I Dream of Jeannie is an American fantasy sitcom television series created by Sidney Sheldon and starring Barbara Eden as a beautiful but guileless 2,000-year-old genie and Larry Hagman as an astronaut with whom she falls in love and eventually marries. Produced by Screen Gems, the show originally aired for 139 episodes over five seasons, from September 18, 1965, to May 26, 1970, on NBC.
Plot
In the pilot episode, "The Lady in the Bottle", astronaut Captain Tony Nelson, United States Air Force, is on a space flight when his one-man capsule Stardust One comes down far from the planned recovery area, near a deserted island in the South Pacific. On the beach, Tony notices a strange bottle that rolls by itself. When he rubs it after removing the stopper, smoke spews out and a beautiful Persian-speaking female genie materializes and surprises Tony by kissing him.
They initially struggle to communicate until Tony expresses his wish that Jeannie could speak English, after which she is able to do so. Then, per his instructions, she "blinks" and causes a recovery helicopter to show up to rescue Tony, who is so grateful he tells her she is free. But Jeannie, who has already fallen in love with Tony after being trapped for 2,000 years, re-enters her bottle and rolls it into Tony's duffel bag so she can accompany him back home.
In one of the early episodes, Jeannie helps to break up Tony's engagement to his commanding general's daughter, Melissa, who, along with the general, is never seen or mentioned again. Producer Sidney Sheldon believed the romantic triangle between Jeannie, Tony, and Melissa would not play out well.
At first, Tony keeps Jeannie in her bottle most of the time, but he finally relents and allows her to enjoy a life of her own. However, her life is devoted mostly to his, and most of their problems stem from either Jeannie's love for him or her often-misguided efforts to please him. She continues in her attempts, unbothered by Tony's obvious preference to do things for himself. Jeannie's magical mischief—and Tony's efforts to cover it up—constantly put him under the scrutiny of NASA's resident psychiatrist (and Tony's commanding officer), Colonel Dr. Alfred Bellows. A running theme throughout the series has Bellows as the only eyewitness to Jeannie's antics, while Tony (and sometimes his best friend and fellow astronaut, United States Army Captain Roger Healey) are also present. Tony offers far-fetched explanations to Bellows, who then tries to prove to his superior officers that Tony is either crazy or hiding something. But his efforts typically backfire, and in the end his superiors never buy them. And, after Bellows is invariably foiled, he proclaims, "He's done it to me again!"
Another frequently used plot device is Jeannie's loss of her powers when she is confined in a closed space. For example, she is unable to leave her bottle while it is corked, and under certain circumstances the next person who removes the cork becomes her new master.
For the first 16 episodes, Roger is unaware of Jeannie's role in Tony's life, although they meet in episode 12. When Roger finds out she is a genie, he steals her bottle, thereby becoming her new master. Roger is good-natured but also girl-crazy, and often schemes to achieve a vain or selfish gain. He occasionally has hopes of becoming Jeannie's master so he can exploit her powers for selfish ends, but he is generally respectful of the relationship between Tony and Jeannie. Tony and Roger are both promoted to the rank of major late in the first season. In later seasons, Roger's role is retconned to portray him as having known about Jeannie from the beginning (i.e., as his having been with Tony on the space flight whose touchdown led to their discovering Jeannie).
Jeannie's evil twin sister, mentioned in a second-season episode (and also named "Jeannie"—since, as Barbara Eden's character explains it, all female genies are named "Jeannie"—and also portrayed by Barbara Eden in a brunette wig), proves to be scheming and underhanded starting in the third season (as in her initial appearance in "Jeannie or the Tiger?"), repeatedly trying to steal Tony for herself and to make herself Tony's real "master". Her final attempt in the series comes shortly after Tony and Jeannie are married, with a ploy involving a man played by Barbara Eden's real-life husband at the time, Michael Ansara. (In a kind of in-joke, while Jeannie's sister pretends to be attracted to him, she privately scoffs at him.)
Early in the fifth season, Jeannie is called upon by her uncle Sully (Jackie Coogan) to become queen of their family's native country, Basenji. Tony inadvertently gives grave offense to Basenji national pride regarding their feud with neighboring Kasja. To regain favor, Tony is required by Sully to marry Jeannie and to avenge Basenji's honor by killing the ambassador from Kasja when he visits NASA. After Sully manages to put suspicion on Tony for various assassination attempts on the ambassador, Tony responds in a fit of anger that he is fed up with Sully and his cohorts and that he would not marry Jeannie even if she were "the last genie on earth". Hearing this, Jeannie despairs, leaves Tony and returns to Basenji. With Jeannie gone, Tony realizes how deeply he loves her. He flies to Basenji to win Jeannie back. Upon their return, Tony introduces Jeannie as his fiancée. She dresses as a modern American woman in public (as she had in multiple previous episodes). This changed the show's premise: now the object is to hide Jeannie's magical abilities rather than her existence.
Cast and characters Main Barbara Eden as Jeannie, a beautiful, loyal, and powerful but mischief-prone genie from the fictional nation of Basenji, who becomes a servant to whomever unseals her bottle. Larry Hagman as Captain/Major Anthony "Tony" Nelson, an astronaut and U.S. Air Force officer who discovers Jeannie. Bill Daily as Captain/Major Roger Healey, Tony's best friend and fellow astronaut, and a U.S. Army officer, whom Tony entrusts with Jeannie's secret. Hayden Rorke as Colonel Alfred Bellows, MD, a psychiatrist and Tony's suspicious superior.
