Back With Brooklyn Gorillas

A guy named Steve Calvert played the titular gorilla in Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. He'd bought the skin from Ray "Crash" Corrigan, a previous ape-enactor. Steve tended bar for a day job, according to the Tom Weaver/Herman Cohen sit-down. How many tavern keeps kept gorilla pelts for such moonlighting occasion? Alex Gordon assumed majordomo duty for Lugosi, holding his cigar off-camera and such. Alex was acutely sensitive to indignities visited upon his idol, Duke/Sammy being a continual affront. To my eyes, "Poor Bela" was here well in front of Poorest Bela of Black Sleep and state in-patient ordeal. He's in command and dwarfs the comics (tall guy, that BL). Maybe there was adlibbing on their part, but Lugosi grooves with it. He also streams pages of gobbledygook dialogue without a hitch. Unlike Alex, I never found myself pitying an old duffer ritually degraded. To the contrary, Bela seemed equal to whatever Gals, Goofs, and Gags (see the trailer) got thrown at him.

Scott MacGillivray and Ted Okuda did a nifty interview with Sammy Petrillo for Filmfax # 53. SP remembered Duke being "like a father" and about eight years his senior. Unlike Dean and Jerry, these two stayed friends. Herman Cohen said Jerry came over to Realart and got in a cuss fight with Jack Broder. Big-shot Hal Wallis wanted a piece of Jack too for imperiling jack the former was hauling out of Martin/Lewis tills. But for Broder's integrity (and the fact Wallis didn't offer enough for the negative) BLMBG might have been sold to the senior-league producer and destroyed. That certainly was Hal's objective. Reflect then, upon Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla sharing with Citizen Kane more than mere greatness. Both came perilously close to being lost forever to us!



A Pressbook So Hurriedly Done As To
Mix Up The Photo Captions

1952 trades treated Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla like something smelly in the punch bowl. Wagons circled to deny legitimacy to Broder's effort. Variety saw "irony" in Jerry having given Sammy Petrillo a spot on his Colgate Hour, and now comes the upstart  poaching Lewis (and Paramount) preserves. Hal Wallis' calling for a print of BLMBG was reported, much as President Truman might have ordered his next White House screening. Well after all, 'twas players like Wallis and Paramount who were buying ad space in Variety, not low spades of Broder ilk (I looked, but found no trade ads for BLMBG). Carbon copies never pay off, said I Love Lucy scribe Carroll Carroll to Variety columnist Jack Hellman. He was put out with Lucy/Desi and other acts being aped: Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis will still be great when Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo are just two names in the phone book, said the truculent team-player.

Jack Broder managed a tail-end of August '52 opening for Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla at Broadway's House Of Horror, the Rialto. Duke and Sammy were thrilled enough to head down on their own dime from Jersey club-dates for fan signings and patron greets. Hadn't Dean and Jerry lately stopped traffic on Broadway? Hal Wallis office this week was reported doing a burn over the promotion build-up given (the) indie pic, said Variety, and insult to injury here was the Rialto blowing up news articles about the tiff and lobby-displaying them. Broder boasted of legal threats he'd gotten, and Duke/Sammy had temerity to deny "any resemblance" between their act and Dean/Jerry's. Broder called the mirror images "coincidental," and said he'd like to do follow-ups with Realart's new fun-makers. Duke Mitchell showed his magnanimity thus: We're not trying to take anything from them (Martin and Lewis). We plan to continue in this business and we think the public accepts us on our own talent.

Variety's review put the stiletto in deep, calling BLMBG a  clumsily titled film that reaches hard for laughs which seldom eventuate (sez them!). M&P's copy of M&L was totally without success. They said Sammy lacked Jerry's "polish" (Wha?). Jack Broder meanwhile sought a co-feature to support wider release of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. What he got was Brit-made House Of Darkness, "a psychological murder film" with Laurence Harvey and Leslie Brooks. Broder wanted into first-run Los Angeles sooner, but faced a seeming embargo on "B" product in that crowded territory. Other low cost pics were finished but unable to get bookings, RKO's Tim Holt western Overland Telegraph and Bob Lippert's Tales Of Robin Hood among small-fry that would wait a year for LA playdates. Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla squeezed into four houses for mid-October play with Untamed Women, an independent with perhaps more marquee sizzle than plainer House Of Darkness. Grosses for the pair were strictly from hunger ... a first week the last week at three of the venues, with a "thin" $9,500 counted (compare that with $60,000 MGM's Ivanhoe took in two theatres during the same frame).

Soft was most subsequent biz, Buffalo in November with $8,000 or close, Denver doubling BLMBG with Yankee Buccaneer for $6,500. Showmen that used Realart oldies might take Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla  --- others wouldn't be bothered. It all had faint aroma of a boxoffice freeze-out. Was Paramount applying pressure upon theatres not to book Mitchell and Petrillo? The frolicsome team meanwhile sought gigs where they could be found. Duke and Sammy appeared with BLMBG in Philly, then were Vegas Flamingo bound to appear with other impressionist acts. Two lads suffer from weak material, and after Petrillo's first Lewis image palls, nothing happens of yock-worthy humor, said Variety. An unkindest cut was Duke and Sammy's from a Los Angeles supper club that had booked them for two weeks during January 1953. Proprietor Larry Potter of same-named night-spot became somewhat ired over the boys' sandwich bit when a piece of bread fell on a salad, spattering a young customer. According to trade reportage, Potter did a burn and the verbal battle ended in an early exit for (the) team.