Pat Cooper was born Pasquale Vito Caputo on July 31, 1929, in
Coney Island, Brooklyn and grew up in the nearby neighborhoods of
Midwood and
Red Hook. He was drafted into the
Army in 1952 and was stationed at
Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He was discharged with
hammer toe, the result of wearing shoes that were too small as a child. Cooper started performing in the 1950s. His big break came in 1963 on
The Jackie Gleason Show. In the early 1960s he Americanized his name to Pat Cooper. In 1966, he was pictured sitting on a chair covered in spaghetti and pasta sauce for
Spaghetti Sauce and Other Delights (a parody of the
Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass album,
Whipped Cream & Other Delights, in which a woman is sitting on a chair covered in whipped cream), an album that consists of one side of spoken comedy and one side of parody songs;
Billboard described it as stronger than
Our Hero. In May 1969, Cooper and singer
Jimmy Roselli premiered in their two-man show at
Broadway's
Palace theater in New York City. During the 1970s, Cooper was a frequent guest on
The Mike Douglas Show and also appeared on
The Merv Griffin Show and
The Dean Martin Show. Cooper 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 wrote his autobiography entitled How Dare You Say How Dare Me!'' ==Personal life and death==