Barbara Eden's Dream Come True

Playing one man's fantasy in a frothy sitcom for five seasons made Barbara Eden a star. As the title character on I Dream of Jeannie, she emerged one day from a bottle on a beach — a curvy, adorably funny blonde sporting a midriff-baring harem-dancer outfit.

The NASA astronaut who rubbed that bottle was Captain Tony Nelson, played by Larry Hagman (who died in 2012). Jeannie fell in love with him, anointed him her "master," settled into his home and pursued him relentlessly.

The NBC series — which echoed the era's Bewitched and My Favorite Martian in its magical "I've got a secret" premise — was a hit from the start. It soon spawned Jeannie baby dolls, Jeannie Barbie dolls and even Jeannie slot machines in casinos from coast to coast.

Prior to her breakthrough role, Tucson-born Eden worked in a bank and as a chorus girl at Ciro's nightclub, then won small parts on TV shows and a few features before costarring from 1957 to 1959 in a series based on the film How to Marry a Millionaire.

In 1965, I Dream of Jeannie fell into her lap. Eden writes in her memoir, 2011's Jeannie Out of the Bottle, that Sidney Sheldon — the Oscar-winning screenwriter, bestselling author and producer — had seen her in the 1964 feature The Brass Bottle. Eden played the girlfriend of Tony Randall's character, who owns a bottle that's home to a well-intentioned but troublesome genie (Burl Ives). Sheldon was so impressed, he thought of her to star in the genie concept he was creating for TV.

A pop-culture bombshell was born.

After Jeannie ended in 1970, Eden starred in several telefilms, including 1978's Harper Valley P.T.A., which led to a series of the same name, in which she also starred. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, she stayed busy on TV, in films and on stages. In 1990 she reunited with Hagman in an arc on Dallas and then again in 2006 in theater productions of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters. In recent years she has costarred with Hal Linden in the same play, and again with Barry Bostwick in early 2020.

Jeannie Out of the Bottle reveals much of her personal life, including details of the drug addiction of her only child, Matthew Ansara, who died in 2001 at age thirty-five. His father was the late actor Michael Ansara, to whom Eden was married from 1958 to 1974 (he made a few guest appearances on Jeannie). Eden recently spoke with emmy contributor Jane Wollman Rusoff about her career, especially her experiences playing Jeannie, who — with a blink and a nod — could magically manipulate time.

Let's talk about your belly button. It certainly made news when you were doing I Dream of Jeannie.
Yes, isn't that sad? So many women are known for gorgeous body parts — for me, it's a navel!

It started with [gossip columnist] Mike Connolly of The Hollywood Reporter. He'd come down to the set when the show first started. My pants weren't deliberately high-waisted at that time, as they were later, so my navel would peek out every once in a while. He'd say, "Let me see! Let me see!" And he'd poke his finger at me. I'd tell him, "A nickel a peek!"

He started writing about my belly button, and then other writers picked up on it. Suddenly Standards & Practices was scrutinizing everything about my costume. They made me wear a silk lining in the pants — I already had on panties and pantyhose. It was so silly. We were all laughing about it.

And they actually said your navel wasn't allowed to show?
Yes. Also, the bottle I came out of couldn't be in my master's bedroom. After a scene where they showed the bedroom door and the smoke [representing Jeannie] coming out from underneath, they said that smoke "must never spend the night in the bedroom of a man."

Would you say Jeannie was seductive to her "master"?
I don't know if seductive is the word. She loved him very much and showed it. She'd go to the ends of the Earth to stay with him. She wanted to be treated as a human woman. She didn't think she wasn't human. He knew she wasn't. That's the whole thrust of the series.

How did you find working with Mr. Hagman?
He was one of the best actors I ever worked with, but he was his own worst enemy. He acted out, and that didn't make him too popular with the crew and others. But he was always kind to me. When I'd see one of those acting-out episodes going on, I'd just turn around and go into my dressing room. I got out of the way.

I understand he was frustrated that the focus of the show was mainly on you and your character. True?
Larry definitely wanted to manage the show. He was very smart and very talented. He didn't suffer fools gladly and would speak out. So it was difficult for him.

Do you recall any lighter moments with him?
Once, we had a guest lion on the show! I had previously done a special and a film with a lion. The trainer told us how to behave around it. Male lions are lazy. They don't want to eat you, and they aren't going to chase you unless you run. If you run, they want to play — but they can [accidentally] kill you by playing with you.

This time, the lion trainer gave those same instructions: "Whatever you do, if you see the lion out alone, do not run. Just stand there because he doesn't want you."

How did Mr. Hagman cope with the situation?
On set, I said to him, "We should go over and meet the lion." He said, "I'm not going to meet any 'blankety-blank' lion!" I said okay, then I went over and let the lion smell my hand. I scratched him behind the ears and rehearsed with him. His head was to be between Larry and me as we sat on the sofa. They would put a bowl of raw meat beside me, and the lion would put his paws over the back of the sofa, eat the meat and be happy.

When they brought Larry in, he sat on the sofa and was not happy. Then they brought the lion in. He put his paws over the back of the sofa and ate the meat. Then, I swear to God, the lion did a double-take of Larry because he hadn't seen him before. He looked at him and roared.

