Jeannie Out Of The Bottle (17 page)

Although I didn’t remind Groucho of it at the time, I’d worked with him on his own show, years before, when I was Barbara Huffman and living at the Studio Club. I hadn’t had any lines in the show, as I was basically just one of the dumb blond models he tended to hire and put in the background of the show. I was very young at the time, and my clearest memory of my walk-on in Groucho’s show is that I was wearing a big gold ring on my left ring finger.

He took one look at it, wiggled his big cigar at me, and said, “Oh, so you’re married, eh?”

I wasn’t at the time, so I shook my head decisively.

Groucho wiggled his cigar at me again.

“Well, Miss Huffman, you’re definitely sending a wrong message with that ring, then,” he said with a wink.

Fortunately, Groucho’s appearance on I Dream of Jeannie didn’t upset the apple cart as far as Larry was concerned. Larry didn’t have any problems working with Groucho, perhaps because Groucho was eighty years old and Larry didn’t see him as competition.

Generally, though, people on the set felt that in Larry’s mind, when it came to I Dream of Jeannie, he was the cock of the walk, and he definitely didn’t want another rooster on his territory. He wanted to be the only leading man on the set, and to trumpet that the I Dream of Jeannie set was his domain and only his.

So it figured that when Sammy Davis Jr. guested on “The Greatest Entertainer in the World” in season two, it brought out the very worst in Larry. Having a star of Sammy’s magnitude on I Dream of Jeannie would automatically upstage him.

When Sammy arrived on the set for the first time, intensely professional, friendly, and cheerful, I knew better than to mention the fact that I’d been in the chorus at Ciro’s and that he’d sent an emissary to invite me out on a date.

Sammy was bright and funny, and we laughed a lot together. When I alluded to the news that although some black-and-white photos had been taken of us, they were now going to shoot some more, this time in color, he joked, “So now you’re starting with all that racial stuff.”

So far, so good. But when Larry strolled onto the set, you could immediately tell that Sammy was in for big trouble. Larry started by ordering Sammy around and telling him where to stand. Sammy, his own man in every sense of the term, was far from amused by Larry’s overbearing manner.

It came time to shoot Sammy’s most important scene, which required Larry to feed him his lines from off camera. As Sammy started saying his lines, Larry expressed his feelings about him in no uncertain terms by opening his mouth and letting loose a long, thick string of drool. I was in the scene and, against my will, couldn’t help being mesmerized by the sight. Sammy, however, took it as a personal insult, which, of course, it was intended to be.

Quite understandably, he was incandescent with rage. He slammed off the set and shouted, “If I ever have to see that —— again, I’ll kill him.” Sammy was a big star, probably the biggest star who would ever guest on I Dream of Jeannie, and after a hurried, whispered conference, the director, Claudio Guzman, hustled Larry off the set and had someone other than Larry read Sammy his lines.

Afterward, Sammy took me aside and asked, “How in the hell do you work with this guy, Barbara? He’s a total asshole.”

Sammy’s words, not mine.

Legendary comedian Milton Berle was one of the I Dream of Jeannie guest artists in Hawaii, where we shot “The Second Greatest Con Artist in the World” for season three. By now, Larry was well established in the series and popular with the public, and so he felt safe flexing his muscles even further, flatly refusing to appear in the show with Milton. Which was probably just as well, because had Larry provoked him, Milton might well have resorted to his favorite party trick, exposing himself. His, um, endowment was rumored to be impressive, but I can’t confirm that from personal experience. However, I do remember being unnerved when I caught sight of his bare feet. (And not because of the size!)

In the tropical Hawaii heat, most of us went barefoot whenever possible, but when Milton did, I couldn’t help noticing that all his toes were crunched up. I didn’t say a word, but he caught my expression and volunteered, “I was the last of six kids, Barbara, so I always got the smallest pair of shoes.”

I wasn’t quite sure that I had completely grasped the logic of that remark. But from then on, I understood why, during the shoot, Milton kept changing from one elegant, expensive pair of shoes to another pair that was even more elegant and expensive. As they say, you can take the star out of poverty, but you can never take poverty out of the star.

Nor can you take the bluntness out of someone who is congenitally blunt. At that time, Larry was probably the least diplomatic actor on the planet and would openly tell Sidney how much he hated his scripts.

