Jeannie Out Of The Bottle (16 page)

During the late sixties, Tony Curtis and one of his daughters used to come up to the house and play Ping-Pong with me and Michael. After one or two desultory games during which Tony’s mind, not to mention his body, seemed to be miles away, I realized that playing Ping-Pong wasn’t the primary motive for his visit. He came to our house to smoke pot without his wife knowing about it, and that’s what he’d done.

Along the way, Tony said something extremely inappropriate to me. Matthew happened to overhear every single word, and he went ballistic and threatened to deck Tony. I tried reasoning with him (“rise above it” and so on), but that didn’t work with Matthew, and it was all I could do to stop him from avenging my wounded virtue and socking Tony Curtis in the jaw.

An international tabloid scandal concerning Matt and another household name was narrowly averted when, in 1992, I made an appearance on shock jock Howard Stern’s radio show. It goes without saying that I wasn’t keen to be on the show, but my manager asked me to do it, and I guess we had a movie to promote. So I gritted my teeth and sailed through the show, turning a deaf ear to some of the more salacious comments made during my brief stint.

Two minutes after we went off the air, I was in the midst of making my escape from the studio as quickly as was polite when I received a heated call from Matthew.

I hadn’t warned him in advance that I was guesting on the show, because I hoped fervently that he’d never find out, but as chance would have it, he was driving his truck through the streets of Los Angeles at the exact moment when my interview went out over the air, and he heard every word of the segment.

I concentrated my energy on preventing Matthew from instantly heading to the studio, where Howard Stern was still on the air, and giving him hell for the way he’d treated me. Matthew was fit to be tied, and it was all I could do to convince him that it takes all sorts to make the world of entertainment go round.

When that failed, I resorted to taking the blame myself. “Howard Stern didn’t force me to go on his show, Matt,” I reasoned with him. “I went on it by choice. And I knew exactly what I was doing and what I was in for.”

He still was far from happy. And it was only a couple of hours later, after I had recovered from my shock that he’d heard the show, that it finally occurred to me I should have had the presence of mind to quiz Matthew on what exactly he was doing listening to The Howard Stern Show in the first place!

However, I caught myself wishing that Matthew had been around the time when I was asked by a sports magazine to present an award to O. J. Simpson. The ceremony took place at Jack Lemmon’s office on Beverly Drive. It was just another job to me, but out of respect to the magazine and to the event, I wanted to look my best, so I wore a peach chamois leather pantsuit to the ceremony.

From the moment I walked into the room, O.J. was all over me like a bad case of measles, flirting outrageously and making a series of suggestive remarks. I’m not unaccustomed to men speaking to me that way, but when they do, I somehow manage to tune them out. I did just that with O.J.

I posed for pictures with him, smiling as sunnily as I was able. Meanwhile, O.J. was ignoring everyone else in the room and just talking to me; he acted as if I were the award he’d been given. And although I tried to evade his advances as politely as possible, as luck would have it (or is it that old Murphy’s law again?), a journalist on hand to report on the ceremony must have picked up on the underlying tension between us. In the article on the award ceremony, the journalist quipped acidly, “O.J. didn’t seem to care much about the award. All he could see was Barbara.”

It’s true that O. J. Simpson did come on to me in an extremely blatant and aggressive way, but I did nothing to encourage him. Nevertheless, the journalist went so far as to unfairly blame me for having invited O.J.’s advances, simply because I was wearing tight pants. I was hurt and angry.

Sometime afterward, I was invited to Nicole Brown Simpson’s birthday party and O.J. came up to me, all wide-eyed and innocent, and said, “Oh, Barbara, I hope I didn’t upset you at that award ceremony. I hope I wasn’t rude to you.” Of course he did upset me, and of course he was rude. I merely shook my head and moved away from him. My mother would have been proud.

A few years later, I saw Nicole and the children at an airport and said hello to her. She looked very tired and was in the midst of telling the children, “We have to go and see Daddy now.” I could tell that she was deeply unhappy.

Time for a Jeannie blink back to my I Dream of Jeannie years. Although I worked extremely hard, I was content, both in my own career and in my marriage to Michael. When we were shooting the show, I would get up at five every day, arrive at the studio for makeup at six, and work until seven in the evening. In those days, none of the cast went to dinner together afterward, or to a bar or a club. We just rushed straight home and studied our scripts in preparation for the next day’s filming.

