Sammy Petrillo(1934-2009)

Actor/comedian who made a career out of being a Jerry Lewis look-and-sound-alike, so much so that Jerry almost sued him. After a lifetime of working on the fringes of show business, he successfully ran a comedy nightclub, the Nut House, in his adopted home town of Pittsburgh for many years. In that capacity he gave both Richard Pryor and Dennis Miller their starts, and both spoke well of him over the years.

[on accepting his lot as a performer] A lot of people are doing jobs that they're not really happy doing. But it's nice to dream--it's nice to do what you can do, when you can do it, for some kind of fulfillment. Just living and being able to pay your bills and being able to eat--that's a form of success in itself. People who strive to do show biz but still do regular type jobs and they have to do show business on the side, there still is a fulfillment in that. There's an old saying and I believe in it--"Each show that you do is a success within itself". Whether you perform for 100,000 people or for two people--to make them happy and to be able to lift them into another world momentarily--that's a form of success.