Sammy Petrillo, 1934-2009

SAMMY PETRILLO DIED THIS PAST SATURDAY, AUGUST 15th AT THE AGE OF 74.

THE FOLLOWING WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY, 2007 AFTER COMIC BOOK WRITER/EDITOR PAUL CASTIGLIA MET ACTOR/COMEDIAN SAMMY PETRILLO AT A NEW YORK COMIC CONVENTION:

Over the weekend, Sammy Petrillo, the infamous Jerry Lewis impersonator who co-starred with Dean Martin-esque partner Duke Mitchell and famous film fiend Bela Lugosi in "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla" was a guest at the Big Apple Comic Con in NYC.

I was at the con for 2 hours, mostly waiting around for Larry Storch, who never showed up while I was there (but he is supposed to be at a show in March, so I'll try again then). So I kept finding my way back to the "celebrity signings area" to check for Larry Storch, and wound up talking to Sammy Petrillo each time. Here are the highlights of our conversations:

ON BELA LUGOSI: Sammy said Bela was very "grandfatherly" and treated him like what he was - a kid (Sammy was 17 at the time they filmed the movie).

He also said that Bela was the utmost professional, and he never saw him using drugs of any kind. He said when Bela makes the big long speech about evolution and embryonic metamorphosis (which Sammy proceeded to recite a little of for me himself... in Bela's voice!), that Bela did it perfectly and in one take, and everyone on the set applauded afterward.

Sammy also relayed a story about an apartment or annex Bela had built for his son, but I missed the details because there was a lot of surrounding chatter at this point.

ON DIRECTOR WILLIAM BEAUDINE: Sammy asked if I knew what his nickname was, and I said sure, "one-take Beaudine." Sammy said that it wasn't because he was necessarily bad or watching the budget, but that he knew how to set-up stage scenes so well and prep the actors before rolling the cameras that no further takes were necessary.

Sammy also said that "comics loved working with Beaudine" because he would just let the comics go, encouraging ad-libbing. Sammy admitted that they didn't have much of a script on "Brooklyn Gorilla" and most of what you see was ad-libbed. You can see a lot of this ad-libbing in Beaudine's East Side Kids/Bowery Boys films, too.

Speaking of ad-libbing, there is a scene in "Gorilla" where Sammy slaps Bela on the back real hard, and Lugosi looks startled and a bit angry by the slap. I asked Sammy about that, and he said, "I probably ad-libbed that," stating that he was a kid (implying that he hadn't given thought to the fact that it might hurt Lugosi). Of course, the results are on film, because after his initial reaction, Lugosi the pro finishes the scene without missing a beat, so Lugosi probably wrote it off to Petrillo's being an impetuous youth.

ON BEING A NIGHTCLUB COMIC AT AGE 16: Sammy said that kids were allowed in nightclubs as long as they didn't drink. He said that back in those days he was unique because "kid comics" were all but unheard of. In fact, he said most comics were "men," so there weren't even a lot of "young men" comics working the clubs at that point (as opposed to now, where there is a slew of stand-up comics in their '20s). He also said they didn't call it "stand-up comedy" back then... you were just a comic. He said that the men comics were referred to as "funny men," as in "he's a funnyman." He said people would tell him, "You're a funny kid... one day you'll be a 'funnyman!'"

Sammy confessed that he used to steal other comics' jokes and acts (I replied, "Coming from you, that's an understatement," which made his manager laugh heartily). But Sammy went on to say that it backfired a bit, because he'd start telling wife and mother-in-law jokes he'd heard other comics do, until finally someone said to him, "you're 16 - stop with the wife & mother-in-law jokes - it doesn't work!"

ON DVD'S OF "BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA": He kept saying how much he liked the Digiview DVD of his movie, and that he couldn't believe it was only a $1! He was also impressed with the printing on the disc itself (on both Digiview and the Alpha release). He mentioned the Image disc that has the interview with him - "it was $20 when it came out but you can probably get it for less now." He signed the paper insert sleeve of my Alpha DVD but accidentally wrote, "To my Paul," instead of "To my pal, Paul," so he wrote a second autograph on one of the sheets he had there as well.

