Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [29]
Their reaction was based on the fact that I was currently the youngest girl whom Fox had under contract; they hadn’t even planted any items in any columns yet about me dating anyone, and now I was already talking marriage! Worse still, the sponsors of Broken Arrow were extremely worried that if Michael married me, his megawatt appeal to legions of women throughout America would instantly dissipate.
None of that bothered either of us, of course, and we just went ahead and booked the church, irrespective of anyone’s objections. Naturally, we invited Booker to be our best man, and, to his credit, he accepted.
Now that the date was set, I discovered that I didn’t have a thing to wear to my own wedding. But as I was basically working ten hours a day on How to Marry a Millionaire, I hardly had any time to scout around for the perfect wedding dress. To my delight, Mary Tate, the show’s wardrobe mistress, came to my rescue and took me shopping for one. The only dress that I really liked was a white shantung silk suit that was about four sizes too large for me. Luckily, Mary arranged for the wardrobe department to cut it down to size so that it fitted me perfectly.
Next, my aunt Margie jumped in and lent me a hat, so that took care of something borrowed. A bigger problem, though, was how to stop my mother and her friend Elinor Hoffman—the kind and generous lady who’d given me the $100 that paid for my studies at the conservatory—from crying all the time. They weren’t crying for happiness, either—they both thought I was too young to get married.
Michael and I held our ground and brushed aside everyone’s objections to our union. We married on January 17, 1958, at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. Afterward, my aunt and uncle held a small reception for thirty guests.
Our wedding took place on a Friday. The following morning, I was scheduled to pose for publicity pictures. On Sunday, both Michael and I had to memorize our scripts in time for Monday morning, when we had to report to work on adjoining sound stages at Fox. So much for a honeymoon!
We moved into a duplex apartment off Sunset. I decorated the entire place in cream, and we were thrilled when Elinor Hoffman presented us with a precious miniature cream-colored poodle to match. We named her Maggie. We both loved Maggie and loved our home, but we weren’t particularly domestic—though Michael cooked chicken once, his first and his last home-cooked meal. In the main, we thrived on TV dinners, books, conversation, and the powerful electricity generated by our brand-new love.
We were the very model of Hollywood actors—our careers were paramount, though we both wanted to have a child two years down the line. But I was still appearing in How to Marry a Millionaire, which went on to run for fifty-two episodes over two years, and Michael was still in Broken Arrow. Parenthood would have to wait.
Meanwhile, we were consolidating our finances. When I started working on How to Marry a Millionaire, the studio didn’t increase my $200 weekly salary. However, Michael, always my biggest and most vociferous champion, and a man with an excellent head for business, argued persuasively that it wasn’t fair for me to work twelve hours a day—and in sky-high heels at that—and not have my salary augmented. So Wilt stepped in and made a great deal for me whereby Fox paid me an extra $1,500 a week over my contract salary, then a king’s ransom. Which was just as well, because later in 1958, after a total of seventy-two episodes over two years, Broken Arrow was canceled. We had no warning; the series was extremely popular, as was Michael, who was now a household name, and the cancellation was a big shock for both of us. The downturn in our finances was not particularly easy to manage, but fortunately, both Michael and I had a natural tendency toward thrift. However, our finances were once again battered