Jeannie Out of the Bottle

by Barbara Eden

  In the morning, while Chuck got ready for work, I kept my eyes firmly shut, feigning deep sleep. He made no attempt to wake me. After he left, I showered and got dressed, then cast around for my makeup chair, but it was nowhere to be seen.

  I spent the next hour scouring our three-thousand-square-foot apartment from floor to ceiling, and finally found my makeup chair on a high ledge above the guest room closet, where Chuck had obviously hidden it. A cruel practical joke, and a lesson: everything that I cared about, everything I needed, was unimportant to him, and needed to be damaged or thrown away.

  Night after night, he was out partying, and when he came home, if I was still awake, he would taunt me: “I’m glad you didn’t go because you’re so dull. You’re no fun at a party. No one wants you around because they don’t like you.”

  Another night, he came home late while I was fast asleep, and shook me awake.

  “Get up, Barbara, you’re taking up too much room in bed!” he yelled at the top of his voice.

  I refused. We had words. Then he kicked me so hard that I fell on the floor. But instead of whimpering, I dusted myself off, picked up a book, locked myself in the bathroom, and stayed there all night, reading, while Chuck banged on the door relentlessly, yelling for me to come out.

  Through all the noise and the banging, the name-calling and the abuse, I just kept on reading. When dawn broke, gambling on the strong possibility that Chuck was now sleeping the pill-induced sleep of someone coming down from a cocaine high, I crept out of the bathroom and into the living room.

  I sat there on the couch, having a silent dialogue with myself.

  You’re insane, Barbara Eden. Why are you doing this? Why are you staying married to a man you don’t even want to be in the same room with?

  Then I got up, got dressed, took a cab to the storage facility filled with all my things that hadn’t yet been delivered to the apartment, and had them shipped back to Los Angeles. Then I headed back to the apartment. It was afternoon by the time I got there. I packed my suitcases and called to make airline reservations.

  As fate would have it, all flights between Chicago and Los Angeles were booked for that night, so I got myself a ticket on the first plane that was scheduled to leave the next morning.

  Then I heard the door open. It was Chuck. A clever man, with good instincts, he’d come home from work early. Then the sales talk began.

  “I love you, Barbara Jean, I love you,” he kept saying, over and over. He called me Barbara Jean because he knew my family had always called me that, and he believed that if he also used that name, it would give him power over me.

  “I love you, Barbara Jean. I’ve never loved anybody like you, never,” he said, over and over.

  I didn’t believe him, and yet … For a little while longer, I was sold on him again. After all, he was my husband, I still loved him, and so I stayed.

  On New Year’s Eve, I had to work at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, and Chuck flew down to Florida to be with me. When I first found out that he was coming, I wasn’t completely bowled over by his devotion, as I knew that he had close friends down there and was keen to party with them. However, I abandoned my misgivings and let my guard slip after he promised to be in the audience.

  That night, I was happy at the prospect of him seeing me in the show, and I had just finished applying my makeup and was about to go onstage when the phone rang. Without any preamble, Chuck announced that he wouldn’t be in the audience after all. There was no explanation, no excuse. The disappointment was so sharp that it felt as if Chuck was stabbing me in the heart with a rusty bread knife. Too dispirited to argue, I hung up and did my show anyway.

  At the back of my mind was the nagging question of why Chuck hadn’t invited me to join him after the show was over, no matter how late that might be. But instead of moping around, I reminded myself that it was New Year’s Eve and accepted an invitation to a party given by our friends Charlie and Rusty Stein.

  I was doing my utmost to join in the spirit of the night and have a good time when, out of the blue, some supposedly well-meaning woman suddenly blurted out how lucky Chuck was to be invited to Sinatra’s party that night. So now I knew the truth—my husband had chosen Frank Sinatra over me. Even worse, as I later discovered, he had taken one of his former wives, the beautiful model, along with him as well, and that hurt.

