necessarily without his permission. what i discovered in that first conversation is wanted in would remain true for the next year in my dealings with him, was that once you get bill cosby on the phone, or you get to them in person, it's never a short conversation. he loves to tell stories.

and, in fact, that's really how he communicates. he was unlike anybody i have ever interviewed before. first of all i could never schedule an interview. he would call me unexpectedly, usually late at night. usually get something that he wanted to tell me, but i realized that once i had him on the phone he would start telling stories. so my job was to be ready with the questions that would elicit the stories that i needed for the book. so in all, i say and acknowledged of the book i had about 15 hours with him. most of it was on the phone, although i did spend a weekend traveling with him on the road, which was fascinating and it's how the book begins, seeing him not only perform but interact with fans and what is backstage ritual was like.

and because he is so incredibly punctual, he shows up early for every, very early for flights and concerts and so forth, i have a lot of time during that time with him and on airplanes and incarcerating to give him. and i also was, again, having worked so long without any access to him, i knew what i needed to use that time for, which was mostly to fill the blanks early in his life when there were no records at all of bill cosby, the growth in housing project in philadelphia. so the book is i think a very different book than it would have been if i hadn't had access to them, but it is not a kind of as told to book. it's mostly about the reporting. most of it comes from my own research and also extensive

interviews i have done with hundreds of people, but most valuable, more than 60 cosby closest associates or friends who know only the bill cosby before he became famous. so people he grew up with in the richard allen homes housing project in north philadelphia, people who he met in the navy, his best buddy in the navy who introduced him to his wife, ma his commander in the navy, his best friend from temple before he became a big star. and also a lot of people who were not only on the air but behind the scenes in all of this iconic shows, the people who were behind i spy, the producers and the director, and given the proper guide for the cost of --

prop guy for the cosby show. use of the people who saw the real bill cosby. i know you have lots of questions because one of the things that writing about cosby is i know lots of people of different connections with him, but i will just end this part by, you know, people ask me, well, what surprised you about cosby in writing this book? well, one -- i will say three things. one is that to answer the question i sort of started with about bill cosby and his feelings about the impact that his work was going to have on society, i can say very clearly, and i think a show in the book that bill cosby always was, as they say in the black community, a race man. he may not have always brought racial material into his comedy,

but he was very aware of, first of all, what it would mean to actually have an entertainer like in the could succeed without, you know, and being a black entertainer, just being an entertainer. started in the '60s he was a big supporter of the league of civil rights causes, civil organizations. later, no, it's interesting, the cosby show at the time was criticized by some circles and sometimes remembered as being the show where the huxtable's really work black and so forth. you know, i argue in the book and i think i shall break 30 that contract their judgments about the black culture in their show. there's jazz, black art and, of

course, there's spellman college which is historically a black college. which at the time that show came on the air those institutions were really starting to be challenged. cause be not only made it a big thing of that show, he used his clout to get a spinoff show called a different world about life on a historically totally black college put on television. who else but bill cosby would've had that idea or could have made that happen? and then he backed it up with, he and his wife, with a $20 million donation to the spellman college, which at the time was and still remains the largest private donation it's ever been given to an hbcu, as well as millions to others. and whatever you think about some of the things he's been

saying recently very publicly about the need for better parenting, commitment to education and so forth in the black community, and there's been a very robust debate and i described it in the book, bill cosby has backed that up by going into inner cities, talking to kids, talking to young people with children, talking to gang members. so he doesn't just talk to the talk. is also walked the walk in that area. the second thing i would say about his personal life is that for all of the good fortune he has had and all the riches he has a cumulative, he's had a lot of pain in his life, a lot of suffering, starting with his upbringing, an alcoholic father who essentially abandoned cosby and his brothers, and his mother, joined the navy, largely

absent from the house during his childhood. struggles in school. although he had a very i do -- a very high iq he dropped out. he flunked and barely got into trouble because he charmed the track coach and to give him a track scholarship. later when he became -- when it became apparent he was a strength of his daughter who develop substance abuse problems and then, of course, he lost his only son in a murder, which was tragic, you know, in a tragic way. just as he was really starting to bill will -- fulfill his promise. he struggled in school until his diagnosed as dyslexic, and cosby had been so thrilled by that

breakthrough that he makes a part of the cosby show in the old huxtable's character intimates is life to helping show with learning disabilities, about to get a doctorate from columbia. he's on vacation in los angeles and gets murdered. you know, it's almost, there are so many highs and so midlands and cosby's life. it's almost -- the final thing i will say this about his work, about his comedy. and it's interesting because cosby has been seen i think for so long as this sort of mainstream entertainment, somebody who crossed over. some people have even described in as sort of an uncle tom, somebody who, you know, and it is true that he has a mass appeal but what would you will see from the book is actually he's always had a very original,

distinctive and sometimes kind of ornery vision for what he thought was funny and how he was going to manage his career. and sometimes it's led to failure. between i spy in the cosby show he had three consecutive tv shows that didn't work. even after the cosby show he had a couple of tv shows, as some of you probably know. he has of movies that were successful in the '70s but the also have some real bombs in the '80s and '90s. i started with a bill cosby joke. joe. i will end with a bill cosby saying, which is famous for. you see tweeted hundreds of times a day literally to this day. and it is, bill cosby said, i don't know what the key to

success is, but i know that the key to failure is trying to please everybody. and what you'll see in this book is that precisely by being willing not to please everybody, cosby has please millions. so i would love to hear your questions about bill cosby. [applause] >> i have a question. did you ever ask imported ever tell you or do you have an opinion as to what he might have done with his life he did not become a comedian? >> yes to so he, as i said, he was a lousy student in high school. in high school he wanted to be either an athlete or a jazz musician. and he spent more time, most of his time doing those two things and not getting the books.

i think that by the time he was in his late teens he realized he wasn't going to be good enough for either one of those things, although he was pretty good to really become a star. so he joined the navy. he did know what else to do. that's what his dad had done. it was really in the navy discharge to develop real habits of discipline and some goals for himself. like he decided he wanted to do, and because he'd grown up in north philadelphia, the college he knew best was the one right next door, temple. he decides he wants into w. never see. and as i said he finally got even even to get a combined sat score of 500 a ged by talking the track coach and giving him a track scholarship. but his plan at that point was to become a phys ed instructor, and specifically in a junior high school which is what he saw as sort of a formative age where

he thought if somebody had been there to guide him, you know, he might have been sort of straightened out earlier than he was. even after he discovered his talent for stand up comedy and end up dropping out of temple because his career was taking off, they continue to be a dream and he would talk about how i'm just going to do this long if i can make enough money that don't have to worry about and i'm going to go teach. and his first sitcom, which will last two years in the late '60s, the bill cosby show, he played a high school is said to instructor. -- a phys ed instructor. later, just after that, he had an opportunity, the dean at the

university of massachusetts had instituted a program for professionals who didn't have traditional academic credentials but had shown a commitment to education. and bill cosby came to perform on the umass campus one day, and he thought maybe bill cosby would be interested in this program. he reached out to them, again without a college degree, without a proper high school degree, and got first a masters and a doctorate in education. duno who was the happiest person in the world the day he finally got his diploma? his mother. his mother who'd worked her entire life as a maid but was a bright woman going to drop out of school herself and give up her dreams of becoming a teacher, he had broken her heart by dropping out of school so many times. and i have a great picture in the book of the day after he

received his diploma. he threw a little party at his house nearby in massachusetts, and his mother is sitting on his lap beaming. cosby is smoking a cigar and beaming. you know that cosby expression where he is pressing his lips and his eyes are twinkling? that's the expression she has come and you look at this picture and you say, that's where it came from. >> how did he get chosen for eyespot, and what was his relationship with robert culp? >> that's a great store, and actually i spend almost as much of the book talking about i spy, which i was fascinated by as i do the cosby show. and its own weight even though it only lasted for three seasons was just as historic in its own way. so sheldon leonard was the producer of eyespot, at the time one of the most -- i spy, one of

