A son of Manhattan’s Little Italy, James Emil Coco spent his formative years in the Pelham Bay neighborhood of the Bronx, the rotund, prematurely balding Coco was nobody’s idea of a movie star, but a string of on and off-Broadway successes beginning in the late ’50s and ’60s made Hollywood take notice, and beginning with 1964’s Ensign Pulver, Coco emerged as an MVP-caliber supporting player. Whether playing a pitch perfect Sancho Panza in 1972’s Man of La Mancha, Walter Matthau’s wicked WASP uncle in Elaine May’s 1971 A New Leaf, or an unlikely love interest in Otto Preminger’s May-scripted Such Good Friends of the same year, Coco’s orotund enunciation and crack comic timing elevated any film he appeared in—so join us in celebrating the legacy of this Bronx boy made good.