Bill Cosby’s marriage and family life turbulent for decades
In 1971, seven years after their wedding, star comedian and actor Bill Cosby’s wife, Camille, remained committed to making their marriage work despite the distractions of Hollywood. They had met on a blind date at a bowling alley in the spring of 1963. He was a 25-year-old comedian who was in the District of Columbia for a gig at the Shadows, a small club in the Georgetown neighbourhood. She was a teenage University of Maryland student.
The parents of Camille Hanks worried she was too young. But the couple, whose early dates often ended at Ben’s Chili Bowl, began a long-distance relationship when Cosby returned to New York. The next year, Camille dropped out of college and her parents reluctantly gave their blessing to their 19-year-old daughter’s marriage.
The ceremony, performed by Father Carl Dianda was held in a large multipurpose hall at a Catholic church in Olney, Maryland.
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“They were well-matched,” Dianda, who had three premarital meetings in the rectory with the young couple, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “She was one of the most beautiful in that parish,” Dianda said, recalling that Cosby introduced himself to the priest by handing him one of his comedic records.
Their move to Los Angeles as Cosby’s career rocketed in the mid- and late-1960s required adjustments. “All of a sudden we were successful people,” Camille Cosby recalled in an interview with Stephanie Stokes Oliver of Essence. “All of a sudden we had money coming in, and it changed our lives.”
It’s unclear how much Camille knew about her husband’s activities during the Los Angeles years. Six of the sexual-abuse allegations against Cosby date to that period, including accusations levied by Joan Tarshis, Linda Traitz, Tamara Green, Victoria Valentino and two other women: Carla Ferrigno, the future wife of Incredible Hulk star Lou Ferrigno, told KFI Radio that Cosby tried to assault her at his house in 1967. And Kristina Ruehli, now a 71-year-old grandmother of eight, told Philadelphia Magazine that she believes Cosby drugged her two years earlier and forced her to perform oral sex on him when she awoke.
By 1971, the Cosbys decided they needed to make a change. Camille Cosby would move with their three children to Shelburne Falls, Mass., and Bill Cosby would shuttle between Los Angeles, where he would continue working, and the new family home. Camille Cosby wanted to extract her family from the toxic Hollywood culture that she felt had facilitated her husband’s “selfish” behaviour, according to a biography of Bill Cosby by former Newsweek managing editor Mark Whitaker that was published this month.
The move gave Bill Cosby an opportunity to live a kind of double life, Whitaker writes. In the East, Cosby was a family man studying for his doctorate at the University of Massachusetts, raising money for Temple University scholarships and making a documentary about convicts seeking redemption. In the West, he could revel in “self-indulgence,” Whitaker writes. Later, Cosby would have a long run of comedy shows in Las Vegas, still far from his family. “After his second show was done, he could often be found playing blackjack or craps into the wee hours, betting thousands of dollars as well-liquored men and flirtatious women egged him on,” Whitaker wrote.