  But heartbroken as I was, I carried on partying with the Steins and their friends. After all, it was New Year’s Eve. Besides, I’ve always believed in not betraying my deepest emotions to anyone. In fact, you could say that the song “Don’t Cry Out Loud” was written with me in mind.

  I was due to host the Orange Bowl Parade, then be introduced during halftime at the game. As a conciliatory gesture, I agreed to go with Chuck to a party that was being thrown at an elegant, multimillion-dollar Turnberry Isle apartment later that day.

  When I got there, everyone was partying as if there were no tomorrow. Still, the hosts had made an attempt to give a formal dinner, at which I was seated next to the wife of a big Florida developer. I glanced out onto the terrace, just in time to see the developer in the throes of a passionate kiss with another woman. I looked back at his wife’s face, saw her glassy eyes, and realized that she didn’t even register her husband’s infidelity. It was as if a veil had been ripped from in front of my eyes. The entire room was zonked out of their minds on coke.

  At last I faced the facts. This place and these people were not for me. More to the point, neither was my husband or our marriage. And I couldn’t believe that it had taken me so long to see the light.

  Fortunately, the party was in full swing, and the noise was so loud that no one noticed when I crept out of the room and upstairs to the guest bedroom, where I’d left my Louis Vuitton suitcases.

  Exhausted by my dreadful night at Turnberry Isle, my revulsion at all the drug use and carousing going on, and Chuck’s indifference to me, I lay down on the bed. Before I knew it, I drifted off to sleep.

  When I opened my eyes again, dawn was breaking. No one had come to find me, no one knew where I was, and no one cared, least of all my husband. I buzzed the doorman to come get my luggage.

  Then the bedroom door opened, and there was Chuck, wasted from a night of drinking and drugs. He stood there staring at me intently, tall and handsome despite the ravages of alcohol and cocaine. He must have seen something flicker in my expression, because he walked over to the bed, almost like a sleepwalker, sat down, rested his head in his hands, and said, “I’m so sorry, Barbara Jean, I’m so sorry.”

  I took one look at my husband, the man I had once thought I loved with all my heart, and simply walked out, my head held high, and didn’t look back.

  Chuck merely watched as I left. He knew it was over between us and that any attempt to persuade me otherwise would be futile.

  I took a cab to the airport and flew home to Los Angeles, alone. I felt sad that I no longer loved Chuck, and depressed that I was about to go through another divorce, but at least our split was my choice, and I was convinced that it was absolutely the right one.

  FORTUNATELY, IMMEDIATELY AFTER my split from Chuck, I was able to drown any vestiges of melancholy in my new role as the madam in a touring company of the musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Moreover, my mother had moved down to LA from San Francisco and was now living with me, so I had her for company, which made life pleasanter and less lonely.

  I loved the script, the songs, and everything else about The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, with just one exception: that four-letter word starting in f and ending in k, which the madam, my character in the show, uses frequently. My mother and I pored over the script together and spent hours trying to come up with alternative words to replace that dreaded one, but to no avail.

  Finally the director laid down the law and in his Texas accent ruled, “Barbara Jean, just please say the word.”

  And that, as they say, was that. So although I blushed a little on opening night, as the tour pro
gressed I became more and more accustomed to using the f-word without blushing. And I have to confess that today you could say that I employ it frequently. However, when I do, I try to remember to make a mental apology to my mother, wherever she is. And I sincerely hope that she forgives me.

  Soon after I was in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Michele Lee, of Knots Landing fame, who was married to the actor James Farentino, introduced me to Brentwood plastic surgeon Stanley Frileck, who was also director of the Michael Jackson Burn Center in Culver City.

  Stanley was a kind and gentle man, and we struck up a congenial relationship, which then blossomed into a romance; eventually he moved in with me. Fortunately, Matthew liked Stanley a great deal, and, thank the Lord, so did my mother. I felt blessed that Stanley was around to support me during her illness and after her death from lung cancer.