PAUL CASTIGLIA, AUGUST 17, 2009:

I’ll never forget meeting Sammy – he really was a wonderful fellow, very engaging and open to talking about “the old days” and in a way that was really interesting given that he is more “infamous” than “famous.” Sammy seemed to accept his role as a show business anomaly without a hint of bitterness. In fact, I think he rather enjoyed the irony of it all. Everyone in show business should be as nice as Sammy was to me that weekend. He’ll be missed.

The Terror-ific Third Annual Third Banana Halloween Anniversary Spooktacular Clip-O-Thon... The Third!

Excerpts from The Paul Lynde Halloween Special! I just think it's amazing that this even exists! KISS! Margaret Hamilton! Tim Conway! Billy Barty! KISS! Betty White! Donny and Marie Osmond! Billie Hayes!! KISS!! Truly one of the last gasps of old-style capital "S" Showbiz.





A rare Bela Lugosi appearance on an even rarer TV show, the 1949 video version of the radio classic Suspense. And check out the 35 year old Ray Walston!

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet: Halloween Party



Excerpts from Capulina Contra Los Monstruos (1974)



Clavillazo in El Castillo De Los Monstruos (1957)











Eegah! (1962) "Watch out for snakes!"

Popeye in Fright To the Finish (1954). You know, if standard drug store vanishing cream really did make people invisible, I think everyone would be much more cavalier about invisible people..

And take a tip from the fine folks at Centron, kids, and have a safe and paranoid Halloween! Remember homemade Halloween treats? Remember fruit? Too bad there were all those all those poisonings and hidden razor blades and.. what? That didn't happen?

And here's Centron's 1985 edition of Halloween Safety. Ramp up the dread! Pour on the paranoia!! Die, Halloween, die!!! Christ.. by 1985, we even had to worry about carving the damn pumpkin!! "Getting my insides scooped out tickles me!"

The Terror-ific Second Annual Third Banana Halloween Anniversary Spooktacular Clip-O-Thon!

Two years, 212 posts and counting, folks, and we ain't dead yet! Here are a few ghost-tastic ghoul-clips for your vampire-joyment. Boo!

Bela Lugosi performs the "Vampire Bat Illusion" with Shirley Patterson in this 1953 episode of You Asked For It. At the end, Bela references a couple of never-to-be projects: The Phantom Ghoul (in 3-D!) and a TV series, Dr. Acula ("Dracula?" asks host Art Baker. "Dracula??" replies Bela, shocked. "For heaven's sake no! Just.. Dr. Acula!").



Germán Valdés 'Tin-Tan' and his brother Manuel 'Loco' Valdés perform a spirited (ho ho!) number entitled "Un Sueño Es Solo Un Sueño" in Los Fantasmas burlones (1965). Antonio Espino 'Clavillazo' and Adalberto Martínez 'Resortes' watch from the audience. Mexicomics and in-camera effects galore! God, I love this film!

Sid Noel's Morgus the Magnificent was, in my opinion, the cleverest of the 50s-60s TV horror hosts (perhaps I should say is as Dr. Morgus is reportedly still in the game). As much as I like Ghoulardi and Zacherly, Dr. Momus Alexander Morgus tops them all thanks to Noel's wonderfully dry delivery, clever physical comedy, and his insistence on backing his character up with a performance philosophy. Based out of New Orleans, Dr. Morgus was the first horror host to star in his own regional feature, The Wacky World of Doctor Morgus, in 1962. In all, it's not a particularly good movie, but whenever the silly plot is shoved out of the way long enough for one of Dr. Morgus's lab-based set-pieces, it shines. Some of the best early-60s "sick" humor I've seen.

Atlanta TV horror host Bestoink Dooley (George Ellis) also starred in his own regional film, The Legend of Blood Mountain, in 1965. It's a jaw-dropper. Some of the boldest, most in-your-face padding in the history of film, bargain monster, awkward comedy sequences, and Groucho's girlfriend/secretary/live-in tormentor Erin Fleming in her first motion picture! It's much less a comedy than The Wacky World of Doctor Morgus, and not just because most of the comedy falls flat. They went for more scares than laughs and, unfortunately, failed to deliver either.



Here's a little stretch of padding I like to call... Bestoink Dooley Goes to Sleep!



Nighty-night! IF YOU DARE!!

A Jungle Full of Bali-Laffs!

Bill Sherman reviews the 1952 Mitchell and Petrillo epic Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla over at Pop Culture Gadabout. Check it out. Personally, I adore the film and think it's a pity Duke and Sammy just made the one picture instead of a string of Grade-Z comedies for producer Jack Broder. They couldn't have lost money at the height of Martin and Lewis Mania. Sammy's Jerry Lewis impression is, of course, amazing but Duke Mitchell, a singer with a reasonable following in 1952, comes across no great shakes here, choking out emotionless lines and looking generally disinterested in everything. However, both his singing and acting are on much better display in his very own not-to-be-missed 1978 exploitation masterpiece The Executioners, aka Massacre Mafia Style. Sage Stallone (Sylvester's son) and Jeffery Duke Mitchell (Duke's son) are reportedly helping to get Duke's lost Executioners sequel Gone With the Pope (!!) restored and released to DVD through Grindhouse Releasing.

The Third Banana One Year Anniversary/100th Post/Halloween Spectacular!

One year! One-hundred posts!! Halloween!!! And that all spells one thing!

HANS CONRIED!!!

Well, it does.. when you think about it. And so I'm happy to present (courtesy These Records Are BenT!) Hans' 1959 monster-themed novelty album Monster Rally. This album must have taken only days to record and Hans was probably in the studio for only one of those. The tracks are actually split between Hans, an RCA studio vocal ensemble billed as "The Creatures", and the nasal-voiced Alice Pearce. Pearce is best remembered today as the original Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched ("ABNER!!! LOOK!! On the Stevens's roof!!"), but was once an acclaimed Broadway and nightclub comedienne in her own right and even had her own TV variety show on ABC in 1949. The album is really just an excuse to have Hans sing Sheb Wooley's "Flying Purple People Eater", the original recording of which was number one for six weeks the previous year, but the rest of his tracks are just as much, if not more, fun.. especially "Not of This Earth", a smooth lounge ode from Hans to his extraterrestrial lover.

Her lips are formed with tempting grace.
I only wish that they were on her face.

Hans gets the science fiction-themed songs while Alice gets the horror stuff.. and, for some reason, it all seems very appropriate. You'll find Monster Rally here.

And dig this, hepcats.. The very first cartoon Hans ever contributed voice work to, Dick Lundy's Sliphorn King of Polaroo (1945). Funny or not, the Walter Lantz studio was far and away the jazziest cartoon studio of the 1940s (the Fleischers held the mantle during the 1930s with contributions from such talents as Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong). Jack Teagarden himself is responsible for the trombone solos in Sliphorn King. Conried was at Lantz for just a short while, contributing voice work to this and one Woody Woodpecker cartoon, Woody Dines Out (1945) before being drafted.



And why stop there? It take it back that a first anniversary/100 posts/Halloween just spells Hans Conried! It also spells

ADMIRAL HALSEY!!!

And, to a slightly greater degree

BELA LUGOSI!!!

Bela was, of course, every comic's favorite straightghoul during the 1940s and early 50s. Always grateful for work, Bela was more than happy to lampoon his horror image, ultimately closing out his career with a comedy revue at the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas in 1954 (four shows a night!!). In movies, he appeared most famously opposite Abbott and Costello in 1948, but he also made appearances with the East Side Kids (twice), the Ritz Brothers, Brown and Carney (twice), Mitchell and Petrillo, Jack Haley, Arthur "Old Mother Riley" Lucan, and, whether you consider him a comedian or not, Kay Kyser. It has to be said that Lugosi was much better suited to self-lampooning than Karloff whose performances never left any doubt in your mind that he was an actor through-and-through.. from London, no less. Lugosi's dark looks and exotic accent, given a further boost from the spooky tall tales he delighted in telling reporters about his dark Hungarian past, gave Lugosi an air of mystery that Karloff simply lacked. For many, it really did seem as though Bela had a touch of the grave about him and so, under the best of circumstances, the lampooning automatically had a bit of an edge to it. But that's under the best of circumstances. Unfortunately, Bela probably returned to that particular well a few too many times. It was as if Richard Nixon not only did the "sock it to me!" gag on Laugh-In!, but came back the next season as a regular castmember. At any rate, Lugosi had it both ways on radio, doing the vampire shtick alongside Fred Allen and Abbott and Costello and turning in solid performances on Suspense and Crime Does Not Pay. His greatest opportunity in radio was Bela Lugosi's Mystery House which sadly never made it past the audition disc. Recorded sometime in the late 40s, Bela Lugosi's Mystery House is like a "Monogram Studios of the Air" and even features John Carradine in support! The story, "The Thirsty Death", was announced to be the first of a series of adaptations of plays from the Grand Guignol in Paris, although I have serious doubts that it's a genuine Guignol play. Nonetheless, Lugosi is absolutely terrific, turning in a wonderful blood-and-thunder performance that is well suited to the material. You can listen to Bela Lugosi's Mystery House here. And if funny Lugosi is more your speed, here he is on the Fred Allen Show in 1943. And get a load of this 1949 clip of Bela with Milton Berle on the Texaco Star Theater! Bela is clearly having a blast! If Ted Healy had been alive, he would have sued Berle for stealing his personality.

And can anyone establish the provenance of this 1950s snapshot of Bela? Is this a shot from the Dragnet spoof from the aforementioned Bela Lugosi Revue? In its own way, this is the scariest image of Bela ever to see print. Never forget, folks.. Comedy is where the real terror is. Happy Halloween, everybody!

A Very Merry Christmas to You and Yours!

In honor of the Christmas season, I'm presenting this Christmas-y two-page Film Fun comic from 1954 featuring Arthur Lucan, aka Old Mother Riley. Be sure to check out Martyn Peter Wilkinson's Old Mother Riley tribute site. It's chock full of info about Britain's most popular pre-Dame Edna drag act, but is disappointingly short on details regarding Lucan's nightmarish marriage to stage "daughter" and manager Kitty McShane. I highly recommend Frank Dello Stritto and Andi Brooks' Vampire Over London: Bela Lugosi In Britain for a recounting of the filming of Lucan's last feature, Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952), that'll make your hair stand on end. Lucan collapsed and died in the wings just before making his entrance in Old Mother Riley in Paris at the Tivoli Theatre, Hull, in 1954.

click the thumbnails

Obscure Vintage Comedies Ate My Brain: The Halloween Edition

Mummy's Boys (1936): Bill Sherman covered this one pretty thoroughly last week, but I'm going to add my two cents just the same. Bob Woolsey smoothtalks himself and his pal Bert Wheeler into a Egyptian expedition that hopes to return "cursed treasure" that has been blamed for a series of mysterious deaths (a la Lord Carnarvon). Is the cause truly supernatural? Nope. After being chased endlessly around an Egyptian tomb by a phoney mummy with a syringe full of poison (it's a fairly nasty idea when you think about it, but it's played for laughs just the same), Bert and Bob reveal the real killer to be the guy you suspected since frame one. This is far from Wheeler and Woolsey's best, but it's not the disaster it has been painted by biographer Edward Watz. Woolsey's aggressively "ugly American" behavior in Egypt is so broad that it comes across as a self-parody, and the running gag about Bert's need to take quick naps (anywhere, anytime) to clear up his faulty memory is worth a few genuine laughs. And, like almost all RKO Wheeler and Woolsey pictures, Mummy's Boys looks very good. Most importantly, it's the first of a genre. Although short "scare" comedies had long been popular (with the ghosts and ghouls invariably revealed to be ordinary mortals up to no good), this is the first example of the wisecracking comics v. monster(s) feature format that would reach its apex with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948 (and which would be a staple of Mexican filmmaking through the early 1970s).

El Signo de la muerte (1939): The mother of all Mexican horror spoofs, a genre the Mexican film industry went further with than anyone else ever dared. A wizard with a line in Aztec sorcery must sacrifice four virgins in order to raise the spirit of Quetzalcoatl. By day, he's an anthropologist and his assistant is a very young Cantinflas, so new to films that he doesn't even have his famous costume together yet. This rather lavish-looking Mexican horror comedy also features topless women and some genuine gore.. in 1939! Clearly there way no Mexican equivalent of the Hays Office to contend with. Cantinflas actually shares top billing with comedian Medel who looks and acts as if he just stepped out of a 1916 Keystone comedy. Some sequences in El Signo de la muerte are worthy of a "straight" horror film, something that can't be said for most, if not all, other classic Mexican horror-spoofs.


Zombies On Broadway (1945): Brown and Carney, the Un-comedy team, are publicity agents for gangster Sheldon Leonard (who else?) who threatens to t'row dem t'roo da door an out da winda unless they come up with the live zombie they promised for the grand opening of his new theme-club, The Zombie Hut. Zombies are really popular! So Brown and Carney are forced at gunpoint to go to the Caribbean island of San Sebastian to find one. A knife-throwing dancer, Anne Jeffreys, promises to lead the uncomics to some zombies in return for their help getting her off the island, but they all end up getting abducted after B&C disrupt a Zombie Ceremony (with hilarious consequences). They find themselves prisoners in the jungle castle of Bela Lugosi, a mad scientist who has developed a short-term zombie-making serum. Bela makes eyes at Anne and makes the hapless comics dig their own graves.. but they're so dumb, they don't even realize it!! (ha ha he ho!). In one genuinely creepy scene, B&C do their take on Abbott and Costello's the-comic-sees-the-ghost-but-the-straightman-doesn't-believe-him shtick. After much dialogue to the effect of "JERRY!! I SAW IT!!!" and "Aw, yer nuts.", Carney is stealthily abducted out of his bed by Zombie Darby Jones, zombified by Bela, and placed back in the bed, now with CREEPY, BULGY ZOMBIE EYES! When the Zombie comes back for Brown (whose back was turned when Carney was abducted), he's carried from the room screaming "MIKE!! I BELIEVE YOU NOW!! MIKE!!!" That would be unnerving enough, but then the camera cuts back to Zombie Carney in bed, staring at nothing with his big, fake eyeballs, and he suddenly cracks this weird little half-smile. It's creepy. I'm not kidding. Long story short, Bela gets brained with a shovel by his pet Zombie before he gets a chance to zombify Anne Jeffreys, and Jeffreys and Brown head back to the US with Zombie Carney in tow as the promised live zombie for Leonard's silly club. But the serum wears off before Leonard gets to see his new zombie! A fight breaks out and Leonard somehow ends up getting injected with Zombie Juice. He's his own featured attraction! It's a hoot! And then Brown ends up sitting on the syringe full of zombie serum and HE becomes a bulgy-eyed zombie! Big laff finish! Intentional or not, this is one of the only classic horror comedies that has anything in it resembling genuine scares. And it had better, because, unlike most classic horror comedies, it has nothing in it resembling genuine comedy. Like RKO's previous, legit zombie picture, Jacques Tourneur's I Walked With A Zombie (1943), ZOB is very atmospheric and the cinematography is terrific. If Brown and Carney were an actual comedy team rather than an amazingly lifelike simulation of one, Zombies On Broadway would be a classic counterpoint to Tourneur's film. It isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's no time-waster, either.


Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952): I love Mitchell and Petrillo and I don't care if the whole world knows it. Sammy Petrillo does a more than credible Jerry Lewis impression and while Duke Mitchell may be no substitute for Dean Martin, he's not really trying to be. And I personally don't think his singing is so bad (he got much better; see his 1978 magnum opus The Executioner). Sammy and Duke accidentally parachute onto a tropical island where they meet some "natives" and where Bela Lugosi's mad scientist has set up his lab in yet another jungle castle. Lugosi's scheme this time around is to create a formula that will reverse the evolutionary process and/or turn things into gorillas. Meanwhile, Duke falls for native girl Nona (Charlita) while Sammy is fallen for by Charlita's sister Saloma, the very cute Muriel Landers. She's fat and he runs from her which equals comedy. Jealous of all the time Duke spends belting tunes at Nona, Bela turns Duke into Ray "Crash" Corrigan in a gorilla costume (that's Crash groaning a few bars of "Do I Love You" out of that suit) for most of the movie. After much running around, Bela attempts to shoot Duke/Crash/Gorilla, but instead kills Sammy who throws himself in front of the bullet (when screening this film at Paramount, Jerry Lewis reportedly yelled out "Thank GOD!!"). I believe this sequence is intended to be dramatic and very serious. But it's ALL A DREAM! Sammy fell asleep in his nightclub dressing room and all the people in his dream are there, Wizard of Oz-style (Bela is the nightclub manager!). What's worrisome is that Sammy seems to recognize everybody from their "dream" personas and not their "real" ones.. even his own girlfriend, Muriel Landers, who turns out to be a very good kisser, is a total stranger to him. Duke and Sammy swing into their song-and-patter nightclub act despite Sammy's clearly fragile mental state. Some say producer Jack Broder made this film with the expectation that Paramount would pay him more than the cost of production to keep it off the market. I don't buy it. Broder may have considered the idea after the thing was in the can, but I don't believe for a second that he made Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla intending to have it destroyed. In any case, it's not a bad little horror comedy and has plenty of built-in exploitation angles that were played to the hilt by neighborhood theaters in the 1950s. Incidentally, BLMABG was written by Tim Ryan, a comedian who was teamed for years in poverty-row comedies and vaudeville with his wife Irene as a kind of low-rent Burns and Allen. Irene Ryan found lasting fame as Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies.


El Castillo de los monstruos (1958): The best Mexican horror spoof I've seen. This epic pits Antonio Espino "Clavillazo", the Man with the Eloquent Hands, against a vampire (German Robles again) , a Frankenstein's monster ("Frentestein"), a mummy, a gillman ("La repugnante Bestia de la Laguna Seca"), TWO wolfmen, and a mad scientist, all in a castle.. hence the title. Village undertaker Clavillazo befriends a pretty young widow, Evangelina Elizondo, and temporarily gives her his own ramshackle apartment while she looks for work. Unfortunately, she has also caught the eye of the village mad scientist and it isn't long before she's abducted and hypnotized into believing herself "Galatea". It's up to Clavillazo to rescue her from the doctor's castle, but first he has to defeat the doctor's ARMY OF MONSTERS. Clavillazo is extremely good here and has a series of beautifully-timed comic set pieces, the best of which have nothing whatsoever to do with the titular monsters. A sequence in which he serenades Elizondo by miming to a love song on a transistor radio is particularly charming (and very funny when his friends change the station and he's forced to keep pace). Antonio Espino is one of those comedians who by all rights should have been an international success in his day, and yet he retired from the screen in his prime, going down with the rest of the Mexican film industry. I'd love to know his story. It's a pity that Columbia held on the US distribution for El Castillo de los monstruos and thus kept it out of the hands of K. Gordon Murray. This would have been an indispensable addition to Murray's package of dubbed Mexican horror pictures.


Los fantasmas burlones (1965): FOUR Mexican comedians for the price of one, mostly because all of their careers were on the downturn in 1965, along with the Mexican film industry. Clavillazo, the genius pantomimist and catchphrase delivery-system, stars along with goofy eccentric dancer Resortes as a pair of carnival mind readers/fortune tellers who accidentally conjure up two genuine ghosts: Tin-Tan (the second most famous Mexicomic of all) and his brother Loco Valdez (who most famously played The Big Bad Wolf in Mexican fairy tale movies). Tin-Tan none-too-convincingly plays an Englishman, Ludovico Churchill, and Loco is an 18th Century French dandy. These historical roles are meaningless, however, and eventually get lost in the shuffle as Tin-Tan and Loco steal suits, run amok in the amusement park and make time with Clavillazo and Resortes' girlfriends. The film is loaded with comedy musical numbers, mostly from other movies (resulting, at one point, in Resortes suddenly becoming eight years younger and losing his mustache). There's an absolutely amazing Around The World Tribute to Ethnic Stereotypes number which features Tin-Tan and Loco as, among others, stereotyped Chinamen (in Japan), Egyptians, and Greeks, and Loco performs "Witch Doctor", transforming himself at intervals into a Witch Doctor, a fey cupid, and a Nazi (!!!!). Brain-melting, Mexican comedy overload, with more catchy pop songs, low-budget ghost FX and carnival atmosphere than thirty such lesser films. You don't need to understand a word of Spanish to enjoy this, but it helps.