- published: 13 Dec 2014
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Barbara Eden (born August 23, 1934) is an American film and television actress and singer who is best known for starring as the title role in the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.
Eden was born Barbara Jean Morehead in Tucson, Arizona, the daughter of Alice Mary (née Franklin) and Hubert Henry Morehead. Her parents divorced when she was three; she and her mother Alice moved to San Francisco, where later her mother married Harrison Connor Huffman, a telephone lineman. The Great Depression deeply affected the Huffman family, and as they were unable to afford many luxuries, Barbara's mother entertained the children by singing songs. This musical background left a lasting impression on the actress, who began taking acting classes because she felt it might help her improve her singing.
Her first public performance was singing in the church choir, where she sang the solos. When she was 14 she sang in local bands for $10 a night in night clubs. At age 16 she became a member of Actor's Equity. She studied singing at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and acting with the Elizabeth Holloway School of Theatre. She graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco in the Spring Class of 1949 and studied theater for one year at City College of San Francisco. Then she was elected Miss San Francisco, as Barbara Huffman, in 1951. Barbara also entered the Miss California pageant, but did not win.
I Dream of Jeannie is an American sitcom with a fantasy premise. The show starred Barbara Eden as a 2,000-year-old genie, and Larry Hagman as an astronaut who becomes her master, with whom she falls in love and eventually marries. Produced by Screen Gems, the show originally aired from September 1965 to May 1970 with new episodes, and through September 1970 with season repeats, on NBC. The show ran for five seasons and produced 139 episodes. The first season consisted of 30 episodes filmed in black and white.
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 movie The Brass Bottle, which had starred Tony Randall, Barbara Eden, and Burl Ives as the genie Fakrash, came up with the idea for a beautiful female genie. Both I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched were Screen Gems productions. The show debuted at 8:00 pm (EDT), Saturday, September 18, 1965, on NBC.
The following is a list of episodes of the American sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released all 5 seasons of I Dream of Jeannie on DVD in Regions 1, 2 & 4.
Some episodes were released on VHS. It is assumed they are no longer in print. This is a complete list.
All Season One episodes are in B&W, but have been colorized for some DVD releases.
A remake from the classic 60s sitcom, astronaut Major Anthony Nelson discovers a mysterious bottle containing a beautiful female genie when his spacecraft makes an emergency landing on a desert island. Eager to have him as her new master, she stows herself away and is taken back to Florida, where she causes Nelson all sorts of trouble in various comic dilemmas.
Keywords: based-on-tv-series, character-name-in-title, remake
Jeannie, fresh as a daisy.
Just love how she obeys me,
Does things that just amaze me so.
She smiles, Presto the rain goes.
She blinks, up come the rainbows.
Cars stop, even the train goes slow.
When she goes by
She paints sunshine on every rafter,
Sprinkles the air with laughter,
We're close as a quarter after three.
There's no one like
Jeannie. I'll introduce her,
To you, but it's no use, sir,