Barbara Eden on Why Jeannie and Tony Were Never Intimate: "She was an entity"

[Danja]

“I Dream of Jeannie” star Barbara Eden on why Jeannie and Tony were never intimate: 'She was an entity'

Love finds a way everywhere but on 1960s television.

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Eden: "She was an entity. If you think of the text of the show, well, genies are not human and she thought she was. [But] he knew she wasn't."

This interview answers a great many questions about why Jeannie behaved the way she did in I Still Dream of Jeannie (She thought that if she JUST worked hard enough at it, she could be human.)

It really plays into the whole Human Potential Movement of the 1960s-1970s ("You can accomplish ANYTHING if you JUST set your mind to it!")

After reading Barbara's comments in the interview, it really puts this scene from I Still Dream of Jeannie in a whole new light (Here, we see Jeannie drop the mask):

#IDreamOfJeannieFan

Maher, who time and again impressed upon the star what an impact she made on him as a young lad, spent a good amount of time talking about the specifics of her costume, and what was deemed too risqué for television back in the 1960s. This led Eden, 94, to recall that "the bottle was never allowed in the bedroom."

 

[ozzfloyd]

Didn't they have a kid in the TV movie follow-up?

 

[Danja]

Didn't they have a kid in the TV movie follow-up?

They had a teenaged son (Tony Jr.)

 

[Guy Gardener]

As an entity, it might explain why Jeanie was not Black or Arabic?

I assumed that series leads did not become intimate because that inhuman thing with the mere passing sentiment of being a human girl seemed developmentally challenged.

 

[ozzfloyd]

A teenaged son (Tony Jr.)

Virgin birth?

 

[Danja]

 Virgin birth?

There were two reunion films produced after the show ended.

The first reunion film was in 1985 (I Dream of Jeannie: Fifteen Years Later).

The series ended in 1970 (more than enough time for Tony Jr. to grow to adolescence).

There were two actors who played Tony Jr. in the movie:

Brandon Call (Child Tony Jr.)
Mackenzie Astin (Teenage Tony Jr.)

The second reunion film, I Still Dream of Jeannie, was released in 1991 (It's now available for download from Internet Archive.)

This is as close as the movie is ever going to come to a streaming release. (Sony/Columbia destroyed the masters. There was no Tv-on-home-video market back in 1991 -- S/C made the series DVDs from the syndication copies! )

Of the two movies, I prefer I Still Dream of Jeannie (It's a lot darker than Fifteen Years Later. It leans much more into fantasy/supernatural than ha-ha sitcom).

As an entity, it might explain why Jeanie was not Black or Arabic?

Sidney Sheldon tried to cast a Middle Eastern actress to play Jeannie (He auditioned people such as Miss Jordan, Miss Egypt, Miss Saudi Arabia, Miss Israel, etc.). None of them could play the part the way he had written her.

Barbara Eden was a last-minute casting (Sidney did not want a blonde Jeannie. He didn't want comparisons to Samantha Stephens on Bewitched.)

 

[ozzfloyd]

But if they were never intimate...how do we get Tony Jr?

 

[Danja]

But if they were never intimate...how do we get Tony Jr?

I don't know. Maybe she saw it as her duty as a wife to bear her Master's child?

Who knows WHAT went on behind closed doors? I Dream of Jeannie was TV's first (consensual) BDSM show.

 

[Christopher]

But if they were never intimate...how do we get Tony Jr?

Jeannie could grant wishes and make things appear out of nowhere. Isn't the answer built into that?

I Dream of Jeannie was TV's first (consensual) BDSM show.

I think you're forgetting The Addams Family. They had medieval torture implements in the playroom.

 

[Danja]

I think you're forgetting The Addams Family. They had medieval torture implements in the playroom.

Good point ...

Jeannie could grant wishes and make things appear out of nowhere. Isn't the answer built into that?

She could've ... but I don't think she did.

Tony Jr. has a funky physiology. He's half human. He's not a full-blooded genie like his mother. To me, it's much more realistic than Tabitha and and Adam coming out of the womb as full-blooded witch and warlock on Bewitched.

Tony Jr. is terrified of his mother's powers (that was a plot point in I Still Dream of Jeannie).

That said, he has the power to escape an enchanted bottle (Not even his mother can do that).

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Sidney Sheldon tried to cast a Middle Eastern actress to play Jeannie (He auditioned people such as Miss Jordan, Miss Egypt, Miss Saudi Arabia, Miss Israel, etc.). None of them could play the part the way he had written her.

Considering all of the playful innuendo and "will they, won't they" plots of that first season (1965), I have some doubts NBC and the sponsors would have tolerated that between White Larry Hagman and any woman of color.

Barbara Eden was a last-minute casting (Sidney did not want a blonde Jeannie. He didn't want comparisons to Samantha Stephens on Bewitched.)

Funny you should mention that, because in one of the Bewitched bio books, it was claimed Elizabeth Montgomery and her series producer/husband Bill Asher did not like I Dream of Jeannie, with its seemingly sticky fingered borrowing from Bewitched's format (right down to a look alike relative being the "evil" version...because they had black hair, and you know if one character had to be the "good one", it was going to be the blonde).

