House Of Cosbys

Cosby Show star Clarice Taylor dies

Clarice Taylor, the actress and comedian best known for playing grandmothers on The Cosby Show and Sesame Street, has died at the age of 93.

Taylor died of congestive heart failure in her home in Englewood, NJ, on Monday, said her son, William Taylor.

During a career that spanned five decades, Taylor performed on radio and TV, in film and on stage, including in the original Broadway cast of the musical The Wiz.

Her films included the 1971 Clint Eastwood thriller Play Misty for Me and, besides The Cosby Show, she had another recurring TV role on Sesame Street, where she was grandmother to the character David.

Both Taylor and Earle Hyman, who played her husband on The Cosby Show, received Emmy nominations in 1986 for their roles as Anna and Russell Huxtable, parents of Bill Cosby's character and grandparents of the Huxtable youngsters.

While touring with The Wiz, she roomed with Phylicia Rashad, who played Cosby's wife on the The Cosby Show. She told The Associated Press in a 1987 interview that she decided to audition to play Rashad's mother.

"I spent three hours making up my face and putting on my tight clothes," Taylor said. "I didn't want to look too old to be her mother."

She didn't get the part.

Later, however, she was asked to audition for the part of Cosby's mother. "I put on a gray wig, a bandana over that, flat-heeled shoes and a long dress with no shape to it," she told the AP.

"Bill saw through my act. I read five lines and he said, 'If you're going to go through all of this - you've got the part.'"

In 1987, she played the pioneering black female comedian Jackie Moms Mabley in an original off-Broadway play, Moms, with future Law & Order regular S Epatha Merkerson also in the cast. Taylor later toured as Mabley in a one-woman show.

She also played the role of Addaperle, the Good Witch of the North, in the stage version of The Wiz, which opened in 1975.

Taylor began her acting career with Harlem's American Negro Theatre, and in the late 1960s was one of the original members of the New York-based Negro Ensemble Company.

Born Sept. 20, 1917, in Buckingham County, she grew up in Harlem, where she skipped school to watch the sassy comedian Moms Mabley perform at the Apollo Theater.

Taylor told the AP she portrayed Mabley in Moms because she was determined that the world not forget her.

"She was so special and so wonderful," she said in the 1987 interview. "Here's a black woman born in the last century who made a living at her craft. She never cleaned house or picked cotton. She went through a lot but she stuck with it.

House of Cosbys, Mirrored - Waxy.org

So, I moved to Palo Alto and finally started at Yahoo last week. (Summary: Fascinating place to work, brilliant people, kooky corporate culture, boatloads of potential.) Things are finally starting to settle down, which means the dry spell on Waxy will be ending very soon.

In the meantime, I've been meaning to post this for the last couple weeks... The House of Cosbys, which I wrote about recently , was finally taken offline by Bill Cosby's lawyers. In its place, the videos have been replaced with this message . The original videos are now very difficult (if impossible) to find online.

I've decided to archive them on Waxy for as long as I possibly can. They deserve to be seen, so watch them, mirror them, torrent them, and don't let them disappear again. March 14, 2006: See below for news!

In actuality, I saw one episode. It became apparent that after 2 minutes of watching, what the rest of it would be like. After that, it became monotonous, tedious, mundane, all of the above. One hit wonder, 15 minutes of fame, I think I will stay away from this. I don't know why the real Bill Cosby would take offense at any of this, it's a joke itself, he should be laughing at it's pathetic attempt of mockery.

I don't think any of you are really old enough to know the battles that he fought for blacks in the 50s, 60s & 70s, and then some. No wonder he has a bunch of lawyers! Drop the west coast shit, and think about what goes on in the rest of the country then you will understand why folks do what they do. You are on the right track to be inline, so whach out!

justtosay, don't kid yourself here, just because he is a self-righteous black man standing up for hundreds upon thousands of his fellow folk for the greater good doesn't mean he is 100% morally just himself. I reckon those high priced lawyers of his are for other purposes too, like getting high profile sexual allegation cases of groping tossed out. Not bashing Cosby the actor in anyway/shape/form here (love him, always will), but there's always alternate realities in play.

P.S. justtosay, not to get too deeply involved in the heart of the matter, but you must realize that Cosby as a fighter for blacks is a fallacy in itself. Slavery/indenture/servitude was created by the colonizer way back during the original diaspora. As we all should know, this was a cruel and racially based act against blacks (and even East Indians).

During the second diasporic transition into America, the black man/woman dreamed of freedom from indentureship and eventually aspired to become successful in America. This is where the fallacy occurs: anytime you aspire to become something that is seen through the eyes of the oppressor (the colonizer) as ideal, you aspire to become like them and henceforth you obey what they have set out to originally do: exploit you for your services in their capitalist regime. Cosby and his success is a mark of that. I would much more follow Rosa Parks as a model of fighting a truer battle.

Jet

The Southeastern reporter

LIFE

A history of East Leake

A history of East Leake,[Nottinghamshire, England].