the most successful television producers, did the danny thomas show, an integral the show and k van dyke. the james bond movies were just taking off, so all of a sudden all these people into you want to sort of james bond like shows. this is what leads to the man from uncle, gets more. sheldon leonard idea for a spy show was really novel which was it would teach -- feature a pair of spies, one white, one black. he pretty quickly chose robert culp, this handsome, young sort of tv actor at the time to be a white spot. but partly because there were so few african-americans on television, there was the

obvious choice for who the partner would be. so sheldon leonard worked very closely with karl reiner who was the sort of, ran the dick van dyke scheppach it was his idea, chief writer, on the show. and one night just as cosby is starting to take off, he got his first comedy album had come up to the appears on the tonight show with johnny carson, and he does a routine. one of the people in the audience is carl reiner's teenage son rob reiner. rob reiner thinks this is the funniest thing he's ever seen, and he wakes up his parents come out to dinner, some big hollywood event. and he wakes up in toledo just

to tell them he's just seen this comedian who is the finest ideas ever seen. and he performed the routine. when carl reiner hears about this, he then goes and arranges to see a tape of cosby. as soon as he sees it, you know, african-american, he thinks maybe this is the guy sheldon is looking for for his spy show. so they arranged -- cause he was just coming out to perform on the west coast for the first time. they arranged to bring them into the set of the dick van dyke show, and there was a meeting between bill cosby and sheldon leonard. so that's how it started. but cosby, you know, had no acting experience. so after he was cast, i describe in the book how bad he was in

the first table reading, but robert culp still saw a real sort of genius in him and his ability to ad lib., and really like the fact that every time there was a line the preferred to the characters skin color, he would change it, you know, and the tennessee didn't like the racial humor either, and they had this in common. and then when they went to shoot the pilot episode, which they did on the road in hong kong, another novel thing about the show was there going to shoot on location. after the network executives saw the result of that they wanted to replace cosby. he only held on because sheldon leonard went to bat for him, and robert culp not only said he would quit if they found cosby, but he made it, you know county was also a writer and he decided that he was going to come in

secret, write a half-dozen episodes for the show that would showcase cosby's character and give them an opportunity to show that he could act. and also by the way, also allowed him to have a romantic interest to get the girl which, of course, the network had no interest in at that time, you know, an african-american in prime time and -- anyway, and he and robert culp became incredibly close friends. if anybody remove her special, the most, the most memorable thing about it is the chemistry between the two of them. it genuinely reflected this friendship it also reflects something else which is interesting which is vacated each other all the time and so forth, but they had one serious conversation as they were shooting the show and was about this whole issue of, you know,

what it meant that they were and interracial teen. and basically they decided their statement was going to be a non-statement. that by not callin calling atteo it, like issuing america this model of these people who were genuinely friendly, that that alone with the rapidly sure which i think was. and by the way, for all of you sort of tv and movie buffs, it forever changed the model for the buddy genre as they call it, right? before that it had been being crosby and bob hope and so forth and so want to think about it, after optical and bill cosby, it's eddie murphy and nick nolte, mel gibson and danny glover, will smith and tommy the jobs. so all of that starts to play.

[inaudible] >> well, you know, as i say there's more in the book about, not just how can one cosby died and who he was about the relationship which has never been reported before but i think to understand the relationship yet to understand first, the difficult relationship house be had with his own father. he was really looking to be a different kind of father and his father was. even before ennis was born, if you go back to his early tell comedy album get two daughters before he had a son. and he loved his daughters and he told he's very funny funny stories about them, but he also talked about how much he wants a son and he kept telling camille, i want a son. she starts explaining about the

x. chromosome and the y. chromosome last night and cosby says in my philosophy is like who ever had at last it's their responsibility. so what happened? anyway, and when ennis was finally born, you know, it was just a joyous occasion. is on the cover of every magazine in 1969, the year of his birth. they bill cosby on the cover holding his son. you can see the love and joy in his eyes. ennis goes up to be this incredibly charming, handsome kid, but he has this severe learning problems. and it is a real sort of frustration for cosby, given how much he cares about education. and it leads to a lot of conflict and tension. including once in which i describe in the book where cosby thought ennis had lied to him about why he wasn't turning in his homework on time, and took them out to the barn behind the