  That final illness was cruelly drawn out and caused her a great deal of pain and suffering. I later learned through one of her friends that she had been having difficulty breathing at night for a very long time beforehand, but she continued to ignore her symptoms, and never gave me a clue, either. My guess is that she simply followed her own dictate and rose right above it—until, of course, it was impossible for her to do so anymore.

  My mother passed away in November 1986, and I continue to miss her today more than I could ever say. When she lived with me, when I was working, each morning, she would take Matthew to school—Buckley, a private school, and to and from sports practice. And when Matthew was with his father (with whom I thankfully shared joint custody), she and I would go on fun and adventurous trips together, sometimes work-related, other times not.

  Everywhere we traveled, even Australia and Fiji, my mother picked up a rock as a souvenir of where we’d been together and what a great time we’d had there. I labeled her souvenirs “Mommy Rocks.” Many a suspicious customs officer examined them, picked them up, turned them over, tapped them on the table, and rubbed their rough surfaces, utterly bemused. However, after hearing my mother’s wide-eyed explanation, the customs officers grinned, nodded, and let us through.

  Stanley and I were together for seven years, but neither of us was passionate enough about the other to take the ultimate step of getting married. After all, I’d been married twice, and I told myself that trying marriage for a third time was a recipe for disaster. So Stanley and I broke up. And guess who is the current love of his life? None other than Michele Lee, who introduced us to each other in the first place. Hollywood musical chairs, you could call it.

  I spent a great many years working on a long series of made-for-television movies, some fun, others not, some worthwhile, others patently not. We can take a whistle-stop tour of some of them.

  In 1974 I appeared in a real howler of a TV movie of the week, The Stranger Within, in which I gave birth to an alien baby, ate a great deal of raw meat, and drank a lot of coffee. Sigmund Freud probably would have had a field day analyzing that script!

  In 1977, I worked on Stonestreet: Who Killed the Centerfold Model? (a pilot that, ultimately, did not get sold), playing an undercover cop. My sister, Alison, was an extra. Alison also stood in for me in some of my other movies, not because she wanted to be an actress but because my mother was dying and we both knew that Alison and me working together would make her so happy.

  In the Stonestreet script my character went undercover as a hooker, plying her trade in a very rough part of LA. I wore a red wig, a minuscule skirt, a plunging top, and towering stilettos.

  As I sashayed along Hollywood Boulevard for a long shot, a white Cadillac screeched to a halt beside me. A man leaned out of the window, beckoned, and said, “Get in, honey.”

  I gave him a wide smile and said, “Not right now. You’re on Candid Camera!”

  He tore away as if the cops were after him.

  Later that day, they shot me walking down another stretch of Hollywood Boulevard, past a peep show. In the middle of the shot, a man ducked out of the peep show and ruined the entire scene.

  The infuriated director yelled, “Cut!” but the poor man was frozen to the spot.

  The director went to war. “If you don’t move right now, I’ll print it and send a copy to your mother,” he said.

  The terrified man scurried off like a bunny rabbit pursued by a pack of ravenous wolves.

  Watching the scene was a young actress who was playing a ticket booth attendant and had only one line in the movie. Even then, with a faint smile playing on her unusually attractive face, there was a memorable quality about her that was impossible to ignore. When we wrapped for the night, she came over to me and said, “Miss Eden, I really don’t know whether or not I want to carry on in this business.”

  I gave her a few words of encouragement about her acting career, which in essence delivered the message, Don’t give up. Carry on!

  And carry on Ellen Barkin did. She went on to make The Big Easy and Sea of Love, carving out a stellar movie career for herself. To top that, in her private life, she married and divorced one of the wealthiest men in America. Not bad for a girl who wanted to give up acting all those years ago.

  In 1981, I appeared in Return of the Rebels with Don Murray, in which the young Patrick Swayze had a small part. He was gentlemanly and polite to me, and I was struck by how close he was to his family and how whenever they came to visit him on the set, he was so warm and kind to them. Patrick was a good guy, and his death from pancreatic cancer at the age of fifty-seven was tragic.