Now and again, however, Michael and I did make time to get together with friends like Steve and Neile McQueen, who lived in a small house in Bel Air, where we’d sometimes go to dinner. Later on, I was so shocked when Steve and Neile announced they were getting divorced, because when we were together it was so clear that they adored each other. After their divorce, we lost touch. Then some years later I was at Columbia Studios, heard someone calling my name, and turned around—and there was Steve!

He hadn’t changed a bit. It was as if time had stood still. We had coffee together and laughed, joked, and reminisced about the past. Steve was a genuinely good human being, a kind friend, and I remember him with great affection.

Which brings me back to I Dream of Jeannie, the show with which I will always be associated, the show that consumed five years of my life. Even with the wild roller-coaster ride I had with my talented, iconoclastic drama king of a co-star, Larry Hagman, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

THIS MAY BE one of the biggest understatements ever made, but for Larry Hagman, the I Dream of Jeannie years were not happy ones. To this day, I believe he much prefers to be remembered for his role as J. R. Ewing in Dallas rather than for his role as Major Tony Nelson in I Dream of Jeannie.

To be fair to Larry, he wasn’t the cause of every single solitary drama out of all the many that unfolded on the I Dream of Jeannie set. One good example was during season three, while we were shooting “Genie, Genie, Who’s Got the Genie,” which aired on January 16, 1968. My mother visited the set for the very first time, and saw me locked into the interior of a safe, with only a gigantic lipstick and a purse for company.

All of a sudden, a flat from the set fell across the safe. Only quick thinking by a crew member saved me from being hit by it. We started the scene again, but then the lipstick toppled over and practically knocked me out.

My mother, watching, gave a big start and said, “Barbara, I never knew that making a TV series was so dangerous!” Of course she didn’t. She hadn’t witnessed Larry in full flight yet.

In his memoirs, Larry claimed not to be able to remember the I Dream of Jeannie years, but I find that difficult to believe, given the high-octane quality of his explosive on-set shenanigans.

On one unforgettable occasion, when Larry didn’t like a particular script, his answer was to throw up all over the set. Nerves? Method acting? I didn’t stick around long enough to find out, but took refuge in the sanctuary of my dressing room instead.

In many ways, Larry was like a very talented, troubled child whose tantrums sometimes got the better of his self-control. The crew, however, quickly lost patience with him and vented their frustration by cutting him dead as often as possible and tormenting him however and whenever they could. Once when Larry demanded a cup of tea (as opposed to his habitual champagne), the crew, exasperated by his high-handedness and demands that a scene be reshot because he didn’t like that particular segment of the script, put salt in his tea instead of sugar.

When the unsuspecting Larry took a sip and spat the tea out in disgust, the entire set rocked with suppressed laughter from the delighted crew, who probably would have applauded if they could have, they so enjoyed humiliating poor Larry.

But when it came to Gene Nelson, to whom Larry had taken an instant dislike when we shot the pilot, Larry hit out hard and often. And as much as I tried to avoid becoming involved in their clash, it was patently obvious that there was a lot of nastiness flying back and forth between the two of them during the early days of filming I Dream of Jeannie.

I was very secure in what I was doing in terms of my portrayal of Jeannie, and whenever a battle between Larry and Gene appeared to be on the horizon, I just hid away in my dressing room, as this was the only way I could survive the storms and conflicts that regularly raged on set. In fact, I retreated into my dressing room so often that many times I honestly didn’t know what was brewing on the set.

Pretty soon, though, I made the unpleasant discovery that I was no longer able to remain above the fray. Larry’s machinations created a situation that made it impossible for me to continue trying to rise above anything to do with I Dream of Jeannie.

After the first few episodes were aired on national TV, Larry demanded an audience with Sidney Sheldon, during which he complained, “Barbara is so little and so cute, and people keep coming up to me and asking how come I get so angry with this cute little thing. I look like I’m the bad guy, and I didn’t sign on for that!”

When you consider Larry’s iconic portrayal of J. R. Ewing, one of TV’s all-time most memorable villains, his objections to being portrayed as the bad guy in I Dream of Jeannie now seem rather laughable. At the time, however, the issue was very important to him. So Sidney Sheldon called me into his office.