house in massachusetts and gave him a spanking. finally, after all the shoes of frustration on both of the parts, ennis is an undergraduate at morehouse college and gets diagnosed with dyslexia. and as i said the kind of turns his life around. but they ennis was murdered, cosby found out about it when he was in the process of taping a new sitcom that he had just started at a studio out in queens. the first thing, you know, he was completely stunned b but his first reflex was i got to go there. i've got to go to california with my boy. they wouldn't let him leave the studio because they were worried about inflated sector for

several hours while he was briefed by the police to be stilted nose out of what had happened. the one witness who have recorded the murder was so shaken up that she was sort of incoherent at the time. but finally they arranged to take cosby out of the back of the studio to his townhouse in manhattan on the site. and by the time he is just completely surrounded with media are untrained. cosby who was aware throughout this, said although he was in shock, in greek, america would be watching him at in some ways how we dealt with this would also be a signal to other people who would suffer similar tragedies. figures very determined to be dignified about it. and he saw that, he realizes as he's approaching he could just duck into the house.

he had to say something to the media. i think a lot of us remember, he goes to the door, he turned around and he said he was my hero. and he goes inside. i think he really was his hero at that point. you know, the impact, well, he didn't talk to me about it. it was clear he wasn't going to talk about it directly. although i did talk to a lot of people who, the producer who broke the news to him, people who were with him that day, at the burial and so forth. two things come out. one is, cosby it turns out he discovers his life calling, to be an entertainer, is an incredible workaholic. he does work all the time. i think he gets that from his

mother who worked his 12, 15 hour days as a maid, from his grandfather who was sort of in absence of a reliable male father figure. you sort of male role models it was a factory worker who got overworked is a grueling job, public transportation because it wanted to sit in the back of a bus or have to do with any hassles in sort of the age of segregation, and so he walked four miles back and forth to work every day. so those were sort of his models. so cosby has dealt with a party by working. he has always worked hard but has probably worked even harder after ennis' death. 10 days after the burial, he not only went back to work on the sitcom but he insisted on going back on the road. his wife didn't want him to do and she actually asked their friend from the psychiatrist to drive with him to make sure he was okay.

but cosby said no, this is what ennis would've wanted. i've got to show i can still make people laugh. but the other thing which is really striking is that some people, editing we can all agree this is pop one of the worst if not the worst thing that can happen to anyone is lose a child, but some people have been through that can't bear to be reminded of the child they lost on regular basis but cosby is the opposite. not only did he bury ennis on his estate in massachusetts where every time he goes on he can see the gravesite, he keeps reminders of ennis with him wherever he goes. so you probably have seen in in a sweatshirt that said hello friend, which wherever he performs the even worse was a sweatshirt or he has one great overture where he sits when he performs the that was ennis' -- that's what ennis said everyone, hello, friend. another thing that people might

not have known about although i think they will find out more about it now, but cosby and his wife camille, over the decades, have acquired what is both probably the most valuable but also the most significant private collection of african-american art in the world. and for the first time they're going to loan it to the smithsonian in november and the will going to be exhibit which be huge deal in the art world. but in addition to all of those priceless works, cosby has had dozens of paintings and likenesses of ennis made that he keeps in rooms in all of his houses. and he talks to them. i mean, he delivers news to the family. he talks about news of ennis' friends from college and high school. and i talk about that in the book. you know, ennis i is a present d

a spirit was with cosby all of the time now. >> one of the criticism of your book has been that you did not delve in to the dark side of cosby's father's life. i certainly agree with the fact that you didn't but i was choose as to how you arrived at that decision. >> first of all i never intended this book to be sort of a steamy tell-all. it was not that kind of book to i really want to focus mostly on cosby's impact and legacies as an entertainer and also as a social figure, as i said earlier. i also knew that he was not going to talk to me, although even though i got access about his private life, and that anything i'd reported in the book about his private life, including about ennis and other matters, i was going up to independently report. and it was very important to me