  In 1985, NBC ordered a two-hour I Dream of Jeannie sequel, I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later, in which I played both Jeannie and her evil sister (I always loved playing the sister because, as they say, the devil always gets the best lines).

  This time around Sidney Sheldon wasn’t available to take creative control of the movie, as by then his career as a novelist was well under way, with books like The Other Side of Midnight selling in the millions.

  Larry also didn’t appear in I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later, for the very good reason that Dallas was now a massive hit and a cultural phenomenon, and he didn’t want to switch horses in midrace, as it were. So Wayne Rogers played Tony, and was very good in the part, although very different from Larry. Wayne, who starred in the hit TV series M*A*S*H and then went on to become an investment broker and a financial commentator on TV, nowadays manages my money!

  However, donning my Jeannie costume once more after an interval of fifteen years was a very strange feeling. The moment I put it on, I got goose bumps all over my body. I looked in the mirror and felt as though time hadn’t passed at all.

  The plot of the movie was a bit strange, but probably appropriate for its time. When the story opens, Jeannie has at last realized her own value. She’s married to Major Nelson, has a child with him (played by Mackenzie Astin, the twelve-year-old son of Patty Duke and John Astin), and has become more assertive than she was at the start of the series. Deciding that Major Nelson is taking her too much for granted, she moves out of their house, rents an apartment on her own, and attempts to live the life of a 1980s liberated woman. Not the world’s most scintillating script, but a worthwhile and fun exercise in nostalgia.

  Moreover, two good things emerged out of the show for me. First, I was allowed to display my belly button at last! And I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later placed a close second to a World Series game in the ratings, to become the eleventh-highest-rated television movie of 1985.

  In 1987, I was cast as Laura Harding in The Stepford Children. It was not a particularly thrilling experience. The script featured a robot clone of me. So I had to spend four hours wearing a leotard and stockings, covered in plaster, with straws inserted into my nostrils so I could breathe.

  My mother had just died, and my sister, Alison, was working as my double. Both she and I were extremely uncomfortable when we discovered that we had a big scene to shoot in a cemetery. But work is work, so we gritted our teeth and got through the scene, trying hard to forget about our mother’s recent burial and concentrate
on the action.

  A happier experience was the TV movie Your Mother Wears Combat Boots, in which I worked with Matthew, then twenty-four. I was playing a woman whose husband was killed in Vietnam after his parachute failed to open during a crucial jump. Years later, the son she had with him is in his late teens and she believes that he is in college. However, to her deep distress, she discovers that he has secretly joined the army instead.

  We filmed at Fort Benning, in Georgia. My scene with Matt went like this: I’m dragging my duffle bag across the grounds when Matt comes riding by on a bike. I ask him to direct me to a particular building. Then Matt comes out with his one and only line in the movie: “The white one!” Ever the proud mother, I thought he delivered his one line with a great deal of presence.

  The whole shoot presented an extreme physical challenge for me, as the script called for me to undertake a series of parachute jumps. It was scary, but I wanted to prove that I could do it. I worked alongside soldiers, who put me through a parachute training course. It was fun but nerve-racking.

  Finally the great day came on which the result of my parachute training was due to be immortalized on film. Feeling strong and brave, I braced myself to climb up three towers, each higher than the last.

  I scrambled up the first rickety wooden tower with nary a second’s thought, and certainly not even a smidgen of fear. Once I reached the top, a harness was hooked onto my back, I jumped off, the parachute opened, and I floated down to the ground. I did that once. Then, brave as anything, and following the script to the letter, I moved over to the next tower and parachuted off there as well.

  Then I got to the third and highest tower. At the base I hesitated for a second, and the sergeant watching said, “You sure you’re up for this?”

  “Of course I am,” I said indignantly.

  But the sergeant persisted. “You mean you don’t want a double?”