Jeannie Out Of The Bottle (21 page)

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 for 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.

Before I left to go on tour, I consulted my doctor, who cautioned me to be careful but didn’t insist I stay home. He gave me a list of obstetricians in all the cities where I’d be performing so I could have regular checkups, and off I went, singing and dancing all across America.

It was a grueling schedule and I knew it, but I took heart in the fact that the producer of The Sound of Music was John Kenley, the famous summer stock producer who’d worked with Ethel Merman, Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and countless other stars. I’d worked with John before in summer stock and was extremely fond of him. He was a theatrical legend—when he was ninety-nine years old, he could still do spectacular high kicks. When he died in 2009 at one hundred and three, the accolades poured in, praising him for his talent and ingenuity.

But that was only the half of it. The even more sensational story was that he was a hermaphrodite and proud of it. He confided in me that he’d been raised as a boy because his parents had concluded that it would be easier for him to go through life as a male rather than as a female. However, during the rest of his adult life, he chose to spend the winters in Ohio living as a man, and the summers in Palm Springs living as a woman named Joan.

So my ten-week tour of America began. In each town I had a checkup with an obstetrician, and each time I was assured that my baby was fine and I had nothing to be worried about. But as the weeks went by, I began to feel weak and exhausted. Moreover—and this is when I was playing the novice nun Maria in The Sound of Music—my bulge was beginning to show. I’ll never forget the kindly audience member who waited for me outside the theater after the show and said knowingly, “Be careful, dear, next time you skip down those steps.”

By the time the show arrived in Washington, D.C., my feet ached, my back hurt dreadfully, and I was just wiped out with exhaustion. As usual, I had my checkup; the doctor examined me thoroughly, then asked when I was going home. “Pretty soon,” I said brightly. I was more than seven months pregnant and the tour was nearly over. In a few weeks I could go home, relax, and have my baby.

When I got home to Los Angeles and saw my regular doctor, he examined me for what seemed like an eternity. Finally he said gently, “Barbara, I think we have a problem.”

Now, I’ve been a positive thinker my entire life. Optimism is bred in my bones, and negativity is as foreign to me as finding a rattlesnake inside a box of chocolates. So I struggled to associate the word “problem” with my much-longed-for baby.

“What kind of problem?” I said finally.

“I’m afraid I can’t find a heartbeat,” he said very quietly. “But I can’t be certain; I can’t say anything for sure. You need to immediately go to the hospital and have a sonogram right away.”

Like a sleepwalker marooned in the midst of a horrendous nightmare, I went out to the waiting room, where little Matthew was waiting with Michael. My son took one look at my stricken face and cried, “What’s the matter, Mommy? What’s the matter?”

I couldn’t bear to tell him the truth.

“Nothing, Matthew,” I said. “Nothing.”

Michael and I exchanged covert glances, in which I silently signaled to him how bad things looked for the baby.

But Matthew must have picked up on our signals. He piped up, “Mommy, I am going to have a baby brother, aren’t I?”

Picking my words extremely carefully, I said, “We’re not sure, Matthew, but I think so.”

He had never seen me cry in his whole life, and I didn’t intend for him to see me crying now, but I was within inches of losing all self-control.

By the time our car pulled up in front of Good Samaritan Hospital, where I had given birth to Matthew and had been so deliriously happy, I was shaking from head to foot and fighting back the tears.

Michael helped me out of the car. My friend Mary was outside the hospital, waiting for me, and so was Michael’s mother.

I had been on the road since I’d first found out that I was pregnant, but now my pregnancy was extremely visible. So when I walked into the hospital, the nurses, some of whom who had assisted at Matthew’s birth, virtually broke into applause.

“You’re having another baby, Miss Eden, how wonderful!” they said in unison.

The only reply I could summon up was, “I’m not sure.”

The receptionist presented me with a medical history form to fill out, but my hand shook so much that I almost dropped the pen. So I dictated my answers to the questions to Mary, who wrote them down for me instead.

Then I was taken into a treatment room, where I was hooked up to a machine that beeped in time with a thumping heart. But I could hear only one heart beating, my own. Not a second one. Not my baby’s.

It was already achingly obvious to me that my baby was no longer alive. There are no words to express my anguish.

The doctors took X-rays and performed other tests, and then my doctor called me into his office and confirmed what I already knew.

My baby was dead. His umbilical cord had been crushed, and there was nothing anyone could do to save him. I say him, because the doctor told me that my unborn baby was a boy. The doctor also told me that in all his many years of practice, he had never encountered a case like mine. I listened to his words and tried to grasp the meaning, but the only thing that was clear to me was that my baby was dead.

The worst was breaking the news to Matthew that I wasn’t going to have a baby and he wasn’t going to have a brother. Telling him broke my heart, so much so that even today I have obliterated his reaction from my memory because the torture of recalling it would be unendurable.

As for Michael, his face was ashen with grief. He put his arms around me and hugged me. I could tell that he was stifling his sobs. So was I. But not only that. I was stifling something far worse: the thought that if I’d stayed home during my pregnancy, perhaps the baby could have survived.

At the time, I stopped myself from articulating all those terrible thoughts and did my utmost to sublimate them. But I failed dismally. I’ve heard a tragedy can bring a couple together, but the death of our second son hurt our relationship beyond repair.

I don’t know how the doctors broke the news to me, which words they used, what consolation they attempted to hand me. I only knew that I had to carry my dead baby inside of me for six more weeks, because were the doctors to deliver his lifeless body before then, my own life could be endangered. In hindsight, this is a barbaric, outmoded medical practice, and thankfully it is no longer done.

Everywhere I went, kind, well-meaning fans congratulated me on the upcoming birth of my baby. And when they did, I fixed a rictus of a smile to my face and said nothing. Even when they asked me what I planned to name the baby and what color I was going to paint the nursery, I smiled wanly but said nothing.