that anything i reported in this book about that, about anything else, too, but deeply about his private life were things that i've been able to independently confirm. so i do get into his history of infidelity, but, you know, as probably a lot of people remember, there was a young lady who came forward about, exactly time that ennis was murdered, claiming that she was cosby's out of wedlock daughter. and i tell the story of the relationship. cosby always denied that, that he did have a relationship with the girl's mother, and i described it in detail and how it happened and so forth. and a couple of other cases that i was able to independently confirm. there are other stories and

allegations about cosby's, you know, relations with women, behavior, that have circulated but that ultimately i felt i couldn't independently confirm. there were no definitive court findings. either nothing entered the criminal justice system over there were no defended '90s, no independent witnesses. and i knew that this was going to be talked about when the book came out, but i didn't want to be in a position where i repeated allegations that it couldn't independently confirm. and to stand before a group like this, and if they've been in the book you would have said well, you put these in the book, but independent evidence do you have that they happened? and i would have to say, i don't have any. that just didn't meet my

standards, journalistically in writing a biography that's going to be on bookshelves i hope for many years. so that's basically why. i stayed away from those areas although if you read the book, you will see that cosby is clearly not always the same. i talk a lot not about just his personal indiscretions about how tough it can be with people, sometimes violent with people. so i would ask anybody to read the book before the judge, you know, just how objective it is. >> are there any more questions? >> now that you've completed this book, what's next for you? >> that is, you know, that's the question that a lot of writers

dread. no, i mean for i have a lot of thoughts. i have been committed to anything yet. you know, i think that, for me in my career, you know, i worked in music for their very long time and i loved that job, and i was honored and fortunate enough to be the editor of the magazine for almost a decade. but then after i left, it still exists but it's not what it was and it sort of disappeared in the form that once had. then i went into television which was a great experience, and television is immensely influential but it's also very fleeting. and so it's been very gratifying to me.

this is my second book. some of you i see in the back have also, can see my first book which was a family memoir, but to really research subjects that i'm interested in, that i think other people would be interested in, in depth, and to tell those stories in a way that's not just a tv sound bite or even just a newsmagazine story, and then to realize that once you've done that they are going to be there, they're sort of a permanence to it. we talked a lot people in the publishing world have been in there for ever and guilty about all the lows, but i think books are still wonderful treasures. to write a book and then have people read it and be moved by it and to be touched by an have

their thoughts provoked by it and they want to talk to you about it, that's pretty special. so i'm definitely going to keep writing books. [inaudible] >> socom although i was under no obligation given the way it'll happen, because this was my idea any sort of came around to me, i thought that because he had cooperated and had been hopeful, he should have a chance to see it. i didn't send it directly to him by senate to represent us, to his publicist, to his lawyer into his doctor who have been helpful. they reported back, what i heard from th them was they weren't wd about everything that was in the. there were some things about his personal life that they would rather not be in the book but they knew that everything i did report and write about in his personal life i had very solid

sources. so they respect about. and i think it also, i think i'm cosby's behalf, appreciated the fact that although i think i analyzed his comic genius, i also take them seriously. one of the things i found interestingly over the years, one of the reason he has pressed issues with the press, it's not just what people have reported about his private life and so forth, it's partly because going back to his early days of success in the '60s when reporters would come to feature stories about him and he would often talk to them very service about what's going on in the world, in the civil rights movement, the politics of the day. but the pieces would appear and it would just make cosby look like this sort of happy-go-lucky comedian who is not engaged. and so he always wanted to be listened to and taken seriously.

i think if they had appreciated the fact, although i really think i described the funny site, i also described his serious side. i have had a couple of phone calls. yet again out of the blue from cosby. they have never been within overall verdict about the book, but they do make me realize that he has read it. and there's one in particular that is sort of telling about i spy. one day the phone rings late at night. i pick up the phone to endeavor introduces himself to be goes right into it and he said frank. i said yes? he deserves more credit. now, the story behind that is that cosby was having some problems as an actor at the very beginning of i spy, that sheldon leonard decided to hire an acting coach.

