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

[3] Petrillo, who had one younger sibling, brother Marvin,[2] was raised in a housing project at 143rd Street and Morris Avenue,[4] and attended the High School of Performing Arts, in Manhattan.

[3] In a 1992 interview, he recalled the genesis of his Jerry Lewis look: One day I went down to the Annex at the High School of Performing Arts.

Lewis, after overcoming his initial trepidation — "Jerry said a couple of derogatory things to me", Petrillo recalled in the same interview.

[3] On one such local show, the seminal late-night television program Seven at Eleven, Petrillo met singer George DeWitt, emcee of the NBC musical quiz series Name That Tune.

Forming a nightclub team, the duo played at such major spots as the Paramount Theatre and the Copacabana in New York, and the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, disbanding there.

[4]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.

[5] In 1952, movie producer Jack Broder, president of Realart Pictures, hired Mitchell and Petrillo to star 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).

[7] 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.

[7] In 1953, Petrillo, solo, guest-starred in a TV pilot, Wings for Hire, starring Lawrence Tierney and filmed in Florida.

[7] For Randall's Network Film Corporation, Petrillo produced and co-wrote the 1958 NBC television special Holiday in Brussels, mixed NBC footage from the Brussels World's Fair, with Petrillo shooting additional of New York City's Central Park standing in for the Belgian capital.

[4] He starred in producer Randall's low-budget Shangri-La (1961),[11] a "nudie cutie" exploitation film,[10] and after appearing on the set of his director friend Joseph Green's The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962), played a cheesecake photographer, earning $90 for the improvised scene.

[10] In 1963, Randall released two comedy albums featuring Petrillo: All About Cleopatra, capitalizing on the Cleopatra craze of the time, and also featuring Will Jordan, Joel Holt, and Dave Shor; and My Son the Phone Caller, a collection of humorous, real-life crank telephone calls.

[10] Petrillo again starred opposite Lawrence Tierney, in Randall's uncompleted or unreleased Unholy Alliance, filmed in and around a Catskills Mountains resort.

Gyorfy utilized the talents of one of his high school students, Mike Hart, at the age of 17 as assistant director and he helped re-write part of the script.

Wishman's next film was the cult classic Deadly Weapons, starring the stupendously endowed big-bust stripper Chesty Morgan, who was handled by the same agent as Petrillo.

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.

In 1980, Petrillo and standup comic Adam Keith starred in a sketch-comedy film, Out to Lunch, produced by J. G. Tiger in association with Paul Tongue and which "played around New York".

[14] Also that year, Petrillo dubbed the voice of a seaside CEO, "Mr. Boden", in the New World Pictures horror movie Humanoids from the Deep.