Looking back, I don’t think Sidney could have written I Dream of Jeannie any other way. The show was fantasy, light and fun entertainment—we weren’t intending to be didactic in any way or Shakespearean in either language or scope.

Larry, however, was aiming higher and wasn’t going to be satisfied by the perfectly serviceable scripts Sidney continued to churn out. Consequently, he let out his ire not just on celebrities but also on harmless “civilians” visiting the I Dream of Jeannie set. I’ve recounted the story about the nuns, so it followed that when I took the risk of inviting my mother to visit me on the set, I was terrified at the thought of what Larry might pull while she was there. At first he was at his most charming (and Larry is quite a charmer when he chooses to be). Then, all of a sudden, he cut her dead, and didn’t speak to her again the entire day.

Hayden Rorke, who played Dr. Alfred Bellows in the series, was the one person involved with I Dream of Jeannie other than Jackie Cooper who could actually handle Larry. Our resident on-set terror, it transpired, actually respected Hayden in his own right, partly because Hayden was a friend of his mother, Mary Martin. Hayden even went so far as to tear into Larry for not bothering to read his script until the eleventh hour. Larry wouldn’t have accepted that kind of a reprimand from anyone else, certainly not me. But he took Hayden’s rebuke without complaining, because he respected him to such a high degree.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Hayden came from a distinguished theatrical family. His grandfather was the well-known producer William Richardson Hayden, and his mother was an actress who later switched careers and built a business in textiles, after which she had the distinction of designing the material used in the ball gowns both Eleanor Roosevelt and Mamie Eisenhower wore at their respective husbands’ inaugurations.

Hayden’s impeccable acting credentials started out with his training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts; he then appeared in classics with Walter Hampden’s repertory company. During World War II, in which he was a sergeant, he toured with This Is the Army, and met Gene Nelson, who was also affiliated with the War Department.

After the war, Hayden became a successful professional actor, appearing in the Broadway productions of The Philadelphia Story, The Country Wife, Three Men on a Horse, A Moon for the Misbegotten, and Dream Girl. Moving on to Hollywood, he won fame as a character actor in such classic movies as An American in Paris. The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Pillow Talk. His acting ability was superlative, and his grasp of the business served as an inspiration to all of us.

In his private life, Hayden was unashamedly gay. He and his partner, Justus Addiss, lived together for many years in Studio City, along with their menagerie of dogs. Hayden was wonderful in the part of Dr. Bellows, the psychiatrist forever stumped by Tony. Throughout the series, he remained a good friend to all of us and kept all our spirits up under all sorts of difficult circumstances, most of them caused by Larry. He was a prince, and everyone, even Larry, knew it.

Hayden’s on-screen wife, Amanda Bellows, was played by the beautiful and gracious Emmaline Henry, whose Philadelphia pedigree melded with her visual resemblance to Grace Kelly. Initially a singer, with a rich soprano voice, Emmaline started out in radio, then moved to Hollywood and appeared in stage musicals, including the road company of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, in which she took over from none other than Carol Channing, the star who’d attended Miss Holloway’s school and inspired me to go there in the first place.

A well-known and glamorous fixture on TV shows such as The Farmer’s Daughter and Green Acres, Emmaline also appeared in a slew of prestigious movies, including Rosemary’s Baby and Divorce, Italian Style. Late in life, she fell in love and hoped to get married, but the man in question ultimately ditched her, and she was devastated, a fact that I firmly believe contributed to her death from cancer at the age of just forty-nine.

Before that, she appeared in thirty-nine episodes of I Dream of Jeannie, starting in the second season (although she made a brief appearance during the first season as a magician’s assistant whom Roger assumed was Jeannie’s cousin). Her cool elegance attracted a great many fans and even fooled the censors into allowing her to show her navel during the beach scene in “Jeannie Goes to Honolulu.” I, on the other hand, was encased in my red one-piece bathing suit and towels and forced to swelter away on Waikiki Beach. But I didn’t begrudge Emmaline that freedom; she was a lovely, friendly lady and I liked her very much.

