The son of a manufacturer received training as an editor and became an assistant director at SDR in Stuttgart in 1954. He later worked there as a television director and at the end of the 1950s followed Helmut Jedele to Bavaria Film near Munich. From 1959 to 1963 he was chief director, after which he worked as a freelancer. With his innovative shows, he soon became Germany's best-known television director. In 1967 he directed the award-winning music television special A Man and His Music plus Ella plus Jobim for Frank Sinatra, starring Ella Fitzgerald and Antônio Carlos Jobim, in the United States. He lived with Sinatra's daughter Tina Sinatra in Munich at the end of the 1960s. He directed i.a. the ZDF show series Wünsch Dir was and in the years 1973 to 1979 the comedy television series Klimbim. He had been in a relationship with Ingrid Steeger, actress in Klimbim, for five years since 1974. In 1990, Pfleghar founded the Lobby für Kinder association together with Ursula Pfeiffer in Nuremberg. The association helps children in need. Michael Pfleghar was married to the pop singers Bibi Johns (1960-1962) and Inge Brück (divorced in the late 1960s); meanwhile he had a relationship with Heidi Brühl. From 1981 to 1990 he was Wencke Myhre's second husband and father of their son Michael (* 1982). A daughter came from a liaison with Corinne Pulver. He shot himself in 1991 in the Düsseldorf apartment of his friend Hubert Maessen, a publicist. Pfleghar was buried in the family grave in the forest cemetery in Stuttgart-Degerloch

1970