Back in this post about the comedy team of Davis & Reese, I said that among the throngs of teams formed to try and emulate the success of Martin & Lewis, they were probably in third place after Rowan & Martin and Allen & Rossi. I got a number of e-mails from people asking about other teams like Stiller & Meara, Burns & Schreiber and even Skiles & Henderson. Those were all successful teams but (a) they came a bit later, after the rush of Dean/Jerry imitators and (b) they didn't fit the template of the handsome straight man (usually a singer) and a monkey.
Someone even asked me how I'd rank the team of Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, who were closer to Martin & Lewis than a couple of acts currently touring who bill themselves openly as Martin & Lewis impersonators. I dunno. About all that survives for inspection of Mitchell & Petrillo is the movie Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, a film I've heard folks describe as "so bad it's good." In May of 2019, I took a lady who still hasn't forgiven me to a screening of it and about fifteen minutes in, we decided it was "so bad it's bad" and got the hell outta there. But maybe on stage doing their own material — if indeed they ever had their own material to do — Duke and Sammy were terrific.
I did see Marty Allen and Steve Rossi in what I think may have been their last-ever engagement in Las Vegas. It was at the Sands Hotel about a year before there was no more Sands Hotel. I always found Marty Allen pretty funny on TV but that night at the Sands, there was only one person in the showroom laughing at him and it wasn't me. It was Steve Rossi. He acted as if every syllable out of Marty's mouth was hysterical and he kept telling us how his partner was the funniest man who ever lived. If any of that had been true, it might not have been their last engagement.