Biography

Sam Patrello was an American nightclub and movie comedian best known as a Jerry Lewis imitator. Born in The Bronx to a show-business family, he began working on stage by the age of six. Petrillo went on to perform comedy on The Colgate Comedy Hour, NBC's Four Star Revue, Texaco Star Theater, ABC's Stop the Music; and several local New York City quiz shows and variety shows.

Petrillo relocated to Los Angeles, California, where he eventually teamed with singer Duke Mitchell for a successful nightclub act approximating the popular Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis team. In addition to impersonating Martin & Lewis, Petrillo mimicked other film stars and cartoon characters, and Mitchell would sing in the styles of Frankie Laine, Vaughn Monroe, and Billy Daniels, among others. 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.

In 1952, Mitchell and Petrillo starred opposite aged screen legend Bela Lugosi and the latest incarnation of the Tarzan film-series chimpanzee Cheeta in a low-budget, jungle-themed comedy, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (also known as The Boys From Brooklyn).

By 1991, Petrillo was living in Pittsburgh, where he ran a family-oriented comedy club, The Nut House. Petrillo, who remained active performing standup comedy, mentored young comics including Richard Pryor and Dennis Miller, the latter a native of Petrillo's adopted home, Pittsburgh. On August 15, 2009, Petrillo died of colon cancer at age 74.
- IMDb mini biography by: Frank Durant

Actor/comedian who made a career out of being a Jerry Lewis look-and-sound-alike, so much so that Jerry almost sued him. After a lifetime of working on the fringes of show business, he successfully ran a comedy nightclub, the Nut House, in his adopted home town of Pittsburgh for many years. In that capacity he gave both Richard Pryor and Dennis Miller their starts, and both spoke well of him over the years.

Part of a nightclub act with Duke Mitchell, a singer who sounded like Dean Martin.

[on accepting his lot as a performer] A lot of people are doing jobs that they're not really happy doing. But it's nice to dream--it's nice to do what you can do, when you can do it, for some kind of fulfillment. Just living and being able to pay your bills and being able to eat--that's a form of success in itself. People who strive to do show biz but still do regular type jobs and they have to do show business on the side, there still is a fulfillment in that. There's an old saying and I believe in it--"Each show that you do is a success within itself". Whether you perform for 100,000 people or for two people--to make them happy and to be able to lift them into another world momentarily--that's a form of success.