Dr. Z in My Wife, The Mantis!

From the files of Dr. Z, Hollywood everyman, if that man is him.

Feb. 24,1966, 11:15 AM.

My bedside phone exploded like a thing that would explode with a noise that sounded like a bunch of loud little bells. It was TV producer Hal Ackerman with an offer he promised "would change my life." Lucky for him I was already awake, sliding into hour two of an internal debate as to whether or not to extricate my arm out from under a still-sleeping Dawn Wells so that I could blissfully urinate or perhaps try to drift back to sleep where I would most likely dream I was back at the table read for The Dambusters.

Hal had had great success with BEWITCHED and was now incensed at the success of I DREAM OF JEANNIE, as it was basically the same show plus Barbara Eden's belly button and no money going to Hal Ackerman.

It was a simple formula any idiot could crib and Hal was here to prove it. The result, MY WIFE, THE MANTIS, in which I played a hapless New York ad exec married to a ten-foot-tall radioactive praying mantis. Somewhere inside that big green suit was sweaty Kaye Ballard playing "Manti." As claustrophobic as that suit was, my contract was worse.

The pilot story was a standard-issue, dinner party fiasco involving my new boss, played by Whit "Smell My Hand" Bissel, and Manti's insistence on serving only crickets.

ABC pulled the plug after four episodes and not one month later I found myself shirtless in an Almeria, Spain lavanderia with a dime borrowed from World's Cheapest Bassist Bill Wyman as I poured frantically through the Spanish Yellow Pages hoping to find a welder who made house calls and would cut through handcuffs, no questions asked.

But that's another story...

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