The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jerry Van Dyke, ‘Coach’ actor and foil for his brother
Jerry Van Dyke, who after decades in show business finally emerged from the shadow of his older brother, Dick, with an Emmy-nominated role in the long-running ABC sitcom “Coach,” died Friday at his ranch in Arkansas. He was 86.
Jerry’s wife, Shirley Ann Jones, said his health had deteriorated since a traffic accident in 2015.
From the beginning, Van Dyke’s television career was intertwined with his brother’s. One of his earliest TV appearances was in 1962 in a two-part episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” as Stacey Petrie, the would-be comedian brother of Dick’s character, Rob Petrie.
A boisterous performer who supported himself with a banjo-and-comedy stage act when television or film roles were scant, Van Dyke was a ham to his brother’s more dignified persona. But while Dick had runaway success early on, with the Broadway show and film “Bye Bye Birdie,” the Disney musical “Mary Poppins” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” his brother’s career was long defined by a string of shortlived projects, like “The Judy Garland Show” and the game show “Picture This.”
Van Dyke was frank but good-humored about his failures. “If I had it all to do over again, I definitely would have turned things down,” he told The Associated Press in 1994. “Almost everything I did!”
The worst of those projects was “My Mother the Car,” which ran for one notorious season on NBC beginning in September 1965.
He played a man who buys a car that contains the spirit of his deceased mother, voiced by Ann Sothern. The plot revolved around Van Dyke’s attempts to conceal the car’s consciousness from his family and to keep an unscrupulous collector from acquiring it.
The premise seems farfetched, if not bizarre, but fantastical sitcoms like “I Dream of Jeannie” and “Bewitched” became popular around the same time. “My Mother the Car” never caught on and was savaged by critics.
He went on to have prominent roles in other series that did not last long, like “Accidental Family,” “Headmaster” and “13 Queens Boulevard,” and largely supported himself with his stage show. His brother, meanwhile, enjoyed more success, including a lead role in the 1968 Disney film “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” a musical about a flying car.
But in 1989 Jerry Van Dyke landed the role of Luther Van Dam, the assistant coach to Craig T. Nelson’s head football coach, Hayden Fox, on “Coach.” They worked together to lead the fictional Minnesota State University Screaming Eagles.
Van Dam, a bumbling, subservient second banana who had occasional moments of pathos, was a reliable source of laughs on the show, which ran until 1997.