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 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 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, 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 filmThis Thing of Ours. He has also guest-starred on television series such as Vega$, Charlie's Angels, It's a Living and L.A. Law. Cooper had a legendary appearance on the Tom Snyder "Tomorrow - Coast To Coast" Show March 6, 1981 in which he decried "headliners" in the club circuit who often worked with comics as their second act. 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!.
Personal life
Pat Cooper has been married three times; he has two biological children from his first marriage to Dolores Nola and 1 adopted daughter from his second marriage to singer Patti Prince. He married Emily Connor in 2019. He is estranged from many members of his family.
