by Barbara Eden
On another tour, Connie Stevens was traveling with us on a C-130 cargo plane. Bob had the lower part of a bunk bed, because of his age, but Connie and I were supposed to sleep on the floor. Bob took pity on us and said that if we ever wanted to, we could take a nap in the top bunk. So one night, fed up with sleeping on the floor, Connie and I slept toe to head in the bunk above Bob’s. Or at least we tried to—our sleep was hampered by the fear that the top bunk would break in the middle of the night, land on top of Bob, and crush him, which would lead to the headline “Two Blondes Kill Bob Hope!”
Aside from being part of Bob’s USO tours, I regularly appeared on his TV specials (on the Christmas specials our tradition was always to sing “Silver Bells” together), sang with him to an audience of fifteen thousand in Chicago, and in 1968 I opened the new Madison Square Garden with him. On that momentous occasion, I made my entrance into the arena in a brown fur coat, carrying a big bunch of balloons, then removed the coat to reveal a ringmaster’s costume underneath. From then on, I sang and danced in a series of outfits: an ice skater’s costume (in which I danced to “The Skater’s Waltz”), a cowboy getup, and a tennis dress. The whole sequence ended up with me dressed as Uncle Sam, all intensely patriotic and the epitome of good old-fashioned American values, everything for which Bob Hope so proudly stood. Later that same year Bob and I did a special together at NASA in Houston, at the end of which he brought all the astronauts onstage, which was great fun. And when Bob was seventy-five, we performed in Australia at the Perth Entertainment Centre in front of an audience eight thousand strong. Bob didn’t work with anyone he didn’t like, so I guess he liked me as much as I liked him.
Although Bob Hope was such a big star, he was a regular guy. I’ll never forget the time in St. Louis when we were working at the Fox Theater and Bob suddenly said, “Let’s go get an ice cream cone.” So we just walked down the main street together, eating ice cream cones, and nobody bothered us. They had such respect for Bob, as I did.
We shared the same sense of humor, I think, and I always loved it when we did a comic duet of the song “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” A little naughty and suggestive, but that was Bob, and when all was said and done, it was good, clean fun.
My relationship with singer Tom Jones, however, is quite another story. I worked with Tom in England in March 1969, during a break from I Dream of Jeannie, and flew to England with my manager, Gene Schwam, my conductor, Doug Talbert, and my hairdresser, Mary Skolnik, to guest on This Is Tom Jones. My guest spot consisted of me singing a duet with Tom, “The Look of Love,” while we strolled along the Thames embankment together.
I’ve always known that my strength as a singer lies more in my acting ability than in my singing voice, so my method has always been to act my songs, very much the way that Rex Harrison did in the musical My Fair Lady. So when I sang “The Look of Love” to Tom, I sang the lyrics with warmth and passion, true to the sentiments behind the words. We strolled along the Thames embankment together and finished up at the top of a stone staircase in the moonlight. When the music stopped and the cameras were switched off, Tom took my hand, looked deep in my eyes, and said in his gravelly Welsh baritone, “Can I show you London, Barbara?”
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 ready to go onstage to rehearse for an hour. To my extreme annoyance I was then informed that the stage hadn’t yet been built. I tried to remain calm.
Almost beside himself with fury, my manager, Gene, shouted to someone to get the head union official immediately.
When the man appeared, tall and classically tough-looking, Gene flatly informed him, “Sorry, we can’t rehearse because there’s no stage. And if we can’t rehearse, Miss Eden can’t sing tonight.”
The union official came right up to Gene and stuck his face close to his.
“Miss Eden had better sing tonight,” he said, “or you better get a fast pair of roller skates.”
Gene didn’t hesitate. “Okay,” he said.
Just before I was about to go onstage at eight, I got word there had been a further delay in building the stage. By ten in the evening, there was still no stage.
At eleven-thirty a union official came to get me, so I assumed the stage had been completed. But when I arrived in the packed ballroom, to my shock the stage still hadn’t been built, and all t
he musicians were sitting ready in their chairs right in the middle of the floor.
So without any rehearsal, I faced an audience of a thousand union men, each and every one of them dressed in black tie and tails (I thought they looked like a bunch of penguins) and all hollering at the top of their voices, “Where’s Jeannie, where’s Jeannie?”
I started the show with a rousing, fast song, but then switched moods and sang a soft version of “MacArthur Park” and “Didn’t We.” Even so, all the way through the songs, the guys were yelling, “Hey, Barbara, where ya from?” and “Honey, sing ‘Melancholy Baby,’ ” and, “Come on, Jeannie baby, flash us your navel!”
All of a sudden, as if someone had given them a secret signal, a big group of union guys surged toward me and started to sing “Sweet Georgia Brown,” a completely different song from the one I was struggling to get through.
When someone turned the lights out, that did it—Gene and I sneaked out of the building as fast as we could, grabbed a cab, and hightailed it to La Guardia.
Touring brought with it other, less intimidating moments. Once I was appearing in concert in Detroit (in a theater the stage of which was built over an ice-skating rink), and my friend Mary shared a room with me. Just before we went to bed, I saw that she was readying herself to sleep stark naked.
As diplomatically as possible, I said, “But Mary, what if there’s a fire in the middle of the night?”
