Background
Born James Emil Coco in New York City, son of Feliche Coco, a shoemaker, and Ida Detestes Coco, James began acting straight out of high school.
Born James Emil Coco in New York City, son of Feliche Coco, a shoemaker, and Ida Detestes Coco, James began acting straight out of high school.
Student, Uta Hagen Bergdorf Studios, 1960.
As an overweight and prematurely balding adult, he found himself relegated to character roles. Coco"s first modern collaboration with playwright Terrence McNally was a 1968 off Broadway double-bill of the one-act plays Sweet Eros and Witness, followed by Here"s Where I Belong, a disastrous Broadway musical adaptation of East of Eden that closed on opening night. Sixteen years later, the two would reunite for the Manhattan Theatre Club production of lieutenant"s Only a Play.
The two later joined forces for a Broadway revival of the musical Little Maine and the films Murder by (1976), The Cheap Detective (1978), and Only When I Laugh (1981), for which he was Oscar- (and Razzie-)nominated.
Coco died of a heart attack in New York City on February 25, 1987 at the age of 56. He is buried in Saint Gertrude"s Roman Catholic Cemetery in Colonia, New Jersey.