Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [67]
On the night of the show, I was step-perfect. Gene, however, was not. Afterward, he took me aside and with a twinkle in his eye said, “You know who the audience is going to think did the routine right, don’t you?”
“I know, Gene,” I said, throwing up my hands in despair. “You, of course.”
And I was correct, because everyone I talked to who saw the show marveled at the perfection of Gene Kelly’s dancing, whereas my efforts passed without comment.
Lee Marvin, famous for his rough, macho-man persona, guested with me on a TV special but turned out to be a pussycat. When he had to lift me during one of our routines, he kept asking, “Are you all right, Barbara? You’re so little. Are you all right?” I assured him that I was.
Many years before meeting me, Michael dated Cher’s mother, Georgia Holt, and when I was on Cher’s show, she joked, “I used to sit on Michael’s knee when I was little, Barbara.”
I burst out laughing, but that wasn’t unusual when Cher and I were together. She always made me laugh so much—we were like two schoolgirls together. I worked with Sonny Bono as well, but fun as that was, working with Cher, whether singing or in a skit, was always my preference. She’s bright, sassy, and very grounded.
In March 1965 I was a guest on a show with Mickey Rooney, Dean Martin, and Kate Smith. Mickey is an incredible performer, really out there, but of course he’s very small. Dean was medium height. Kate, in contrast, was really big, both in height and in width. At the end of the show, the four of us were slated to sing a medley of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “My Old Kentucky Home” together, all standing in a row; Kate, then Dean, then me, then Mickey. It crossed my mind that we looked like a flight of steep steps.
We started singing our song together. Then Mickey raised his hand and the band stopped playing. He took Kate aside and they started whispering together. Looking at them, I could guess what they were whispering about. The end result? I was placed in the middle, like strawberry jam in an oddly shaped sandwich.
For many years, one of my greatest joys was touring with Bob Hope—or rather, Mr. Hope, as I respectfully addressed him when we met in person. To me, Bob Hope was always the quintessential all-around entertainer and a great comedian. If you see some of his early movies, you know he was not merely a comedian but a good actor as well. He was smart, and a fabulous raconteur to boot.
Offstage, however, he was a bit of a rascal with women.
As I got to know Bob better, I discovered that he nurtured the archaic, chauvinistic conviction that all women were divided into two distinct categories: ladies and the other kind. And he had very firm ideas about exactly who was a lady and who was not.
Fortunately for me, he decided early on in our acquaintance that I belonged in the “lady” category. After that, he was very protective of me, primarily because he felt I merited it. So one time, when some football players were on Bob’s show and became overly familiar with me, Bob took them aside and said sternly, “No, no, guys, she’s not for you. Besides, there’s a big Indian at home.”
The guys backed off, and I was grateful. Bob himself always treated me with the greatest respect. I loved him and treated him with due respect in return. In that spirit, we toured the world together in 1988 on his USO-sponsored “Around the World in 8 Days” tour, and Bob was kind enough to allow Matthew to join us on it. Together with Bob, we circled the globe in eight days, traveled twenty-seven thousand miles, and in the process entertained twenty-five thousand servicemen stationed in the Persian Gulf. The tour took us from Honolulu to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, the battleship USS Iowa, the USS Okinawa, and Bahrain.
Our first stop was the USS Midway, a nuclear aircraft carrier positioned at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. We spent one night aboard, and I remember being so happy that I was finally able to wash my hair.
Our final show was supposed to be at Lajes