Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [72]
In April 1970, we flew to London, where I was doing my nightclub act at a Chevrolet dealers’ convention. Michael bought a beautiful 1970 650cc Triumph Bonneville and had it shipped back to Los Angeles.
We traveled a great deal, to Italy, Germany, France, Jamaica, Hawaii, and Mexico. We also visited Lebanon, where Michael introduced me to his family.
Those were the good times, but I was afraid that, given the disparity in our careers, they wouldn’t last forever. Ten years into our marriage, I gave an achingly honest interview to a newspaper journalist about the problems Michael and I encountered in our marriage.
“My husband, Michael,” I said, “is becoming more and more annoyed watching me go to work every day while he sits home. He hates the thought of it. I don’t blame him. There isn’t a man around who enjoys the feeling that his wife is the breadwinner and brings home the bacon. I know it’s uncomfortable for Michael. What are we going to do about it? I wish I knew.… All I’m sure of is that Michael would give anything to see our positions reversed.”
Much later, Michael himself admitted, “I should have known it would be difficult for a man in the business to have a wife who’s in the limelight.”
Difficult or not, Michael and I had no plans to end our marriage, and we still loved each other as much as we ever had. Then in 1971, to our delight, I became pregnant with our second child. We’d always longed for Matthew to have a sister—so much so that when they wheeled me out of the delivery room after my son’s birth, Michael kissed me and said, “So shall we start trying for a girl now?”
My response is unprintable!
But now I was pregnant again. Michael was ecstatic, and so was Matthew, who was excited at the prospect of having a brother (a sister, it seemed, was not on his agenda).
I was thrilled, of course, but I was also a little nervous about my pregnancy. After all, I was in my late thirties and exhausted after acting, singing, and dancing nonstop all over the country for so many years. So when I was offered a ten-week tour, first starring in the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown beginning in June and covering St. Louis, Kansas City, and Dallas, then starring in The Sound of Music, for once in my life I was overcome by a burning desire to refuse not just one job but two.
But Michael was not working, and if I didn’t take this opportunity, our family would go hungry. Although I knew in my heart that this wasn’t the case, against my better judgment, I agreed to star in both musicals and tour the country right up until I was eight months pregnant.
Before I left to go on tour, I consulted my doctor, who cautioned me to be careful but didn’t insist I stay home. He gave me a list of obstetricians in all the cities where I’d be performing so I could have regular checkups, and off I went, singing and dancing all across America.
It was a grueling schedule and I knew it, but I took heart in the fact that the producer of The Sound of Music was John Kenley, the famous summer stock producer who’d worked with Ethel Merman, Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and countless other stars. I’d worked with John before in summer stock and was extremely fond of him. He was a theatrical legend—when he was ninety-nine years old, he could still do spectacular high kicks. When he died in 2009 at one hundred and three, the accolades poured in, praising him for his talent and ingenuity.
But that was only the half of it. The even more sensational story was that he was a hermaphrodite and proud of it. He confided in me that he’d been raised as a boy because his parents had concluded that it would be easier for him to go through life as a male rather than as a female. However, during the rest of his adult life, he chose to spend the winters in Ohio living as a man, and the summers in Palm Springs living as a woman named Joan.
So my ten-week tour of America began. In each town I had a checkup with an obstetrician,