Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [43]
Soon they were engaged in animated conversation, while I stood there in the background, like a discarded store mannequin. There was just one second when Miss Hepburn deigned to throw me a cursory glance, then spun around and turned her back on me without a single word. I was dismissed, and how!
Clearly, Katharine Hepburn had no time whatsoever for attractive blondes. And I sincerely hoped that poor Marilyn had never met her in person, either, as she probably would have been most unhappy to be on the receiving end of Miss Hepburn’s disdain. As for me, I chalked it all up to yet another tale in the saga of my encounters with Hollywood divas.
Lauren Bacall was another formidable Hollywood diva with whom I crossed paths when she was starring in Applause onstage in Los Angeles. My agent arranged for me to meet Lauren, as she was scheduled to take a break from the production and I was slated to replace her.
We met at the theater between shows and she looked me over briefly, with hardly a smile or a flash of warmth. I had expected to be fascinated and beguiled by her, but when I left her dressing room I was just saddled with the impression that she was large, commanding, and definitely in charge. I had no clue as to her impression of me, but guessed that it wasn’t remotely positive.
My guess was confirmed when, the following morning, she contacted the producers of Applause and, for reasons not revealed to me afterward, informed them that she had now decided not to take a hiatus from the show after all. I wasn’t altogether sorry, as Applause truly was Lauren Bacall’s show and I was happy to keep it that way.
Hollywood is a far smaller town than people outside the business tend to realize, and—all that negative publicity about casting couches aside—a great many shows are cast by serendipity. I Dream of Jeannie was one of them.
Let’s Jeannie-blink to the summer of 1964. Sure, I’d read about I Dream of Jeannie in the trade press, that it was a fantasy about a female genie, but there was nothing in the article about any bottle yet, or what kind of an actress the show’s creator, writer, and producer, Sidney Sheldon, was planning to cast as his Jeannie. The word, though, through the grapevine, was that he and the show’s producers were holding clandestine meetings with Miss Greece, Miss Israel, and other sultry five-foot-nine beauty queens with a view to auditioning them for the part.
I never dreamed that Sidney would consider me for the role of Jeannie. But then I didn’t know that he’d seen Brass Bottle, or that we had a number of mutual friends who were comedy writers and seemed to like and admire my work.
So I almost passed out in shock (also partly ecstasy) when Sidney called me, unheralded, and announced, “I hear you are my Jeannie!”
I never did discover who suggested me for the part, but Sidney, of course, knew a good line when he had one, so—after I picked myself up from the floor—I still didn’t assume that the part was mine. I believed that he was seeing a slew of other actresses far better suited to playing Jeannie than I was.
When I accepted Sidney’s invitation to have tea with him at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Polo Lounge, I did so with very low expectations that anything would come of it. But I like very few things in life better than tea and cakes, preferably chocolate ones.
Let me pause to say a few words about the incomparable Sidney Sheldon, one of the most prolific and successful writers of all time. Born in Chicago, the son of a salesman, he attended eight different schools as a child, and discovered his writing talent when he was just twelve and he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in his very own mystery thriller.
After graduating from Northwestern University, he decamped to Hollywood, where David O. Selznick hired him to vet a script for the princely sum of $3. After that, Darryl Zanuck hired him to read and analyze scripts for a slightly higher