Sammy Petrillo

Sam Patrello (October 24, 1934 – August 15, 2009) was an American nightclub and movie comedian best known as a Jerry Lewis imitator.

Early life Sammy Petrillo was born Sam Patrello in The Bronx, New York City, New York, to a show-business family in which his mother, Anne Jackowitz Patrello, was Alice Faye's double, and his father, Abraham Patrello,

Petrillo, who had one younger sibling, brother Marvin, and attended the High School of Performing Arts, in Manhattan. For the climax of the show, they would announce to the audience that they would now do their impression of Martin and Lewis — followed by Petrillo playing Martin and Mitchell playing Lewis, inverting expectations.

Regardless, Allied Artists film studio offered Mitchell and Petrillo a contract, and the production company Federal Films pitched the two on a TV series. "We were offered things we turned down. We were stupid", Petrillo said in 1991. The duo did play the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, and Hollywood's famed Cocoanut Grove, and made a single TV appearance as a team, on the local L.A. program The Spade Cooley Show, starring American Western swing musician and big band leader Donnell Clyde "Spade" Cooley. Petrillo would later become head of production for the Network Film Corporation owned by Dick Randall, producer of that pilot and of several films.

Mitchell and Petrillo amicably dissolved their professional relationship in 1954, but reteamed the following year. The duo broke up for good following the highly public, July 25, 1956, breakup of Martin and Lewis. In 1959, he appeared on the talk show The Steve Allen Show, a "nudie cutie" exploitation film,

At an unspecified point, Petrillo said in 1992, he starred in a television series titled The Sammy Petrillo Show, on which ukulele novelty act Tiny Tim was a guest star. Afterward Petrillo starred in a children's TV program, Uncle Sammy; and produced and directed "a couple of infomercials" with comic actor Al "Grampa" Lewis. and wrote lyrics for the Isley Brothers' song "Angels Cried". The company was in talks to release Mitchell's 1974 movie Massacre Mafia Style, a.k.a. Like Father, Like Son, a.k.a. The Executioner, which finally appeared direct-to-video on the Video Gems label He and comedian girlfriend Suzie Perkovic, a.k.a. Suzie Fiore, became business partners,

Legacy Petrillo mentored young comics including Richard Pryor and Dennis Miller, the latter a native of Petrillo's adopted home, Pittsburgh.

One of Jerry Lewis' sons, Gary, told The New York Times upon Petrillo's death that, "When Sammy and the other guy played in that gorilla movie, I remember my dad and Dean [Martin] saying, 'We got to sue these guys — this is no good' ... Whenever there was any mention of Sammy Petrillo, it was a tense moment".

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