NEW YORK -- James Coco, the portly, sad-eyed star of stage and screen, had just filmed a television episode of 'Who's the Boss' and was working on a movie when he was stricken with a fatal heart attack, his publicist said Thursday.
Coco, who lived in Greenwich Village, died at St. Vincent's Hospital Wednesday night. He was 56.
Coco struggled for years as an actor in New York before winning fame in 1969 as the star of the Neil Simon play 'Last of the Red Hot Lovers.'
Most recently, Coco had completed filming 'The Chair,' a movie shot in Newark, N.J., last summer and yet to be released, and was in the midst of a new movie titled, 'Rented Lips,' publicist Mark Schlegel said.
As recently as Tuesday, Coco had made a guest appearance on the television situation comedy 'Who's the Boss,' Schlegel said.
Coco was taken by ambulance to St. Vincent's after suffering a heart attack about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. Members of his familly went with Coco to the hospital and were with him when he died.
Funeral arrangements were incomplete Thursday.
Coco, the son of a shoemaker, was born in New York's Little Italy on March 21, 1930. He won an Emmy for his performance in the television show 'St. Elsewhere' and starred in the highly regarded but unsuccessful TV series 'Calucci's Department' in 1974.
The once hefty actor wrote the best-selling diet book 'The James Coco Diet' in 1984 with co-author Marion Paone.
He starred in such movies as 'Such Good Friends,' 'Man of La Mancha,' 'Junie Moon' and 'The Wild Party,' in which he dropped from 320 to 260 pounds to play the role of Fatty Arbuckle, among others.
Coco won an off-Broadway Obie in 1959 for his portrayal of a humorless German scientist n 'The Moon in the Yellow River.' He won a second Obie in 1967 in Murray Schisgal's 'Fragments.'
Later films included 'The Cheap Detective' in 1978, 'Only When I Laugh' in 1981 and 'The Muppets Take Manhattan' in 1984.
