Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [49]
Michael drove me there and waited in the car outside while I braced myself to face Sidney.
He gave me a warm smile—very few people I’ve ever known could smile as warmly as Sidney could—and in a moment that recalled Emma Nelson Sims and her uncanny psychic ability, he cracked, “Don’t tell me, Barbara—you’re pregnant!”
“Oh, yes, Sidney, yes, I am,” I said, and practically threw my arms around his neck. “Isn’t it just wonderful?”
Sidney, a class act to his fingertips, didn’t chime in with, Yes, but what about my show?
I tore myself back to reality.
“I’m sorry to do that to you, Sidney, but I wanted to tell you right away so you’d have time to replace me,” I said contritely.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Sidney said, “You haven’t done anything to me, Barbara. You’re staying in the show.”
“But—but how?” I stammered.
“Let me think about it, Barbara. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”
The end result? Sidney came up with an almost foolproof technique for disguising my pregnancy by draping me with a multitude of veils and instructing that I be shot only from the waist up, or from a distance. Consequently, I worked on I Dream of Jeannie right up until the eighth month of my pregnancy, and filmed eleven episodes of the show during that time.
Before we started shooting one of the very early episodes, I arrived in my dressing room to discover that a red one-piece bathing suit had been laid out for me to wear in the episode. Horrified at the thought of being paraded on camera like an overstuffed elephant, I rushed straight to Gene Nelson’s office and made it clear to him that I wouldn’t wear the offending bathing suit under any circumstances.
“But Barbara, this isn’t you,” he said, shocked. “You’re never temperamental!”
“I’m not temperamental, Gene,” I said. “I’m pregnant.”
Well, directors are directors because they are in the business of directing. And none of them relishes having his commands disobeyed by a lowly actor. So, in the most polite terms he could muster, Gene swept aside all my objections and repeated his request that I try on the bathing suit.
Confrontation has never been my forte, so I put on a brave face and capitulated, but under one stringent condition: there was no way on earth that I would step out on the set in that bathing suit for all the cast and crew to see. I would only put it on if Gene came to my dressing room and saw me in it there. Fully aware that I meant business, Gene agreed.
So I went back to my dressing room, squeezed myself into that damned bathing suit, put a robe over it, and then, when Gene arrived, flashed him.
Seeing that I had an obvious belly bump, he did a fast retreat.
“Okay, Barbara, you win. I’ll come up with something that works for you,” he said.
Ultimately, on his suggestion, I kept the bathing suit on, and walked out onto the set with a towel draped strategically around me.
This particular scene was to be shot beside a swimming pool. The ever-resourceful Gene had me lie down by the pool, put an inflatable swim tube around my bump, and cover myself up so that my pregnancy remained invisible.
In other scenes, he draped me in yards of chiffon veils, so I looked like a walking tent. Gene’s inventive ways of disguising my pregnancy turned out to be magical, because neither the critics nor the viewers ever realized that their two-thousand-year-old Jeannie was expecting a baby.
During the first seven and a half months of my pregnancy, I scarcely put on a pound. Then, during the last few weeks, I packed the weight on dramatically. Everyone who saw me commented that I was going to have either twins or a very big baby indeed.
Gene Nelson’s wife, Marilyn, threw a baby shower for me, and I received so many lovely gifts that we had to send for Michael to transport them home for me.
On August 29, 1965, less than a month before the premiere of I Dream of Jeannie, I woke up at two in the morning, wracked by excruciating pains. I didn’t want to wake Michael, so I suffered in silence for as long as I could. Then at three-thirty, when the pain became unbearable, I woke him up. Within