Sammy Petrillo

Sammy Petrillo
Petrillo (right) opposite Duke Mitchell in Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla
Pseudonym	Samuel Petrillo
Birth name	Sam Patrello
Born	(1934-10-24)October 24, 1934 The Bronx, New York, U.S.
Died	August 15, 2009(2009-08-15) (aged 74) Bronxville, New York, U.S.
Medium	Stand up, film
Nationality	American

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

Sammy Petrillo was born Sammy 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, "was a comic and a hoofer" [dancer] who performed in Catskills Mountains resorts and went by the stage name Skelly Petrillo. By age six, Sammy would sometimes join his father onstage.

Petrillo, who had one younger sibling, brother Marvin, was raised in a housing project at 143rd Street and Morris Avenue, and attended the High School of Performing Arts, in Manhattan.

In a 1992 interview, he recalled the genesis of his Jerry Lewis look:

After finagling a meeting with famed comic Milton Berle, then rehearsing at Nova Studios in New York City, Petrillo recalled, Berle sent Petrillo and Berle's agent, Herb Jaffee, to meet with Jerry Lewis at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in Manhattan. Lewis, after overcoming his initial trepidation — "Jerry said a couple of derogatory things to me", Petrillo recalled in the same interview. "He said something to the effect of, 'Don't sign any checks and tell people you're Jerry Lewis!' He wasn't being funny. He was being serious" — hired the 16-year-old Petrillo for a sketch with him on NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour television series. Petrillo rehearsed "for about a week over at the Mayflower Catering Hall on West 43rd Street", and was paid "about $60" for playing Lewis' baby in a crib, though only at the end of the sketch, in which Petrillo has no lines. The episode ran November 12, 1950.