Pat Cooper (born Pasquale Caputo July 31, 1929) is an American actor and comedian.
Cooper started performing in the 1950s, originally for primarily Italian-American audiences. His big break came in 1963 on The Jackie Gleason Show. Afterwards, he played the top nightclubs such as the 500 Club, Latin Casino, Palumbo’s, Atlantic City and Las Vegas Hotels and casinos. Cooper would appear on the same shows as Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Durante, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Sergio Franchi, Sammy Davis Jr., Connie Francis, Bobby Darin, Tony Martin and many others.
On May 2, 1969, Cooper and singer Jimmy Roselli premiered in their two-man show at Broadway’s Palace Theatre, New York. He has performed at celebrity roasts at the New York Friars Club which he also played in an episode of Seinfeld titled “The Friar’s Club” and was also a frequent guest on many radio shows, most notably The Howard Stern Show, Imus in the Morning and Opie and Anthony.
Billboard Magazine gave his album Our Hero (1965) a special merit review and said that it “does for the Italian-American community what Jackie Mason did for the Jewish-American community” The following year it stated that his Spaghetti Sauce and Other Delights (1966), an album which consists of one side of spoken comedy and one side of parody songs, was stronger than Our Hero.
Cooper played fictional mobster Salvatore Masiello in the film Analyze This and in the sequel Analyze That, as well as playing lawyer, John Bruno in the 2003 film This Thing of Ours. He has also guest-starred on television series such as Vega$ (episode: “Deadly Blessings”), Charlie’s Angels (episode: “Stuntwomen Angels”), It’s a Living (episodes: “You’re Not Old, You’re Fired” and “Horsing Around”) and L.A. Law (episode: “Foreign Co-respondent”).
He was an occasional contributor to Colin Quinn’s late-night show on Comedy Central, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. In 2005, he released a DVD called You’re Always Yelling and in 2010, he co-authored with Steve Garrin and Rich Herschlag his autobiography called How Dare You Say How Dare Me!.
His father, Michael Caputo, was a bricklayer from Mola di Bari, Italy and his mother, Louise Gargiulo was born in Brooklyn, New York, where Cooper was born and raised. Cooper often makes reference to his Italian heritage in his stand up comedy routines.
Cooper has been married twice; he has two children from his first marriage and one adopted daughter from his second marriage to singer Patti Prince. He is estranged from many members of his family and former close friends.