Recurring Barton MacLane as General Martin Peterson (seasons 1–4, 35 episodes) Emmaline Henry as Amanda Bellows (seasons 2–5, 34 episodes) Vinton Hayworth as General Winfield Schaeffer (seasons 4–5, 20 episodes) Philip Ober as Brigadier General Wingard Stone (season 1, episodes 1 and 4) Karen Sharpe as Melissa Stone (season 1, episodes 1 and 4) Abraham Sofaer as Haji, master of all the genies (seasons 2–3) Michael Ansara as The Blue Djinn (season 2, episode 1), also as King Kamehameha (season 3, episode 19), last as Major Biff Jellico (season 5 episode 12), and directed "One Jeannie Beats Four of a Kind" (season 5 episode 25) Barbara Eden as Jeannie's evil sister, Jeannie II (seasons 3–5), who schemes to steal Tony from Jeannie Jackie Coogan as Sully, Jeannie's uncle, who calls upon her to become the queen of Basenji during an armed conflict
The role of Jeannie's mother is played by a few actresses: Florence Sundstrom (season 1, episode 2) Lurene Tuttle (season 1, episode 14) Barbara Eden (season 4, episodes 2 and 18)
Episodes
Production
Background The series was created and produced by Sidney Sheldon in response to the great success of rival network ABC's Bewitched series, which had debuted in 1964 as the second-most watched program in the United States. Sheldon, inspired by the 1964 film The Brass Bottle, conceived of the idea for a beautiful female genie. Both I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched were Screen Gems productions.
When casting was opened for the role of Jeannie, producer Sidney Sheldon couldn't find an actress who could play the role the way he'd written it. He had one specific rule: he didn't want a blonde genie because that would make the character too similar to the Bewitched lead character. However, after many unsuccessful auditions, he called Barbara Eden's agent. (Coincidentally, Eden had co-starred in The Brass Bottle as Sylvia Kenton.)
The show debuted on Saturday, September 18, 1965, at 8 pm on NBC. NBC began broadcasting most of its prime-time television lineup in color in the fall of 1965, which made Jeannie one of two programs that remained in black and white; in Jeannie'''s case, it was to facilitate the special photographic effects on magic sequences. By the second season, visual effects in color were possible. By 1966, all prime-time series in the United States were shot in color.
Sheldon originally wanted to film season one in color, but NBC did not want to pay the extra expense; the network (and Screen Gems) believed the series would not make it to a second season.Dreaming of Jeannie, a book by Stephen Cox and Howard Frank Sheldon offered to pay the extra $400 an episode needed for color filming at the beginning of the series, but Screen Gems executive Jerry Hyams advised him: "Sidney, don't throw your money away."
Opening sequence The first few episodes after the pilot (episodes two through eight) used a non-animated, expository opening narrated by Paul Frees; the narration mentions that Nelson lived in "a mythical town" named "Cocoa Beach" in "a mythical state called 'Florida'". The remaining episodes of the first season featured an animated sequence that was redone and expanded in season two, at which point the show switched from black and white to color. This new sequence, used in seasons 2–5, featured an animated depiction of the initial meeting in the pilot episode, with Captain Nelson's space capsule splashing down on the beach, and Jeannie dancing out of her bottle (modified to reflect its new decoration) and then kissing Nelson before the bottle sucks her back in at the end. Both original versions of the show's animated opening sequence were created by animator Friz Freleng.
Setting Although the series was set in and around what was then known as Cape Kennedy, Florida, and Major Nelson lived at 1020 Palm Drive in nearby Cocoa Beach, filming took place in California. The exterior of the building where Nelson and Major Healey had offices was actually the main building at the NASA Flight Research Center (renamed as the "NASA Dryden Flight Research Center" in March 1976 and as the "Armstrong Flight Research Center" in 2014) at Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles. "If you look at some of those old episodes, it's supposed to be shot in Cocoa Beach, but in the background you have mountains—the Hollywood Hills," Bill Daily said. In fact, the home used as Major Nelson's (also used as the Anderson house in Father Knows Best, and then the home of Mr. Wilson in Dennis the Menace) was located at the Warner Bros. Ranch, in Burbank (on Blondie Street). Many exteriors were filmed at this facility. Interior filming was done at the Sunset Gower Studios (the original Columbia Pictures studio lot) in Hollywood.
The cast and crew only made two visits to Florida's Space Coast, both in 1969. On June 27, a parade in Cocoa Beach escorted Eden and the rest of the cast to Cocoa Beach City Hall, where she was greeted by fans and city officials. They were then taken to LC-43 at Cape Canaveral, where Eden pressed a button to launch a Loki-Dart weather rocket. They had dinner at Bernard's Surf, where Eden was given the State of Florida's Commodore Award for outstanding acting. Later, the entourage went to Lee Caron's Carnival Club, where Eden was showered with gifts and kissed astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the cheek, just two weeks before the Apollo 11 launch.
The cast and crew returned on November 25, 1969, for three days for a mock wedding of Eden and Hagman staged for television writers from around the nation (timed to coincide with the airing of the nuptials episode on December 2) at the Patrick Air Force Base Officers Club. Then-Florida Governor Claude R. Kirk, Jr. attended and cut the cake for the couple.Osborne, Ray I Dream of Jeannie Days