Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [58]
Hayden Rorke, who played Dr. Alfred Bellows in the series, was the one person involved with I Dream of Jeannie other than Jackie Cooper who could actually handle Larry. Our resident on-set terror, it transpired, actually respected Hayden in his own right, partly because Hayden was a friend of his mother, Mary Martin. Hayden even went so far as to tear into Larry for not bothering to read his script until the eleventh hour. Larry wouldn’t have accepted that kind of a reprimand from anyone else, certainly not me. But he took Hayden’s rebuke without complaining, because he respected him to such a high degree.
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Hayden came from a distinguished theatrical family. His grandfather was the well-known producer William Richardson Hayden, and his mother was an actress who later switched careers and built a business in textiles, after which she had the distinction of designing the material used in the ball gowns both Eleanor Roosevelt and Mamie Eisenhower wore at their respective husbands’ inaugurations.
Hayden’s impeccable acting credentials started out with his training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts; he then appeared in classics with Walter Hampden’s repertory company. During World War II, in which he was a sergeant, he toured with This Is the Army, and met Gene Nelson, who was also affiliated with the War Department.
After the war, Hayden became a successful professional actor, appearing in the Broadway productions of The Philadelphia Story, The Country Wife, Three Men on a Horse, A Moon for the Misbegotten, and Dream Girl. Moving on to Hollywood, he won fame as a character actor in such classic movies as An American in Paris. The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Pillow Talk. His acting ability was superlative, and his grasp of the business served as an inspiration to all of us.
In his private life, Hayden was unashamedly gay. He and his partner, Justus Addiss, lived together for many years in Studio City, along with their menagerie of dogs. Hayden was wonderful in the part of Dr. Bellows, the psychiatrist forever stumped by Tony. Throughout the series, he remained a good friend to all of us and kept all our spirits up under all sorts of difficult circumstances, most of them caused by Larry. He was a prince, and everyone, even Larry, knew it.
Hayden’s on-screen wife, Amanda Bellows, was played by the beautiful and gracious Emmaline Henry, whose Philadelphia pedigree melded with her visual resemblance to Grace Kelly. Initially a singer, with a rich soprano voice, Emmaline started out in radio, then moved to Hollywood and appeared in stage musicals, including the road company of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, in which she took over from none other than Carol Channing, the star who’d attended Miss Holloway’s school and inspired me to go there in the first place.
A well-known and glamorous fixture on TV shows such as The Farmer’s Daughter and Green Acres, Emmaline also appeared in a slew of prestigious movies, including Rosemary’s Baby and Divorce, Italian Style. Late in life, she fell in love and hoped to get married, but the man in question ultimately ditched her, and she was devastated, a fact that I firmly believe contributed to her death from cancer at the age of just forty-nine.
Before that, she appeared in thirty-nine episodes of I Dream of Jeannie, starting in the second season (although she made a brief appearance during the first season as a magician’s assistant whom Roger assumed was Jeannie’s cousin). Her cool elegance attracted a great many fans and even fooled the censors into allowing her to show her navel during the beach scene in “Jeannie Goes to Honolulu.” I, on the other hand, was encased in my red one-piece bathing suit and towels and forced to swelter away on Waikiki Beach. But I didn’t begrudge Emmaline that freedom; she was a lovely, friendly lady and I liked her very much.
Barton MacLane, who played the imposing, if a little intimidating, General