Jeannie Out Of The Bottle (26 page)

ME, MY VOICE DRIPPING WITH FROST: “Sorry, I don’t. Goodbye.”

TOMMY: “Don’t hang up on me, honey, now, don’t.” [Clinking of glasses from the other end of the line] “Hey, guys! Guess what! I’ve got Jeannie on the phone! I’ve got Jeannie on the phone!”

The resultant roar that came across the line almost deafened me.

I cut off the call, left the receiver on the night table, curled up in bed again, and did my best to fall asleep.

Dreams of Jeannie? Now and again it was a nightmare.

Had I truly wanted to escape my I Dream of Jeannie legacy (and I did not), the rerelease of the series on Nick at Night in 1994 would have made it impossible. My picture was plastered the length and breadth of a building on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles and on a building in the middle of Times Square in Manhattan. I happened to be in New York City that week and had no idea about the publicity campaign, so you can imagine my shock when my cab drove through Times Square and I looked up to see myself many times larger than life!

The year before, I’d made two NBC movies set in San Francisco, the first of which was entitled Visions of Murder, in which I played Dr. Jesse Newman, a psychologist who works in the San Francisco police department and has psychic abilities. The handsome and distinguished actor James Brolin, who is now married to Barbra Streisand, played my first husband. In the sequel, another actor took that role. I was sorry about that, as James is a very nice, steady man and a good actor.

Speaking of Barbra Streisand, when I was making The Confession with Elliott Gould, Barbra was starring in Funny Girl on Broadway. Elliott was extremely affable and was kind enough to take me to see the show (which was incredible, and her legendary performance spectacular), and afterward he took me backstage to meet Barbra. She was extremely down-to-earth, and not a little discomfited when Shirley MacLaine arrived backstage and showered her with compliments. After Shirley left, Barbra turned to me and said, “She’s a big star, isn’t she? So what’s with the big red nails?” So refreshing, and very real.

When I made Visions of Murder, I was hopeful that Dr. Jesse Newman might develop into a Jessica Fletcher–type character, with the same resonance and long-term success that Angela Lansbury achieved with Murder, She Wrote. The producers were probably thinking along the same lines, but after the second movie, that didn’t come to fruition.

However, I did enjoy working in San Francisco again, and relished the coincidence of my playing a psychic in the same city where I had consulted Emma Nelson Sims, whose psychic predictions about me proved to be so uncannily accurate.

Unfortunately, while making Visions of Murder and the sequel, Eyes of Terror, I couldn’t find Emma, though I’d have relished her input. Instead, in the interest of accurately portraying a psychic, I consulted psychic Sylvia Browne.

Like my character, Dr. Jesse Newman, Sylvia also worked with the San Francisco Police Department on solving cases, and had a high success rate in doing so. When we got to know each other better, she confided in me that she found her work, which she did pro bono, extremely painful, particularly when missing children she was seeking turned up dead. But there were physical issues for herself, too.

A case in point: She was investigating the abduction and murder of a child when all of a sudden she felt blows all over her body and was bruised, just as the child had been. She then had a vision of the child’s abductor, which, when he was caught, proved to be accurate. I was so impressed that I partially based my portrayal of Jesse on Sylvia.

In 1996, I also made Dead Man’s Island, in which I played an investigative journalist, Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins. I owned the rights to the book on which the movie was based, and co-starred in it with Morgan Fairchild and William Shatner. For some reason, in those days before Boston Legal and remembering William’s role as Captain Kirk, I expected him to be staid and stuffy. Boy, was I in for a surprise!

During the five-week shoot, he proved to be a lot of fun. In one scene, he had to wear a one-piece swimsuit and was supposed to swim in a large pool, then get out, dripping wet, and stroll down a path while simultaneously conducting a conversation with Roddy McDowall. Well, William was quite heavy at the time, and the swimsuit that wardrobe had selected for him was a 1920s-style getup. In addition, wardrobe gave him a rubber bathing cap to wear that was extremely tight. But gallant and self-deprecating William Shatner just laughed his way through the scene, making fun of the outfit and, above all, of himself. A great sport and such good company!

