Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [89]
However, I did enjoy working in San Francisco again, and relished the coincidence of my playing a psychic in the same city where I had consulted Emma Nelson Sims, whose psychic predictions about me proved to be so uncannily accurate.
Unfortunately, while making Visions of Murder and the sequel, Eyes of Terror, I couldn’t find Emma, though I’d have relished her input. Instead, in the interest of accurately portraying a psychic, I consulted psychic Sylvia Browne.
Like my character, Dr. Jesse Newman, Sylvia also worked with the San Francisco Police Department on solving cases, and had a high success rate in doing so. When we got to know each other better, she confided in me that she found her work, which she did pro bono, extremely painful, particularly when missing children she was seeking turned up dead. But there were physical issues for herself, too.
A case in point: She was investigating the abduction and murder of a child when all of a sudden she felt blows all over her body and was bruised, just as the child had been. She then had a vision of the child’s abductor, which, when he was caught, proved to be accurate. I was so impressed that I partially based my portrayal of Jesse on Sylvia.
In 1996, I also made Dead Man’s Island, in which I played an investigative journalist, Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins. I owned the rights to the book on which the movie was based, and co-starred in it with Morgan Fairchild and William Shatner. For some reason, in those days before Boston Legal and remembering William’s role as Captain Kirk, I expected him to be staid and stuffy. Boy, was I in for a surprise!
During the five-week shoot, he proved to be a lot of fun. In one scene, he had to wear a one-piece swimsuit and was supposed to swim in a large pool, then get out, dripping wet, and stroll down a path while simultaneously conducting a conversation with Roddy McDowall. Well, William was quite heavy at the time, and the swimsuit that wardrobe had selected for him was a 1920s-style getup. In addition, wardrobe gave him a rubber bathing cap to wear that was extremely tight. But gallant and self-deprecating William Shatner just laughed his way through the scene, making fun of the outfit and, above all, of himself. A great sport and such good company!
My friends always say that I am all work and no play. They are sometimes right, but now and again I do indulge my love for exotic adventure travel. And so I was thrilled when I was invited to attend the Silver Jubilee of King Hassan II of Morocco (otherwise known as the “Finger of God on Earth”), along with Michael York and Robert Stack; the head of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun; and Ahmet’s wife, Mica.
We were flown first-class to Marrakech, where the streets were lined with orange blossom trees and floodlit in red, green, and orange lights, the colors of the Moroccan flag. The celebrations centered around the king’s fifteenth-century palace in Marrakech, and no expense was spared in making them spectacular beyond belief.
Before the trip, I’d been warned not to wear anything that revealed my arms or my legs. I brought a glamorous long white gown with cap sleeves, completely forgetting that the gown had a low-cut neckline and a slit up the front of it. With it I wore a white fox stole.
When the escort arrived at our hotel to drive us to the castle, she took one look at me and screamed, “Oh la la!”
“Oh la la?” I said.
Recovering her composure, she explained that I had to wear something else that evening. Good idea—except that this was the only long gown I’d brought with me, and I told her so.
Her solution? She took my white fox stole and draped it diagonally across my body, so that it covered one arm and one leg. Then she pressed my left arm across my chest and my right across my legs. Difficult to imagine, I suppose, but I hope you