“There won’t be, Barbara, there won’t be.” She laughed, then turned over and went to sleep, naked as the day she was born.
The fire alarm rang out about an hour later.
I grabbed my show costumes, my makeup, and my music and made for the door. Mary, meanwhile, made a terrified dash for her clothes and threw them on as fast as she could. And, to my credit, I didn’t even say I told you so. Together, we dashed out into the freezing streets, in the middle of a heavy snow.
One of the hotel maids kindly offered us the opportunity to sit in her car, and we gratefully accepted. A few minutes later, a fireman rapped on the car window, asking us if we’d left anything important in the hotel room. I thanked him and said that all we’d left behind was some nail polish.
Without a word, he walked away. Ten minutes later, he brought us down our bottles of nail polish, having risked his life to go back to the hotel room to get them. Mary and I were speechless.
Then we took one look at Gene, who’d come down in a red leather jacket and red shoes, and we both screamed, “Gene! You’re dressed for a fire,” and burst out laughing.
Sadly, the days of untrammelled fun and laughter were numbered.
In Michael’s studio. Michael is a very talented artist, and these paintings of his mother, his sister, and his father are perfect examples of his work. (Photo Credit i2.1)
With Michael in the garden of our second home in Sherman Oaks. We were happily married and looking forward to the future with hope and optimism.
Michael and I are blissfully happy with our newborn son, Matthew. (Photo Credit i2.2)
I’m with one-and-a-half-year-old Matthew, who’s holding the phone. (Photo Credit i2.3)
Larry and I are with Simba, the lion, just before Simba gave a big roar. Larry and every other man on the set raced out of the studio in terror. Meanwhile, Simba put his head in my lap and purred! (Photo Credit i2.4)
Larry and I on the set of I Dream of Jeannie. Although we look serene and content here, when the camera was switched off, life was far from uneventful. (Photo Credit i2.5)
Groucho was a guest star on I Dream of Jeannie. This was our second meeting, but I decided not to mention our first to him. (Photo Credit i2.6)
A peaceful moment among Larry and Sammy Davis Jr. and me captured just before all hell broke out between Larry and Sammy off camera. (Photo Credit i2.7)
A publicity shot promoting my Las Vegas act, showcasing me in a Bob Mackie gown. (Photo Credit i2.8)
A still from the movie Harper Valley PTA, which was also Woody Harrelson’s first feature film. Afterward, I went on to make the TV series of the same name. (Photo Credit i2.9)
Showing my belly button at last! A publicity shot from I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later. (Photo Credit i2.10)
Harnessed, about to jump, and feeling petrified in a scene from Your Mother Wears Combat Boots, shot at Fort Benning, Georgia. (Photo Credit i2.11)
With my second husband, Chuck Fegert, at a publishing convention in Florida, where he was probably the life and soul of the entire event.
Mommy at my new house in Beverly Hills, which was in the process of being decorated. We thought it would be fun to pose for this picture sitting on the floor and enjoying it.
With Matthew at his cousin’s wedding. This photograph touches my heart, as Matthew, in his rented tuxedo, had made such a great effort to be with me that day. I could tell that he wasn’t well at all, but I was still glad he was there with me.
Such a contrast: Matthew in rehab, free and clear of drugs, looking bright and healthy, with all of life ahead of him. Or so it seemed to us both that day. Jon, who was with us, took this photograph.
With my current husband, Jon, at his company Christmas party, happy together then and forever.
MICHAEL ANSARA TRULY was the love of my life, the passion of my youth, and the father of my only son. I adored being married to him. But by 1971, a year after the cancellation of I Dream of Jeannie, he had less and less work, money was scarcer, and tensions were escalating in our marriage.
When we first met, Michael had been the star, and I was just a struggling contract player in her first TV series. But when I Dream of Jeannie burst into our lives, the tables were turned. In a scenario that echoed A Star Is Born, writers, photographers, and fans didn’t flock to Michael as they had when he was in Broken Arrow and a star; instead, they were almost exclusively centered on me.
Michael tried everything to revive his career, but after Broken Arrow was canceled, he was mostly cast as villains and heavies in movies, and was never the star. He suffered for not being a blue-eyed, blond-haired all-American boy. While I made sure to defer to him in most things, such as decorating the house and finances, and always encouraged him with his oil painting, at which he was extremely talented, there was no question that our marriage came under a strain because of my success in I Dream of Jeannie. Even when the series had ended and I was appearing in my Las Vegas nightclub act, the tensions between Michael and me continued to escalate.
That’s not to say we didn’t still have our happy times together. Michael was a great dirt bike enthusiast, and at the height of I Dream of Jeannie, we bought a Yamaha 360cc dirt bike for him and a 125cc Yamaha dirt bike for me. To my surprise, I got as much of a thrill out of dirt bike riding as he did, though I didn’t have as much time as I’d have liked in which to practice.
However, I wasn’t that comfortable about riding on the streets, which proved to be somewhat of a problem, as dirt bike areas are only accessible via the roads. Nonetheless, we circumvented the problem a few times by putting the bikes on the trailer, driving it to Palm Springs, and riding them there, which was glorious fun.
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 f
or 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.