My friends always say that I am all work and no play. They are sometimes right, but now and again I do indulge my love for exotic adventure travel. And so I was thrilled when I was invited to attend the Silver Jubilee of King Hassan II of Morocco (otherwise known as the “Finger of God on Earth”), along with Michael York and Robert Stack; the head of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun; and Ahmet’s wife, Mica.

We were flown first-class to Marrakech, where the streets were lined with orange blossom trees and floodlit in red, green, and orange lights, the colors of the Moroccan flag. The celebrations centered around the king’s fifteenth-century palace in Marrakech, and no expense was spared in making them spectacular beyond belief.

Before the trip, I’d been warned not to wear anything that revealed my arms or my legs. I brought a glamorous long white gown with cap sleeves, completely forgetting that the gown had a low-cut neckline and a slit up the front of it. With it I wore a white fox stole.

When the escort arrived at our hotel to drive us to the castle, she took one look at me and screamed, “Oh la la!”

“Oh la la?” I said.

Recovering her composure, she explained that I had to wear something else that evening. Good idea—except that this was the only long gown I’d brought with me, and I told her so.

Her solution? She took my white fox stole and draped it diagonally across my body, so that it covered one arm and one leg. Then she pressed my left arm across my chest and my right across my legs. Difficult to imagine, I suppose, but I hope you get the picture.

“Stay that way!” she instructed.

So I did, teetering to the car in my four-inch heels, my arms, legs, and fox fur all in place.

Once we arrived at the immense palace courtyard, I kept myself covered as best I could and watched enthralled as the king rode a black stallion the whole length of the courtyard and thousands of Berbers in white djellabas bowed down before him and wished him a long life.

Then we were escorted inside the palace, which was furnished with bizarre reproduction Victorian furniture, and into an anteroom, where a group of women, all dressed in long dresses cinched by heavy gold belts, chattered away like a flock of starlings. Although we were all girls together now, as it were, I still kept my arms strategically placed across my body and made sure that my fox fur didn’t slip from its designated position.

Then a ripple of excitement shot through the anteroom.

“The king, the king is coming!” the women cried.

“Remember, you don’t offer to shake hands with the king unless he offers his first,” my escort instructed me.

As I was holding my arms over my chest to cover it, and wished I had some Krazy Glue to fix them there, I was relieved.

Too soon, of course, because the moment the king came into view, the first person he approached was me. And the first thing he did was offer me his hand in greeting. And who was I not to take it?

Fortunately, the king kept his eyes focused firmly on my face, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief.

Afterward, we were led out to a huge garden, bigger than a football field, where the ground was covered by precious Persian carpets, each sprinkled with rose petals.

No alcohol was served, but there were massive tables, many piled high with all manner of sweets, including slivered almonds, hard candy, and petits fours. Groups of wrinkled old men made mint tea for all the guests.

The following day, we had lunch at La Mamounia, Winston Churchill’s favorite hotel, which had beautiful rows of orange trees in the gardens. There we were served cold lobster, chicken galantine, and shrimp-stuffed artichokes. Again, the ground was laid with Oriental carpets sprinkled with rose petals.

The fête was rounded out by folk dancing, visits to the souks, and further exhibitions of horsemanship. All breathtaking, and opulent in the extreme. I was amazed to discover that the king had no fewer than ten thousand retainers to serve his every need!

I was happy living the single life and had no expectations of ever finding love again. Then one morning my friend Marilyn called out of the blue and announced, “Barbara, I met somebody last night. He’s really cute, and I like him. Do you want to date him?”

As usual, all I was doing was working, and the prospect of a date was enticing. The problem was, I simply didn’t have time, so I sighed and regretfully told Marilyn so. But she was having none of it; to her credit, she convinced me to set aside a weekend night on which to meet this new man she was touting so highly.

I was in my fifties and didn’t dream that I would ever fall in love again, but I was willing to meet Marilyn’s cute new acquaintance. So I was pleased when, a few weeks later, I received a call from Jon Eicholtz. I immediately liked the sound of his voice, his Texas accent, and the decisive yet courteous way in which he suggested that it might be more relaxing if we didn’t double-date with Marilyn and her husband but went out to dinner alone at Morton’s so that we could really get to know each other.

