Sammy Petrillo, the Poor Man's Jerry Lewis & the Concept of Imitation and Originality

Most people are familiar with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but not a whole lot of people are still around who remember the cut-rate Martin & Lewis knockoff team of Mitchell & Petrillo. Perhaps that is because one of the few places you can see this actually somewhat amazing ripoff act is in the Z-grade budget film Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. If you can track it down, however, you can also locate the comedy duo doing their act on some of the older 1950s variety shows. The fact is that Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo were a team specifically put together to become an inexpensive alternative to the gigantically successful Martin & Lewis, but it was really Sammy Petrillo who was the star.

Sammy Petrillo had the fortune, or perhaps misfortune, of bearing a strong physical resemblance to Jerry Lewis. He was also blessed with the talent to do a dead-on imitation of the early, funnier, Jerry Lewis. If you were to put Jerry Lewis and Sammy Petrillo behind a wall and have them do the exact same shtick , you would have a hard time distinguishing between the real and the fake. Does that mean that Sammy Petrillo was just as funny as Jerry Lewis? Actually, yes. And the fact that the fake was as funny as the reality makes the existence of Sammy Petrillo in the same universe as Jerry Lewis an interesting case in the examination of what exactly separates stars from also-rans.

Consider it in terms of the phenomenon of the Elvis Presley impersonator. Clearly, drag shows have created a cottage industry for those men who get a kick out of dressing up to look like Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland and Cher. But even if you put together all the drag queens in America they would not equal all the Elvis Presley impersonators. There used to be a conspiracy theory (utilized somewhat in the film Bubba Ho-Tep) that Elvis Presley did not die, but faked his own death because he was tired of living the life of old fat Elvis and wanted to go back to his glory days. And so he reappeared a year later as an Elvis impersonator. Think about the ramifications of that if it were true. Thousands upon thousands of people paid to watch Elvis Presley perform live for the first time in their lives, but still walked away convinced it was only an impersonator. If Elvis Presley was significantly better than even the greatest Elvis impersonator, wouldn't you expect the audience to realize the difference? Especially an audience so fanatical about Elvis that they pay money to see an impersonation?

There is something of this in the idea of Sammy Petrillo being just as funny..when he is imitating Jerry Lewis. It reminds me of the shot for shot remake of Psycho from Gus Van Sant awhile back. I happen to think that both Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche were better than Tony Perkins and Janet Leigh. I understand I am in the minority here, but if you compare the sequences where Marion and Norman are talking in that little room just before she goes to her room you may understand why. In comparison to the original actors, Vaughn and Heche (especially Vaughn) traverse into more complexity. Vince Vaughn manages to give an incredibly subtle performance here that hints at the psychotic below the surface whereas Perkins just seems merely odd. Naturally, this could be due to the fact that Hitchcock was trying his level best to keep the secret of Norman Bates' mother as long as possible, whereas Gus Van Sant had the luxury of everybody already knowing the ending, but even so there are additional levels to both Vaughn and Heche's performances that go beyond the original. And yet, there is no denying that the remake is not as good as the original.

Which is really weird since it is a shot for shot remake, with a few glaring exceptions in the shower sequence. Why then does the remake not satisfy even when you think it was superior in the way of lead acting performances? Perhaps for the same reason that even though Sammy Petrillo is clearly the greatest Jerry Lewis impersonator in history and even though he is just as funny, he is not as satisfying as Jerry Lewis. Maybe it has to do with the level of material, but since Petrillo is funny even with sub-standard material, should that not mean he is a superior talent (in the art of being the manchild, not as a revolutionary film director) to Jerry Lewis. It probably should, but it doesn't. There is much credit to be given to originality.

Ultimately, the question of just why Sammy Petrillo cannot be considered in the same class of Jerry Lewis (and, again, I'm referring specifically to the character that both played essentially over and over again while they were teamed up with darkly handsome straight men) can probably never be satisfactorily answered. Sammy is clearly funny. Click here to watch him in action in Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla.