Absurdity
Jerry Lewis Impersonator Who Outlived Jerry Lewis Now Has More Biographies Than Jerry Lewis
By Jeff Garstein, . BSN Network. Satire.
Jerry Lewis died in 2017. He made approximately 60 films, invented a style of physical comedy that the French government considered a matter of national security, and has still, as of this week, not received a single full-length biography.
Sammy Petrillo, who looked like Jerry Lewis and was paid to do so on at least one documented occasion, now has one.
Your Time Is Now: The Sammy Petrillo Story, released this week with cover art by illustrator Drew Friedman, chronicles the life and career of a man whose primary professional qualification was a genetic coincidence. Petrillo's most famous credit is Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, a 1952 film that answers the question nobody asked about what would happen if Jerry Lewis had a twin, the twin had fewer prospects, and Bela Lugosi needed the money.
For the record, Bela Lugosi also did not need the money badly enough to explain the decision, and historians have been working on it for 70 years.
Petrillo did not merely impersonate Lewis once and move on with his life. He committed. The resemblance was physical, vocal, and, by most accounts, professionally total. Lewis, for his part, was not delighted. The degree to which Lewis was not delighted has been described by people who were in the room as "significant," "sustained," and "consistent across several decades."
None of that stopped Petrillo from continuing to exist, which in the comedy impersonator business is actually considered a win.
Drew Friedman, the illustrator whose cover graces the biography, is known for painted portraits of entertainers, fringe celebrities, and figures from the exact category of American showbiz that exists just below the level where anyone's publicist returns calls. His decision to commit his considerable talent to commemorating Sammy Petrillo is either a profound statement about the margins of fame or the most efficient use of caricature skills since someone first noticed that two people could look alike and one of them could charge admission.
Probably both.
The biography itself raises a question that nobody has asked in the seven years since Lewis died, which is whether a life spent in the shadow of someone else's face is more or less interesting than the face itself. Based on the fact that there is a book about Petrillo and not about Lewis, the publishing industry has rendered a verdict.
Petrillo was 91 years old when he died in 2020, which means he outlived Lewis by three years. During those three years, he was the only remaining Jerry Lewis, which is a sentence that has never appeared in print before and probably should not have appeared now.
Your Time Is Now is available wherever books are sold, including, presumably, bookstores that are legally distinct from other bookstores but could be mistaken for them from a distance.
The story we are making fun of: https://boingboing.net/2026/09/22/sammy-petrillo-your-time-is-now.html