James Coco, the Emmy Award-winning character actor whose pear-shaped vowels matched his rotund body, died late last night in a New York hospital hours after suffering a heart attack. He was 56.
His most important Broadway roles were in "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers" in 1969, "You Can't Take It With You" in 1983 and as Sancho Panza in "The Man of La Mancha" in 1967.
It was "Red Hot Lovers" that finally gave the biggest boost to Coco's career; before that, he was best known as the chubby Willie the Plumber in Drano commercials.
Most of Coco's film roles were broad comic ones, notably "Murder by Death," in which he played the Hercule Poirot character called Hercule Perrier; its sequel, "The Cheap Detective," and the movie version of "Man of La Mancha." His other movie credits included "A New Leaf," "The Strawberry Statement," "Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon," "Such Good Friends" and "The Wild Party."
Born March 21, 1930, the son of a shoemaker, Coco grew up stage-struck, becoming the stage manager of a touring children's theater while still in his teens.
"When I was about 8, my mother began taking me to the movies and I got hooked by Hollywood," he once said. "In a sense, I was formed by the movies. I think I must have started imagining what it could be like to be an actor when I was sitting in the darkness of some Loew's movie palace."
