Call Her Mom

Did You Know?

• The film was the pilot for a proposed series that was not picked up.
• Connie Stevens and Jim Hutton had previously appeared together in Never Too Late (1965).
• ABC next cast Connie Stevens in the TV movie Playmates, co-starring Alan Alda, which was another large success.

Plot

In 1972, a TV movie called Call Her Mom aired on ABC as a standalone film after failing to become a series. It was a massive hit in the ratings. The story takes place at Beardsley College, where the Alpha Rho Epsilon fraternity house, known for constant partying, has driven away thirteen housemothers in a row. Connie Stevens plays a waitress who storms out of her job during a busy shift, and the fraternity brothers, impressed, hire her as their new housemother. They expect an easygoing supervisor, but she takes the role seriously and enforces strict rules. She also joins the women's liberation movement, clashing with the conservative college president, played by Van Johnson, leading to protests on campus. Stevens, in a miniskirt, performs "Come On-a My House" and creates sexual tension among the all-male house. Jim Hutton and Charles Nelson Reilly co-star, and Mike Evans, known for playing Lionel Jefferson on All in the Family and The Jeffersons, appears as a fraternity member. The film earned a 30.9 rating and a 46 audience share, making it the second most-watched show of the week after All in the Family, and the eighth most-watched TV movie ever at that time.

Reception

The TV movie was a huge ratings success, earning a 30.9 rating and a 46 audience share, making it the second highest show of the week after All in the Family. It was the eighth most widely seen film on television, after Ben Hur, The Birds, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Night Stalker, Brian's Song, Women in Chains, and Born Free (the ninth and tenth were A Death of Innocence and The Feminist and the Fuzz). The film was repeated in 1973 and was the 12th most popular show of the week. The Los Angeles Times, however, thought the movie was poor and the cast "wasted".