Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [52]
Then a bold English-speaking Chinese lady pointed at me and came straight out with it. “Are you the magic lady?” she said.
“Sometimes,” I replied.
In America, too, crowds followed me wherever I went. Flattering, but difficult if I wanted to spend a private day concentrating on Matthew and my family. My solution? To wear a red wig and hope no one would recognize me.
One time I was taking Matthew, then eight, to Disneyland, and invited my sister, Alison, and her four-year-old daughter, Michelle, to come with us. Beforehand, I put on my red wig and a pair of big dark-lensed glasses, and when we stood in line for tickets, I felt confident that no one in the park would recognize me.
No such luck. A perceptive young girl came running up to me, waving her autograph book, and eagerly asked, “Aren’t you Barbara Eden?”
Shocked that my disguise had failed and my attempt at privacy had been foiled, I didn’t think before blurting out, “No, I’m not.”
Hearing me, little Michelle reacted with a horrified “Auntie Barbara lied! Auntie Barbara lied!” No matter how carefully we explained the situation to her, she never really understood it.
That day at Disneyland, the girl obviously didn’t believe me, and alerted all her friends that Jeannie was standing in line. Subsequently, pandemonium broke out, and to Matthew’s disgust, I had no alternative but to sign autographs, which I did with as much courtesy as I could muster. At which point the man running the ride spirited all of us—Alison, Michelle, Matthew, and me—to the front of the line.
“Sometimes it helps to be a genie,” I said to Matthew with a wink.
As Matthew grew older, it was clear that he didn’t much like being Jeannie’s son. Moreover, by the time he was six or seven and the show was in reruns, he actively resented the show and my part in it.
He really didn’t want to share me with anyone, and I didn’t blame him. I did everything I could so that he would know he was the most important person in the world for me, that he was number one. That wasn’t difficult, because he was a darling little boy, and everyone who met him immediately warmed to him. I took him on tour to the Persian Gulf when I was appearing there with Bob Hope, and when I did my show in Las Vegas, he would be there in the wings watching me rehearse.
I was proud and happy to have him there, and always basked in his love and admiration, the memory of which still sustains me today. One of my funniest memories of Matthew as a child goes back to the times when I was all dressed up and ready to go onstage in Las Vegas. Matthew, then about eleven, always clapped his hands and cried, “Oh, Mommy, you’re so pretty!” which naturally warmed my heart. And whenever he saw a glamorous singer or actress on TV, he’d always comment, “Oh, Mommy, she’s so pretty.” He’d pause for a second, then without fail he’d add, “But not as pretty as you, Mommy.”
Then one day we were watching TV together and Raquel Welch came on. Matthew exclaimed, “Oh, Mommy, she’s so pretty.”
I waited and waited, but that was it.
So I asked, “Prettier than me?”
And Matthew said, “Well …”
I fell down laughing.
On a more serious note, I never once doubted his deep and abiding love for me. When he reached his late teens and early twenties, Matthew became my greatest defender, a chivalrous knight in shining armor, loving and protective in the extreme.
During the late sixties, Tony Curtis and one of his daughters used to come up to the house and play Ping-Pong with me and Michael. After one or two desultory games during which Tony’s mind, not to mention his body, seemed to be miles away, I realized that playing