Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [20]
At first, the memory of the casting director made me feel nauseous, but I quickly recovered and did the scene with the actor. Afterward, the studio’s acting coach, Don Cutler, offered me the chance to study with him on a daily basis, free of charge.
I was thrilled. I still hadn’t been cast in a movie or a play, and very much wanted to improve my acting technique.
I took Don Cutler’s class at Warner’s every morning. One day I was walking toward the classroom when I heard a male voice behind me shout, “Hey, you!”
I didn’t turn around. I just kept on walking.
“Hey, you! You in the yellow pants!”
I wanted to run, but my ingrained sense of politeness triumphed over my fear. I turned around to face Solly Biano, the man who had told me to go back to San Francisco.
I almost fainted dead on the spot. I didn’t belong at Warner’s. He was sure to have me thrown off the lot.
He gave me a big smile.
“Are you an actress?” he said.
I nodded mutely.
“Has the studio tested you?” he said.
I shook my head, incredulous. He didn’t recognize me! Okay, I wasn’t wearing white gloves or plaid anymore, but I was still the same girl he had rejected out of hand just five months earlier.
“Then we’re going to test you right away,” he said, and threw me another brilliant smile.
So the man who’d rejected me in the first place, the man who’d temporarily broken my spirit but then put iron in my soul, actually arranged for me to have a screen test at Warner Brothers after all.
And although I didn’t get a contract at the studio, I’d learned a valuable lesson: no matter who rejects you in life, no matter how bad you feel, no matter how much that rejection hurts you, just keep on going. Put one foot in front of the other and ignore people’s negative judgments, because those can change or even be forgotten.
So I carried on auditioning and didn’t let the continual rejection get me down, until one day my persistence finally paid off.
I was over at Universal, doing another reading with yet another aspiring actor, when I met an agent, Wilt Melnick, a friendly man in his thirties with sandy hair and an engaging smile, who offered to represent me.
“But there is just one condition,” he said.
My heart sank. By now I had wised up to Hollywood men and their “conditions,” and I wasn’t giving in to any of them. I raised an eyebrow and waited for the inevitable.
“The name Barbara Huffman sounds like a doctor,” Wilt went on. “Change your name and I’ll represent you.”
In retrospect, I wonder whether a certain Desperate Housewives actress named Felicity was ever faced with a similar dilemma. However, having met her at the 2006 Academy Awards (when she was nominated for Transamerica) and chatted about my former last name and her current one as well as our distant Huffman relatives, I know that she never once bowed to any hotshot Hollywood agent who demanded that she jettison her last name. Perhaps she was made of sterner stuff than I was, or perhaps times have simply changed.
In 1955, though, when Wilt Melnick issued his ultimatum that I change my name, I only hesitated for a few moments before replying.
“Mr. Melnick,” I said, “just as long as I can carry on being called Barbara, you can give me any last name you like.”
He gave me a long, appraising look.
“You seem kinda innocent,” he said. “So let’s call you Eden, like the garden.”
That’s how Barbara Eden was born.
By coincidence, Wilt Melnick also represented Kim Novak, though our paths never crossed again. However, early in my relationship with Wilt, I had a narrow escape from someone else also associated with the Studio Club—Howard Hughes.
Wilt called me there early one morning to tell me that I should expect a midnight call from Howard Hughes.
A warning light flashed in my head, but I trusted Wilt,