Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [50]
Six hours later, we were still in the hospital’s waiting room. Michael tried to stay calm, while in the vain hope that I might distract myself from the pain stabbing through me, I read a book, the title of which has long since escaped me.
When I finally went into the delivery room, Michael waited outside, pacing back and forth. Twelve hours after we arrived at the hospital, Matthew Michael Ansara, a big baby with dark eyes, long dark eyelashes, enviably thick dark hair, and a sweet smile, was born.
We called him our lucky-charm baby. We had a child at last, and we loved him more than words could say. Our joy was boundless, and our hopes that he would live a healthy and happy life were unlimited. Matthew meant everything to both of us, and always would.
He was just three weeks old when I Dream of Jeannie first saw the light of day. For a show that was destined to endure for 132 episodes over five seasons (and countless more times in reruns), when I Dream of Jeannie was first released, it didn’t meet with much fanfare from the press.
In fact, no less an industry powerhouse than Variety carped, “Miss Eden plays a genie who materializes out of an Egyptian jug to badger an astronaut, making his commanding officers believe he’s off his rocker, driving his fiancée up the wall, and teasing viewers with dirty minds with innuendo (like the climax of the initialer, what was happening behind the camera in astro boy’s bedroom?).”
Down the line, when the feminist movement swept America, the critics also lambasted the show for depicting a master-slave relationship that they claimed was an insult to liberated women everywhere. I always considered that to be nonsense. I Dream of Jeannie is a fantasy, a modern-day fairy tale that has nothing to do with women’s liberation. The show’s purpose was not to make a political statement but simply to entertain audiences, which is what it indisputably succeeded in doing.
I Dream of Jeannie genuinely delved into the battle of the sexes, but in a cute way. Jeannie truly believed that Captain Nelson was her master, that she was there to serve him. But she also loved him and believed that he didn’t know what was good for him, she did. For despite the surface elements (“Yes, Master,” and so on), it was Jeannie who dominated Major Nelson, not the reverse. She invariably got her way and liked it. And besides, what all the critics seemed to forget was that Jeannie wasn’t a flesh-and-blood person but a fantasy. She simply didn’t exist.
By the end of the first season, we all recognized that I Dream of Jeannie was a hit. Surprisingly enough, while the show was an unqualified success throughout the five seasons it aired, it was never an industry sweetheart. Yet audiences loved it and still do. And after all, I Dream of Jeannie has lasted far longer than many shows that won cartloads of Emmys and reams of accolades from the critics; over the long haul, that longevity is what counts.
When we began filming the second season of I Dream of Jeannie, Matthew was five months old. Consequently, while I was working, I spent most of my downtime dreaming not of Jeannie but of Matthew, wondering what he was doing, what he was eating, and how he was sleeping. I missed him from the bottom of my heart whenever I had to be parted from him.
When the show was on hiatus, I worked in summer stock all over the country, guested on other people’s TV shows, and appeared in my nightclub act in Las Vegas and throughout the country. I worked so hard partly because I wanted to, but partly because after Broken Arrow was canceled, Michael wasn’t working as much as he used to, and although we were both frugal and had a cushion of savings, my income was more important to us than ever.
But it broke my heart when Matthew looked at me with those big brown eyes and said, “Mommy, why do you have to leave again?”
I tried to explain to him that everyone in the world had to work and that I was extremely lucky to be able to do work I loved,