Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [69]
My first reaction was that his request was a friendly offer made by a Brit to an American who’d never visited London before, and to whom he was gallantly volunteering to show the sights. But then he started caressing my hand sensually.
If I had any further doubts about Tom’s intentions in offering to show me London, my manager immediately clarified the matter for me. “He thought you were coming on to him, because you put so much passion into the song. He really thought you meant every word of the lyrics you were singing to him,” he whispered to me.
At that moment, the director called for Tom and me to do another take of the duet. This time I didn’t inject an iota of passion, meaning, or intensity into my voice, but just sang the words in a monotone, almost by rote. The moment the director yelled, “Cut,” Gene rushed over to me and said accusingly, “You’ve toned it down, Barbara. What’s wrong with you?”
“But Gene, you’re the one who warned me that Tom believed I meant what I was singing to him! And that gave him the wrong idea about how I felt about him, big-time!” I said indignantly.
“You can handle Tom Jones, Barbara. I know you can,” he replied. “Give the song everything you’ve got.”
So I did. I sang “The Look of Love” to Tom as if he were the love of my life, the man I desired more than any other man on the planet. And again Tom must have believed me, because the moment the camera was switched off, he put his arm around me and said, “Can I show you London, Barbara?”
I whispered back, “But Tom, I’m married!”
“Well, so am I!” Tom replied, quick as a flash.
We parted company and I had dinner all by myself in my hotel room, then went to bed.
At four in the morning, the phone suddenly ripped me out of my sleep. In a daze, I picked up the receiver, terrified that something might have happened to Matthew or to Michael.
But I needn’t have worried.
“Barbara, can I show you London?” Tom said again in that sexy baritone.
“Tom! It’s four in the morning!” I said.
Tom chuckled. “Don’t you worry about the time, Barbara. I’ll show you London right now!”
“Tom, we’ve got a show to do tomorrow! And it’s your show!” I said, as if I were reprimanding a naughty boy, which, of course, he was at that moment.
He hung up the phone without another word.
About three hours later, I arrived at the studio and went straight into makeup. Tom was already there in the chair, having his makeup done.
“Good morning, Tom,” I said, trying to act as if nothing had happened between us just hours before.
Tom turned away from me abruptly and didn’t answer.
A few moments later the makeup artist left the room, and Tom finally looked me in the eye.
“Four in the morning, Tom?” I said.
“Oh, you were lucky, Barbara,” he retorted. “I nearly knocked your door down.”
I don’t want to disillusion anyone, but the truth is that if Tom Jones had indeed knocked down my door, I might well have succumbed.
Generally, I was always delighted by the enthusiasm and loyalty of my audiences. When I played Hot Springs, Arkansas, there was a tremendous tornado; windows were torn out of shops and houses, and cars were upended, but we still had an enthusiastic audience at the show that night.
Other times, however, the audience’s enthusiasm can be overwhelming, not to say a little scary. In the early seventies, I headlined at the Waldorf-Astoria for a convention of the heavy equipment contractors’ union. I was to wear a sheer Bob Mackie gown covered in beads. Dinner was scheduled for six, and the show was supposed to begin at eight.
In the middle of the afternoon, I donned my Bob Mackie and got