1. 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, "was a comic and a hoofer" [dancer] who performed in Catskills Mountains resorts and went by the stage name Skelly Petrillo.
Sammy 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.
Sammy Petrillo said in a 1991 interview that a favorable writeup in the trade paper Variety prompted Lewis to have Sammy Petrillo sign with Lewis' talent agency, MCA.
Sammy Petrillo's father got Petrillo, a minor, released from his MCA contract.
Sammy Petrillo went on to perform comedy once more on The Colgate Comedy Hour, in a sketch with host Eddie Cantor, and appeared on NBC's Four Star Revue with the comedy team of Olsen and Johnson; NBC's Texaco Star Theater, starring Berle; ABC's Stop the Music; and several local New York City quiz shows and variety shows.
On one such local show, the seminal late-night television program Seven at Eleven, Sammy Petrillo met singer George DeWitt, emcee of the NBC musical quiz series Name That Tune.
Sammy 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.
Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo returned to nightclub work but, according to Sammy Petrillo, Lewis threatened to boycott anyone who booked them and club owners caved in, not wishing to spoil their chances of someday hiring Martin and Lewis.
In 1953, Sammy Petrillo, solo, guest-starred in a TV pilot, Wings for Hire, starring Lawrence Tierney and filmed in Florida.
Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo amicably dissolved their professional relationship in 1954, but reteamed the following year.
For Randall's Network Film Corporation, Sammy Petrillo produced and co-wrote the 1958 NBC television special Holiday in Brussels, mixed NBC footage from the Brussels World's Fair, with Sammy Petrillo shooting additional of New York City's Central Park standing in for the Belgian capital.
Sammy Petrillo starred in producer Randall's low-budget Shangri-La, a "nudie cutie" exploitation film, and after appearing on the set of his director friend Joseph Green's The Brain That Wouldn't Die, played a cheesecake photographer, earning $90 for the improvised scene.
Sammy Petrillo again starred opposite Lawrence Tierney, in Randall's uncompleted or unreleased Unholy Alliance, filmed in and around a Catskills Mountains resort.
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.
Sammy Petrillo wrote a TV-series treatment, titled "My Daddy Was a Monster", that served as the basis for the 1960s sitcom The Munsters, and wrote lyrics for the Isley Brothers' song "Angels Cried".
Also that year, Sammy Petrillo dubbed the voice of a seaside CEO, "Mr Boden", in the New World Pictures horror movie Humanoids from the Deep.
Sammy Petrillo twice appeared as a guest in 1988 and 1991 on Beyond Vaudeville.
Sammy Petrillo recalled in 1991 that he shortly afterward received a call from bookers at the NBC talk show Late Night with David Letterman, on which Lewis was scheduled to appear; Sammy Petrillo said they asked him to make a surprise appearance, and that he turned down the offer.
In 1997, Sammy Petrillo appeared in the documentary Bela Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula.
Sammy Petrillo is buried at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.
Sammy Petrillo, who remained active performing standup comedy, mentored young comics including Richard Pryor and Dennis Miller, the latter a native of Sammy Petrillo's adopted home, Pittsburgh.