Gary Kott is an American television and advertising writer, and folk artist. A writer and supervising producer of The Cosby Show, Kott worked on the program during its five consecutive years of number one Nielsen ratings.[1]
Contents |
Kott grew up in Cranford, New Jersey, where he attended Cranford High School. He graduated from Marietta College in Ohio with a BA.
Kott worked on Madison Avenue in the early 1970’s, writing and producing dozens of national television commercials and print ads. He was a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather, moved to Young & Rubicam, then moved back to Ogilvy & Mather, where he served as Vice President and Creative Director.
In addition to his time working on The Cosby Show, Kott has also written for other shows, including Fame, Remington Steele and The White Shadow. He has received numerous accolades, including a Peabody Award, a Writers Guild of America Award, a People’s Choice Award, an NAACP Image Award, a pair of Humanitas nominations, and one Emmy Award nomination. Kott has been a guest speaker at the Museum of Broadcasting in New York and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Kott has written numerous plays, with performances at The Actors Studio in New York, The Grove Street Playhouse and The Santa Monica Playhouse.
In 2011, Kott launched Gary Kott's Creative Warehouse, a website devoted to collecting his work, including folk art, stories and plays. In addition to writing a series of blog entries on the site, Kott has also introduced the concept of the "Storynar," a live webcast of the reading of an original story.
Kott is married to Karen Kott; has two children, Crispin Kott and Morgan Almquist; and one granddaughter, Madeline Kott.