Fantasy Fridays: The series premiere of My Mother The Car (1965)

 We're serving up Fantasy Fridays for the rest of the month (Family Fridays returns November 14), and starting off with arguably one of the worst of the fantasy-coms of the 60's, My Mother The Car.

Mother was one of two flops that United Artists sold to NBC in 1965 (Mona McCluskey, with Denny Miller & Juliet Prowse, was the other), and, for the longest time, it was a stain on the career of its lead, Jerry Van Dyke.

Jerry plays a lawyer who finds and restores an old Porter, then, as he tries it out, discovers his mother (Ann Sothern) was reincarnated as the car......

Both Van Dyke and Avery Schreiber (Captain Manzini) forged ahead after Mother was cancelled. Van Dyke would return to NBC two years later with Accidental Family, which flopped, and it'd be 20 years before Van Dyke finally landed a hit series. Schreiber resumed his comedy act with Jack Burns, which led to a short-lived variety series for ABC a few years later, after which he spent a year on Sha Na Na as a repertory player following a Saturday morning flop, The Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine.

Next week: Who knows?