they hired a very distinguished african-american stage actor named frank. in fact, the original shakespeare in the park in 1962 was frank as king lear. so we conduct from. he flies about to the desi lula in california with a shot to show and has him stay there during the shooting to help us be whenever he needs help with backing. i mentioned this in the book, frank, you look at the index. but cosby felt that for everything i said in the book about how sheldon leonard and robert culp helped him along the way there, and particularly in terms of when how to act, he felt that the third person who was instrument and that was frank. said he was calling me to say essentially further editions of

the book may be, maybe you can say all of it more about frank. but it's really time because actually in the first conversation i had with cosby when he called me, he said, and i talk about this term in the book, he said i want, if you're going to write this book i want it to honor the abolitionists. now, abolitionist was his pet term for white mentors of his going back to sixth grade teacher in the projects in philadelphia. the white track coach who got him in the temple, sheldon leonard, bob cole, -- bob cole, other white americans who he felt help them at a time when it was in august is going to be a star, and not many people, white folks are going out of their way to help black folks intellect. so you want their story told. this story is in the book.

in frank's case, obviously he was also african-american but it was very important i think once cosby started to give me access, a lot of what he was wanted to make sure happen was that the people who he felt deserved credit for helping in his career got that credit. please. i think we have time for one more. >> what was your overall impression of him? did you like it as a person at the end of the book? >> well, he was always very nice to me, as i said. i didn't spend that much time with him but again, he was sort of the centric in the way that he reached out to me, but that was fine. he was very nice. i was, first of all, i was

fascinated. i was both, by his mind, because my parents were college professors, you know. i spend my grid engine was an unused to people who think and expose themselves and have been rewarded for doing that in a very linear, analytical way. cosby is the opposite. he's not linear at all. he just six and zags dutchmen zigs and zags but he doesn't talk an argument or even full sense of the he talks and for creative spurts. i talk about, even at the height of his success with the cosby show, often he would come in with ideas that the writers initial express them seem complete off the wall. the writers sometimes did know what he was talking about.

but then it was a show and once they work with and developed it be turned into magic to one of the great examples i tell in the book is he comes in when we can sit i think we should an episode where the huxtable's -- sound everybody looks at themselves and says what you mean, like karaoke? is that going to be funny? bitingly, so they went with andy developed this storyline about the huxtable's putting on a performance for the grandparents on their anniversary singing ray charles, which is now one of the most famous, literally one of the most famous television episodes of all time. so it was just fascinating to me to see somebody who's mine worked in a completely different way and was completely unapologetic about it. i had to work with a although what was really interesting was i talk about how he was unlike any other energy. i still had to make sure, even though he would go from store to store, decade to decade, and

likely come partly because i done all this research when used to get nicknames of people and so forth i knew who they were. i would not have otherwise, but i always made sure i was getting everything down, even if i didn't quite know how it was relevant to the book. because i discovered going back to write from those interviews and those conversations that everything he said was so incredibly vivid. these amazing little details which i hadn't even noticed as i was trying to down because i just making sure i got everything. you can see why, in the, as a result he such a great storyteller. in fact, he told me, we were discussing his approach to comedy, and he said, you know, mark, getting a laugh is only a secondary thing for me. that's never too.

the number one he says is what he called putting you there, which means telling a story that so engrossing that you get caught up in the story, and then along the way he finds a way to make you laugh. but the other thing i was really came away with in terms of my view of him is just how resilient he is. because you will see in the book, i mean, we all know about the highs but you is to all of the most to you will see all the setbacks, the personal struggles, some of which i talked about, others which i happen. and yet whatever he's been faced with, whether it's been good or bad, he just keeps going. he goes back to work, goes back on the road, and i was ultimately very moved by that. again, i didn't one in this book

to tell you what to think about bill cosby. and i really, i try to put you there myself, you know, in the way i write about it, kind of as -- not bill cosby in retrospect we know all these things will be accessible with the light in the moment when it was all happening. but i think whatever view you come away with from the book in terms of bill cosby, you are going to be impressed by just how, you know, he just keeps picking himself up and moving on. and to me, that's a lesson for all of us. thanks so much for having me. [applause] >> booktv is on twitter and facebook, and we want to hear from you. tweet us, twitter.com/booktv,

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