Years ago, the National Enquirer or similar published a front-page article declaring that Bill Clinton had had a crush on Barbara Eden in the ‘60s. I looked at the friends I was with and said, “Is this news? Is there a straight man who was aware of US pop culture at the time who didn’t have a crush on Barbara Eden?” One of my male friends, who was there, replied that it was not just young men of the ‘60s. I conceded the point right away, because we’re of an age to have to have grown up with syndication. I don’t know if there are kids today with crushes on Barbara Eden—and I don’t want to dismiss the many women/NB who had crushes on her—but I feel as though the numbers only started to dwindle in the ‘90s.
There was more to her than Jeannie. “There was more to them than [blank]” is a fairly common statement in this column, true, but there’s a reason for that, after all. She got her start singing, in fact. Then, she had what we’re just going to have to call the Standard ‘50s TV Career—an episode of I Love Lucy, an episode of Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Father Knows Best. Not a ton of them, but that’s because she was also a regular on a few things. The short-lived Johnny Carson Show. She took the Marilyn Monroe role in the TV series of How to Marry a Millionaire.
In the ‘60s, she did more movies. Still some TV—Andy Griffith and Route 66, among others—but also Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, among others. She was second-billed in several things. Joel Robinson’s canonical favourite movie, The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. (Is it Joel Hodgson’s? I don’t know!) Flaming Star, with Elvis Presley. She was building up a pretty solid career for herself and almost certainly would have been the kind of person I would have gotten around to sooner or later.
And then, in 1964, she was third-billed in The Brass Bottle, with Tony Randall and Burl Ives. (Casting in the ‘60s was weird.) I have not seen the movie. Apparently Burl Ives is the genie, because sure, and Barbara Eden is the girlfriend of the man who acquired the genie. IMDb says this inspired I Dream of Jeannie and Eden’s casting on it, but of course there’s no source there and you couldn’t prove it by me. Either way, she ended up granting Larry Hagman’s every whim in an awkward power dynamic where the censors wouldn’t let her show her navel.
She’s had quite a career even since then. Yes, the eternal Jeannie stuff—there were two reunion movies, neither of which seem to have had Hagman but both of which had Eden because you can’t have I Dream of Jeannie without Barbara Eden. On the other hand, she did a lot that wasn’t Jeannie. She was still performing until just a couple of years ago, Gods bless her. She survived COVID and is still going, though she seems to have finally retired. But I mean, she’s 92 and has long outlived most of the people she worked with; she’s allowed.