“Barbara, I’ve decided to change Jeannie’s character a bit, and have her take charge more. I want you to be stronger,” he announced.

“Stronger?” I said.

“Be stronger, Barbara, be stronger,” Sidney replied.

Well, I’m an actress, and I believe I can play the strong woman (on- and offstage, as it happens) as well as any other actress in the business. No problem whatsoever. So, at Sidney’s behest, strong I became, and I made a concerted effort to make Jeannie far more acerbic and willful than in the pilot and the few other episodes already aired.

When my two “strong” I Dream of Jeannie episodes were tested in front of a focus group, to my amusement word quickly came back to the producers that not one member of the focus group liked the new, stronger Jeannie. As a result, Sidney threw up his hands and told me to go back to playing Jeannie the way I’d played her in the first place!

As for the two “strong” episodes we’d already made, because I was on maternity leave at the time, a much sweeter (in my opinion much too sweet) voice was dubbed over mine, and Jeannie was restored to her original persona.

Nonetheless, there were more clashes to come. Gene Nelson was a good friend of mine, and I liked and respected Larry as an actor, though his shifting moods and off-camera theatrics (arriving for work in a gorilla suit, for one) grew wearying. But it was clear that a showdown between Gene and Larry was imminent.

Unbeknownst to me, Larry decided to precipitate that showdown by issuing an ultimatum to Sidney: “Either Gene goes or I do.”

Sidney, an intensely clever man, prevaricated. Then, without putting it in so many words, he threw down the gauntlet at my feet.

He invited me into his office and, after telling me that Jorja (his wife) sent her best and asking after my family, he got to the point. “Barbara, how would you feel if we replaced Larry?”

Now, I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes, but I did know one thing: no matter how anarchic Larry might be or how much the crew might detest him, when that camera rolled, he was there. He didn’t have to be my best pal, just a good actor. And he definitely was that.

So I answered Sidney’s question the only way I could. “Sidney, I feel it would be a big mistake to replace Larry. He really does his job, once the camera is rolling.”

Before I knew it, Gene Nelson was out the door, without further ado. In all, he directed just eight episodes of I Dream of Jeannie. It must, however, be said that during the short period in which he directed the show, he stamped his indelible imprint on it. His contribution should never be underestimated, and I said as much at the time. But nothing could salvage my relationship with him. He never forgave me for siding with Larry, which was how he saw it, and he never talked to me again. Larry had gotten what he wanted.

One of the results of Larry’s power play with Sidney was that he followed Sidney’s advice to try to calm down while shooting I Dream of Jeannie. To that end, Sidney arranged for Larry to see a therapist, and, reluctantly or not, Larry went along with the idea. However, in keeping with the anything-goes ethos of the early sixties, the therapist ostensibly advised Larry to smoke pot and drink champagne on the set, to help himself relax.

Larry, being Larry, naturally didn’t do anything by half measures. Henceforth, instead of being nervous, on edge, and confrontational, he started every day at the studio by drinking vast quantities of champagne, and in between scenes, he sequestered himself in his dressing room, smoking pot and downing yet more champagne, all in the interests of attaining a state of calm serenity. The result? Mayhem, as I’ll tell you.

Surprisingly, the past master at handling Larry at his worst turned out to be Jackie Cooper, the former child star. Jackie was no longer an actor and had now graduated to the position of vice president of Screen Gems, the production company responsible for I Dream of Jeannie. Whenever Larry reverted to his usual modus operandi of questioning everything and everyone, as in “Do we have to do this? Do we have to do that?” Jackie would shoot back, “Do we have to pay you, Larry?” and despite himself, Larry couldn’t prevent himself from laughing.

Larry even continued laughing when we had Groucho Marx, our first male guest star on I Dream of Jeannie (but I pity those that followed). Groucho, a close friend of Sidney Sheldon’s, made a cameo appearance on the show in season two, in “The Greatest Invention in the World.” Really, the most remarkable thing about Groucho’s appearance on the show (which was extremely brief) was the fact that he waived his considerable fee—not out of friendship for Sidney, but simply because he didn’t want to be liable for taxes. Instead, he requested that he be compensated for his appearance on the show by being given a new TV set. He was.