What happened then?
Larry immediately raced out — to the next set. Every man on that shoot fled. The camera was turned over. And I had this hundred-pound lion in my lap, who was purring. He wasn't after me. He just didn't want any of this other stuff going on. As the trainer told me, a male lion is not aggressive at all if he's well fed.

Reportedly, the reason Tony didn't try to bed Jeannie was that it wouldn't have been proper because he was an astronaut. Was that it?
That sounds very goofy. He just didn't know what to do with this creature. He knew she came out of the bottle, and of course, he didn't want the system — NASA — to know about her.

What did you like best about playing Jeannie?
She was unencumbered. She was in a brand-new world that she knew nothing about, but she was so open to it and eager to learn. She was very giving and candid, possibly too candid. She was loving. Even when she pulled a prank on someone, it was never to hurt them. It was for fun.

You also played Jeannie's evil sister in a dark wig.
I loved her. She was so naughty! She was always trying to get my master. She'd say things about Jeannie like, "Oh, that little ninny! She doesn't deserve him!" In the script, her name was "Jeannie No. 2." They never gave her a name.

In the first episode, you had to use a Farsi dialect, which a UCLA professor helped you with. Was that difficult?
It was one of the toughest things I've ever had to do. Jeannie came out of the bottle speaking something that wasn't relatable. But they were always switching where she was from because they wanted to avoid [getting political] about whatever [international] thing was going on [in real life].

How did you get cast?
Sidney Sheldon, who created the series, was testing every beauty-contest winner — usually tall women with long dark hair. My agent sent me the script. I told him that I loved it. He said they'd offered me the part. All they wanted me to do was to have tea with Sidney at the Beverly Hills Hotel. So I met Sidney and got the part. I think he'd finally
decided that he needed a comedian to play Jeannie.

How did things go from there?
The very day the show sold, I found out I was pregnant. My husband and I had tried to have a baby for years, so I was very happy. I told Sidney right away. "I said, 'I wanted to let you know quickly so you can replace me.'" His face fell. But he pulled everything together. We did thirteen shows with me pregnant, and they went on the air before I came back [from maternity leave]. At the beginning of my pregnancy, I wasn't showing that much. But [my son] Matthew decided to be a big boy, so they put chiffon scarves on me. I looked like a walking tent!

Where was the show shot?
The pilot was shot on Zuma Beach [north of Los Angeles] and at Columbia Gower Studios on Sunset [Boulevard]. The rest of the series was shot there, and we also did some of it in Florida [at Cape Canaveral] with NASA — because we were all about astronauts — and at an airfield in Nevada.

Chuck Yeager [U.S. Air Force record-setting test pilot] became a dear friend of mine. And I met [astronauts] John Glenn, Wally Schirra, Walter Cunningham and Gene Cernan. Later, we went to Houston and saw how these guys trained to be in space.

Why did I Dream of Jeannie end after five seasons?
In my opinion, it was because my master and I got married. We should never have married because the whole crux of the show was that Jeannie thought she was human, and he knew she wasn't. She wasn't a housewife!

What do you suppose was behind the idea of the marriage?
I think they wanted something new, something different. I really don't know. But I thought it was a bad idea. I didn't tell Sidney that. It was his show, and I don't think it would have made any difference if I did.

What inspired you to be an actress?
I wasn't exactly inspired. I was a singer in San Francisco, and my mother told me, "You're singing every note perfectly, but you don't mean a word. You should study acting." So I went to the Elizabeth Holloway School of the Theatre and did a few shows with Actors' Equity in San Francisco, but I continued singing. Then I moved to L.A. on the advice of my acting teacher.

What was your first job in Hollywood?
Doing sketches with Johnny Carson, who was replacing The Red Skelton Hour with his own show for the summer. I did five or six shows.

And you worked with Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy in 1957. What was that like?
It was my third job in Hollywood. At one point, she looked at the dress they'd chosen for me to wear for my entrance and said, "Barbara, come here." I thought, "Oh, God," mainly because I had just worked with Ann Sothern on her show [Private Secretary], and she had been really rude. I was miscast as an [aggressive agent]. She insisted that they put more makeup on me, so I went back into makeup. But I heard the makeup man say, "I just can't make her look older." I did the show, but the experience left its mark.

So, you were afraid that Lucille Ball was going to act the same way toward you?
Yes, I was. So I didn't say a word. But she couldn't have been nicer — Lucy was so kind to me. She told me to take off the dress and sat there with her assistants and put sparkles on it to make it look glamorous. She was wonderful.

What came next for you?
Lucy wanted to put me under contract to Desilu [Productions]. But while I was on the set, my agent called and told me the test I'd done at Fox had been accepted. I was under contract to them to do movies. But the first thing they put me in was a TV series, How to Marry a Millionaire. We did two years of that, and I did movies in between. The show was great fun because I could play [the Marilyn Monroe part] more broadly than Marilyn did in the movie. I was thrilled.

How did you celebrate your ninetieth birthday last year?
I didn't do anything. I was so surprised to be ninety! The time had passed so fast; I wasn't paying attention. Now I guess I have to. Every time I turn around, somebody says, "Hey, you're ninety!" And I say, "Hey, I'm really lucky!"

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine issue #5, 2022, under the title, "Lightning in a Bottle."