Adventures of the Fat Man

Time was, not so long ago, when to be fat, balding, unmarried and in your late 30s was to be scorned by strangers, pitied by the family and ridiculed by friends of friends. Not any more. Not, that is, if you are James Coco, a fat, balding, bachelor of 39 who opened to rave notices last week as Barney Cashman in Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Neil Simon's latest smash.

He bounces around onstage as a middle-aged New Yorker containing a wastrel screaming to be let out. Mostly he resembles an overweight wrestling coach, or the boy next door who ate too much of too many Sunday dinners. "I come from an old-fashioned Italian family, where we used to sit down for Sunday dinner at 2 and get up at 7." Which explains the 250 lbs. spread over his 5-ft. 10-in. frame. What it does not explain is how a nice, fat Italian boy from The Bronx became an overnight success on Broadway after 22 years of trying.

Flop After Flop. "I used to stand around the Strand Theater," Coco told TIME Reporter Mary Cronin, "waiting for the stars to give me their autographs. Mom and Pop could never understand it." Pop was Feliche Coco, a shoemaker; James shined shoes and generally had "a really dull childhood." At 17 he joined a children's theater and toured for three years playing Old King Cole and Hans Brinker for $40 a week. From there it was years and years of summer-stock stints, auditioning, studying and touring. Finally, he started on TV commercials. Most of his fans know him as Willy the Plumber in the Drano TV spots.

Coco spent many lean years in New York "living in $8-a-week rooms on West 57th Street and appearing in one flop after another." In between were "all the cliche jobs actors do for money: I sold tops at Gimbels, was a waiter at a milk bar under Grand Central Station." Meanwhile, he was acting (six Broadway shows, 25 off-Broadway), collecting two Obies for off-Broadway performances (The Moon in the Yellow River and Fragments), and being entirely forgotten by audiences and casting directors when his shows were over.

Next came Next, a play written for him by his friend Terrence McNally. Elaine May directed Coco in a straw-hat production, admired it and him, and brought both to New York. Who should see it in New York but Neil Simon, with one act of Lovers already written. After he saw Coco, Simon wrote the other two acts with him in mind.

Overnight Success. Luck? Talent? Both--as well as patience. "What other business in the world would you be in for over two decades and not even have a watch to show for it?" Coco asks. "Do I consider myself a success? Yes. Yes. I'm a huge, tremendous, enormous success. In fact, I may start a whole new Fat Man trend." For Coco, newfound success manifests itself in such niceties as a chauffeured limousine and the three-quarters of a million-dollar advance sale for Lovers. He also has a major role in Otto Preminger's Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, plus an offer to do the movie version of Jimmy Breslin's Mafia comedy, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. He has even hired a money manager --"The same one Neil Simon has. I can't go wrong there, can I?"

One thing that he will not do, however, is move from his three-room Greenwich Village apartment. All his friends live on his block, he says--Terrence McNally, Paddy Chayefsky, Robert Drivas, the actor, and Playwright Israel Horowitz. "We get together once a week to play poker. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else." Which sounds about as Barney Cashman as a guy can get and still be James Coco.

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