Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [4]
Recently, in an interview, Sally let slip, “The only uncomfortable thing about doing The Flying Nun was, my God, Barbara Eden singing all the time in the makeup room at 6 AM and never stopping!”
Sorry, Sally! If only I’d known, I’d have practiced in the shower instead.
But back to Larry. After Sidney Sheldon suggested that Larry see a therapist and he agreed, the therapist was frequently on the set during filming of I Dream of Jeannie, in case he was needed. But even he didn’t seem able to put the brakes on Larry. Consequently, Larry’s dramatics escalated, and—now that we live in an X-rated age—could most likely become the basis of a terrific comedy series themselves.
In fact, you could devote a whole episode to the time when Sammy Davis Jr. guested in “The Greatest Entertainer in the World” and ended up threatening to kill Larry, and another to the time we filmed “The Second Greatest Con Artist in the World” in Hawaii with Milton Berle.
But there is one episode that I don’t think would actually make it onto the air even today: the time when Larry, in frustration and anger at what he saw as the show’s shortcomings and the second-string status of his character, Major Tony Nelson, relieved himself all over the I Dream of Jeannie set.
I’ll be sharing more of Larry’s tantrums in the rest of the book, no holds barred. But working with Larry was still a walk in the park in comparison to many other things that happened to me throughout the years, particularly in my private life—my stillborn son; two divorces; the death of Matthew, my only child, when he was thirty-five and on the threshold of marriage; and the loss of my beloved mother.
Through it all, my mother’s voice has always echoed in my mind: Rise above it, Barbara Jean, rise above it! I’ve tried as hard as I can to do so. Sometimes I’ve triumphed and risen above whatever life has flung at me, but other times I’ve failed dismally, floundered, and been utterly swamped. This is the story of all those times, good and bad, better and worse, exactly how they happened, exactly how I coped, and exactly how I didn’t.
WHENEVER I HEAR the blare of a foghorn or see a picture of a mermaid or a young couple madly in love, I feel as if I’ve been Jeannie-blinked back into my childhood, happy and secure.
The foghorn, you see, reminds me of San Francisco, where I grew up. The mermaid reminds me of Dolfina, the famous “Girl in the Fishbowl” always on display at the Bal Tabarin restaurant in North Beach, where my parents often used to bring me when I was very young, simply because they couldn’t afford a babysitter and had to cart me everywhere with them.
In those far-off years during the Depression, however poor my parents were, they still hadn’t forgotten how to love, how to laugh, and how to dream. They were young and carefree, spent every penny my father earned from his job as a telephone lineman, and understood exactly how to have fun.
At the time, long before my younger sister, Alison, was born, I was my mother’s “onliest only,” as she called me then, and would until her dying day. Like many an only child, I was probably grown-up before my time, and those nights at the Bal Tabarin (which later became Bimbo’s 365 Club), where Rita Hayworth danced in the chorus and Ann Miller was discovered dancing when she was just thirteen, only served to make me more mature and at the same time give me an early love of show business.
So did seeing Bob Hope perform live onstage when I was just four years old. My mother and father took me to his show at a local theater, and I remember how joyful watching Bob made me feel. Little did I know that when I grew up, I would meet him, we’d become friends, and I’d appear onstage with him many, many times myself.
When I was a small child, my dream was to be not an actress but a singer. Each night, when I did the dishes with my mother, Alice, she sang Gilbert and Sullivan ditties or tunes from her father’s favorite Irish operetta,