Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [60]
By now, Larry and Bill had fallen into the habit of always coming up with tough physical stunts they could do on the show. For this particular episode, they decided to roll down a hill. Rickles just stood at the top of the hill, watching. “Yeah, yeah, guy, beat yourself up, break your legs, go ahead. The genie’s standing up here laughing; it’s her show!” he said.
I liked him a lot, and I also liked his wife, who was called Barbara as well.
One night Michael, Charles Bronson, and I went to see Don Rickles in Las Vegas. When we walked into the room, he looked out into the audience, spotted me with my hair in big curls, and yelled out, “So you’re married to a little girl, Michael Ansara!” We all laughed. As the show progressed, Rickles was at his funniest and most vitriolic, and the insults got stronger and stronger. He insulted Michael, he insulted Charlie, and he took on a few other audience members, but he never insulted me. Afterward, when we went backstage, he took me aside and said, “Barbara, I’m so sorry; I can’t insult you. I can’t say ‘Barbara’ and insult you, because, you see, I love my wife.” Don Rickles, a wonderful comedian, was sometimes vicious and sometimes hurtful, but underneath he was a true romantic with a heart of gold.
At the height of the success of I Dream of Jeannie, I was receiving bags and bags of fan mail from all over the world. The series was so popular that in 1966, a Jeannie doll was released by Libby. There was also a Madame Alexander Jeannie doll, a Jeannie baby doll, and a Jeannie Barbie.
On the subject of I Dream of Jeannie objects, the original Jeannie bottle was a Jim Beam liquor decanter created in 1964 to help promote sales around Christmastime, painted with a leaf design in gold. It was the first of many designs and bottles used on the series. Years after the series became a hit, fans created their own versions of Jeannie bottles, which have become collectors’ items.
I still own the original Jeannie bottle from the second season, which I keep locked in a bank safe deposit box. Before I deposited it there, I discovered that my Jeannie bottle truly did have magical powers. Until then I’d been keeping it on display in my library. But when a major earthquake struck Los Angeles in 1994, the library was totally destroyed. When I inspected the debris, however, there, shining out from the rubble like a glittering beacon, was my Jeannie bottle, wedged on top of a gigantic pyramid of books, as if by magic.
Part of the magic of I Dream of Jeannie, I suspect, was the aura of mystery surrounding the show and the characters. Famously, I never was allowed to expose my belly button on the show. Throughout the series, I kept getting letters from fans asking me if I had one, and visitors on the set always asked me to show it to them. I’d joke, “A nickel a peek!” but I never ripped away the last of the seven veils and revealed it.
However, the day came when, during the fourth season of I Dream of Jeannie, George Schlatter, my clever friend who used to produce Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, came up with the brilliant idea of unveiling my hitherto unexposed belly button on an episode of his blockbuster TV show.
George had designed a tiny proscenium stage that would fit over my stomach. The plan was that a big fanfare would sound, the curtain would open, and a huge klieg light would shine on my belly button at last.
I was content to go along with George’s off-the-wall idea, but NBC went ballistic. When I asked the producers to explain what was wrong with me unveiling my belly button on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, they just stared into space and ignored me. I wouldn’t have given the issue any thought, but ever since the series began, I’d been receiving stacks of mail from U.S. soldiers posted abroad, who wrote, “I am so looking forward to seeing your belly button.