The first thing that impressed me about Jon, apart from his perfect manners, was that he had never seen a single episode of I Dream of Jeannie and wasn’t remotely starstruck. Quite a relief, especially after Chuck. Like Chuck, he was born in Chicago, but I decided not to hold that against him.

And I was relieved that he had nothing whatsoever to do with show business. His father had been in the army during World War II, and Jon went to the University of Kansas. Now a builder/developer, he had a five-year degree in architectural engineering. Like me, he had a twenty-six-year-old son; he had been married twice, and was now a widower.

Soon after we met, I consulted one of my doctors, and incidentally learned that he had referred Jon’s wife Jeanine to a specialist after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In the process, he grew to know Jon very well. In fact, when I told him I was dating Jon, he said, “Be good to him. I’ve seen a lot of husbands when their wives were ill and dying, and most of them usually run for the hills because they can’t stand it, but Jon was there with her every minute. He’d wash her hair, bring her meals, and was so good to her.”

On that first date, I quickly realized that Jon was so straightforward, so solid, and so dependable that next to him, I felt lightweight and frivolous. As a result, I assumed that he wouldn’t like me at all. But I gave the date my best shot, and we spent most of the evening talking about his work, which was interesting. At the end of the evening, he took me home and made no attempt to kiss me goodnight, so I guessed that I’d never hear from him again.

But I was wrong. He called and we went out on a second date together, then a third. Generally, it takes me several dates with a man before I sense that romance is on the horizon, bells start to ring, and my heart begins to melt. And while I’d love to say that meeting Jon was like a thunderbolt, that I fell in love with him at first sight, that wouldn’t be the truth.

We had a few more dates—romantic candlelight dinners, kisses under the stars, heart-to-heart talks, confidences exchanged, closeness established—but the moment when I knew I’d fallen in love with him now and forever was far less conventional.

We’d been invited to a Christmas party, but I was doing some night filming at the studio, and Jon came there to get me. He’d never been on a film set before, but instead of being dazzled and in awe, I could tell he was curious and, being an extremely neat and tidy man, not a little discomfited by all the on-set chaos.

He was wearing a three-piece suit and looked entirely out of place with all the crew and the actors. As he walked across the set, picking his way carefully over the cables, observing all the disarray around him, he seemed like a stranger just arrived in another world, a world where he was uncomfortable but not intimidated. A fish out of water, I guess, much in the same way as Jeannie was.

I offered him a chair, but he shook his head and instead stood and surveyed the surrounding scene with mounting disbelief.

At that point, the director started to move a big table, all on his own. As Jon watched him struggling, he turned to the crew, who were hanging around, and said, “Hey, you guys, can’t somebody help him move the table?”

No one moved, and Jon looked at me questioningly.

“They can’t help him,” I explained. “Only the props guys can. It’s a union issue, and those guys are camera crew, so their union categorically bans them from moving furniture.”

Jon thought that was ridiculous and was really upset about what he considered the unfairness of the situation. And it was at that moment that I started to fall in love with him.

Then we went on a romantic trip to Egypt together, and my love for Jon intensified even more. After that, he took me to Paris, where he introduced me to his late wife’s family, with whom he is very close. In a way, Egypt and Paris turned out to be our advance honeymoon.

Jon and I decided to be married at Grace Cathedral, in San Francisco, one of the most beautiful churches in the country, and world-renowned for its two sacred labyrinths—one in the forecourt and the other in the cathedral itself.

However, Jon and I picked Grace Cathedral primarily because of my personal connections to it. It was at Grace Cathedral where I was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal Church, and I went to Sunday school there.

Before we could set the date, cathedral officials informed us that we had to meet with the priest there. On the appointed day, we were shown into his presence, and I told him all about my links with the cathedral. He was pleased, but then he sprang a not-too-pleasant surprise on us. According to Grace Cathedral protocol, he explained, since both Jon and I had been married before to other people, we were obliged to go to our respective churches in Southern California and get the ministers to send him letters recommending us.