Barton MacLane, who played the imposing, if a little intimidating, General Peterson, started out in the 1920s as a Paramount contract player and was a veteran of over two hundred movies. In the legendary Bogart picture The Maltese Falcon, he played the police detective; he also appeared in Bogart’s classic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. An unusual man, passionate about card playing (he even invented a canasta card holder), he was in his late sixties when he made I Dream of Jeannie, and died during the making of the series.

Vinton Hayworth, who played General Schaeffer, only came into I Dream of Jeannie for the last two seasons. Nevertheless, he was a good actor; coincidentally, he was also Rita Hayworth’s uncle. With his deep and resonant voice, he was a well-known radio announcer in his day, and also made countless guest appearances in shows other than I Dream of Jeannie, including Perry Mason, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Munsters, and Gunsmoke.

Bill Daily was fun and funny in real life, as well as in his role of Roger Healey in I Dream of Jeannie. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, he grew up in Chicago and, like Larry, began his career in the military (though as a musician, not as an actor). After performing in nightclubs in the Chicago area, he got a spot performing comedy routines on TV.

Discovered by Steve Allen, he went on to land guest roles in Bewitched and The Farmer’s Daughter. Initially his role as Roger Healey on I Dream of Jeannie was projected to be a small one. But after Bill’s natural comic talent shone through, his part was expanded, and the multidimensional Major Roger Healey came into being.

All of us on I Dream of Jeannie welcomed any laughs we could drum up amid the grueling shooting schedule. And now and again we enjoyed excursions the cast and crew took in the name of PR. We went to visit Cape Canaveral after Buzz Aldrin’s rocket mission was scrubbed. I was photographed with Buzz, and then afterward all of the I Dream of Jeannie cast went on to Houston, where we saw the astronauts training to walk in outer space in a huge water tank. It was the nearest thing to being weightless on planet Earth. We were categorically warned to stay on the boardwalk overlooking the astronauts, no matter what.

“You do not get off the boardwalk, you do not go down below, you do not touch anything”—that was the rule.

We all obeyed, even Larry.

In another part of the facility, Gene Cernan was training in the moon module. Suddenly the distinguished astronaut shouted up at me, “Barbara, Barbara, come on down and see a mock-up of the capsule that’s gonna land on the moon. Soon.”

I hesitated.

“I can’t, Gene,” I said. “That’s strictly against the rules.”

A guard with us shook his head. “If Gene Cernan says you can go down, you can.”

So I went down and got into the capsule, and he said, “Here, Barbara, you take the controls and land.” I tried, but we “crashed.” I was vastly relieved that it wasn’t the real thing, but flying it was sure fun!

Given that Major Tony Nelson was an astronaut and, comedy or not, the show did keep the image of the astronauts and the space program at the forefront of the public’s consciousness, our links with NASA were strong. In June 1969, Cocoa Beach, Florida, celebrated Barbara Eden Day. All the local press and some national newspaper reporters and photographers were on hand.

Buzz Aldrin, who had guested on I Dream of Jeannie, showed up, and the photographers kept egging me on to kiss him. I planted a big kiss on his cheek, but that wasn’t enough for the press, and not for Buzz, either. He grabbed me, declared, “I can do better than that,” and kissed me right on the mouth. I wasn’t prepared for that and was stunned, but everyone watching gave a big cheer.

A former fighter pilot and the first man to break the sound barrier, Chuck Yeager was also in an episode of I Dream of Jeannie (“Bigger than a Bread Box and Better than a Genie”), but for some obscure reason, his appearance in the show was not credited.

Such was Larry’s respect for astronauts that he didn’t act up during either Buzz’s or Chuck’s guest spot. He was also quietly respectful to Don Rickles, who guested on the episode “My Master, the Weakling,” and who was wonderful. (A brief aside: the twenty-three-year-old David Soul, later of Starsky and Hutch fame, had a small part as an orderly in this episode as well.)

By now, Larry and Bill had fallen into the habit of always coming up with tough physical stunts they could do on the show. For this particular episode, they decided to roll down a hill. Rickles just stood at the top of the hill, watching. “Yeah, yeah, guy, beat yourself up, break your legs, go ahead. The genie’s standing up here laughing; it’s her show!” he said.

I liked him a lot, and I also liked his wife, who was called Barbara as well.