 

[Danja]

Considering all of the playful innuendo and "will they, won't they" plots of that first season (1965), I have some doubts NBC and the sponsors would have tolerated that between White Larry Hagman and any woman of color.

NBC went crazy after Kirk kissed Uhura!

Funny you should mention that, because in one of the Bewitched bio books, it was claimed Elizabeth Montgomery and her series producer/husband Bill Asher did not like I Dream of Jeannie, with its seemingly sticky fingered borrowing from Bewitched's format (right down to a look alike relative being the "evil" version...because they had black hair, and you know if one character had to be the "good one", it was going to be the blonde).

Jeannie writer James Henerson was fired from Bewitched after grafting plots from BW onto I Dream of Jeannie.

 

[Christopher]

She could've ... but I don't think she did.

Tony Jr. has a funky physiology. He's half human. He's not a full-blooded genie like his mother.

Sure, but as Eden said, Jeannie was a nonhuman entity. She may have presented as a human woman, but that didn't mean she had the reproductive anatomy of one. Her generative ability was in her granting of wishes. So maybe Tony wished for a son that was a blend of their respective genes or essences or whatever. Or maybe their love made it happen as a miracle, or something.

To me, it's much more realistic than Tabitha and and Adam coming out of the womb as witch and warlock on Bewitched.

Didn't Bewitched treat witches/warlocks as a separate species that was innately magical, rather than humans with an acquired skill? So I don't see the issue there. (Also, how does "realistic" even come into the conversation when talking about 1960s fantasy sitcoms?)

NBC went crazy after Kirk kissed Uhura!

Rather, Shatner and Nichols claimed that NBC had concerns before filming that some affiliates might object to the kiss, so they asked for alternate takes without it. But there's little evidence that it created any kind of controversy at the time, and the inaccurate claim that it was TV's first interracial kiss didn't start to appear until a decade later:

Did Star Trek really show TV's first interracial kiss?

UPDATED on Nov. 22, 2015! “Casual fans today might be under the impression the episode resulted in boycotts, death threats, and people marching in the streets, but the contemporary record tells a different story.”

web.archive.org

 

[Set Harth]

 

[Danja]

Sure, but as Eden said, Jeannie was a nonhuman entity. She may have presented as a human woman, but that didn't mean she had the reproductive anatomy of one. Her generative ability was in her granting of wishes. So maybe Tony wished for a son that was a blend of their respective genes or essences or whatever. Or maybe their love made it happen as a miracle, or something.

The writing wasn't always consistent (In one episode, Jeannie cannot be photographed. Yet in another ep, Jeannie's photograph appears in a Honolulu newspaper.)

 

[Christopher]

The writing wasn't always consistent (In one episode, Jeannie cannot be photographed. Yet in another ep, Jeannie's photograph appears in a Honolulu newspaper.)

The one thing that gets me is, given the reference built into the title of the show, why didn't Jeannie have light brown hair?

 

[Gaith]

Most historians agree they did get intimate, most nights a week, in a variety of delightfully freaky ways. It's just that the TV show based on their lives was subject to the network censorship of the times.

 

[Danja]

Sure, but as Eden said, Jeannie was a nonhuman entity. She may have presented as a human woman, but that didn't mean she had the reproductive anatomy of one. Her generative ability was in her granting of wishes. So maybe Tony wished for a son that was a blend of their respective genes or essences or whatever. Or maybe their love made it happen as a miracle, or something.

Sidney Sheldon's original concept of Jeannie in S1 was that she was born human, but she was turned into a genie by the Blue Jinn after she refused to marry him (This origin was reiterated in I Dream of Jeannie: Fifteen Years Later).

Maybe she still has residual human plumbing?

The one thing that gets me is, given the reference built into the title of the show, why didn't Jeannie have light brown hair?

Maybe it was a joke?

Funny you should mention that, because in one of the Bewitched bio books, it was claimed Elizabeth Montgomery and her series producer/husband Bill Asher did not like I Dream of Jeannie, with its seemingly sticky fingered borrowing from Bewitched's format (right down to a look alike relative being the "evil" version...because they had black hair, and you know if one character had to be the "good one", it was going to be the blonde).

William Asher and Sidney Sheldon produced and created The Patty Duke Show together (Asher coming back to direct I Dream of Jeannie: Fifteen Years Later was a homecoming for him).

 

[Christopher]

Maybe it was a joke?

That's my point -- the title of the show is itself a joke, a pun on "genie" and the opening line of Stephen Foster's song "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair," so if they'd extended the joke as one would expect, then Jeannie would have had light brown hair. Instead, they let Barbara Eden stay blonde.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Around 35 bce, within the bustling Roman Occupied Egypt... The physical location of where Baghdad would one day be founded 700 years later... If they did not speak English, then the pun would not work.



Eric, the computer, who computed her birthday from available astrological data, must have been running on a very early presale of Windows Vista.