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The landmark NBC hit television series I Dream of Jeannie has delighted generations of audiences and inspired untold numbers of teenage crushes on its beautiful blond star, Barbara Eden, for decades. Part pristine Hollywood princess and part classic bombshell, with innocence, strength, and comedic talent to spare, Barbara finally lets Jeannie out of her bottle to tell her whole story.
Jeannie Out of the Bottle takes us behind the scenes of I Dream of Jeannie as well as Barbara’s dozens of other stage, movie, television, and live concert performances. We follow her from the hungry years when she was a struggling studio contract player at 20th Century Fox through difficult weeks trying to survive as a chorus girl at Ciro’s Sunset Strip supper club, from a stint as Johnny Carson’s sidekick on live TV to tangling on-screen and off with some of Hollywood’s most desirable leading men, including Elvis Presley, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, and Warren Beatty. From the ups and downs of her relationship with her Jeannie co-star Larry Hagman to a touching meeting with an exquisite and vulnerable Marilyn Monroe at the twilight of her career, readers join Barbara on a thrilling journey through her five decades in Hollywood.
But Barbara’s story is also an intimate and honest memoir of personal tragedy: a stillborn child with her first husband, Michael Ansara; a verbally abusive, drug-addicted second husband; the loss of her beloved mother; and the accidental heroin-induced death of her adult son, just months before his wedding. With candor and poignancy, Barbara reflects on the challenges she has faced, as well as the joys she has experienced and how she has maintained her humor, optimism, and inimitable Jeannie magic throughout the roller-coaster ride of a truly memorable life.
Illustrated with sixteen pages of photographs, including candid family pictures and rare publicity stills, Jeannie Out of the Bottle is a must-have for every fan, old and new.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 5, 2011 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780307886958
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780307886958
- File size: 7409 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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March 1, 2011
Eden comes clean. Squeaky clean.
The author recounts her life story in a charmingly effervescent manner, but there just isn't much there—an unremarkable girlhood, some familiar struggling-to-break-into-showbiz anecdotes, middling success as an entertainer (excluding her defining role as TV's "Jeannie") and family difficulties that, while sad, fail to add much heft to the skimpy narrative. It seems odd to pen a showbiz memoir about not sleeping with Elvis, Warren Beatty or Sammy Davis Jr., but Eden is eager to portray herself as a wholesome good girl repeatedly scandalized by the sexual and chemical habits familiar to anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of Hollywood. Her hit sitcom, I Dream of Jeannie, is a perplexingly enduring piece of pop culture, an inane fantasy distinguished only by its questionable sexual politics—a topic Eden dismisses out of hand, pleading the show's status as simple entertainment. But what other reason is there for discussing it? Eden's descriptions of costar Larry Hagman's obnoxious on-set antics are amusing, but she shies away from exploring the profound psychological and emotional problems that must have generated such erratic and appalling behavior. There is authentic pain in her descriptions of an abusive marriage and the drug addiction and fatal overdose suffered by her son, but it's difficult to muster sympathy in the face of the author's overwhelming obliviousness in her response to these realities. Eden comes across as a nice person with a modicum of charm, but a more pointless memoir is difficult to imagine.
Irredeemably minor but inoffensive, like a half-remembered episode of a silly sitcom.
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
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March 1, 2011
Eden comes clean. Squeaky clean.
The author recounts her life story in a charmingly effervescent manner, but there just isn't much there--an unremarkable girlhood, some familiar struggling-to-break-into-showbiz anecdotes, middling success as an entertainer (excluding her defining role as TV's "Jeannie") and family difficulties that, while sad, fail to add much heft to the skimpy narrative. It seems odd to pen a showbiz memoir about not sleeping with Elvis, Warren Beatty or Sammy Davis Jr., but Eden is eager to portray herself as a wholesome good girl repeatedly scandalized by the sexual and chemical habits familiar to anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of Hollywood. Her hit sitcom, I Dream of Jeannie, is a perplexingly enduring piece of pop culture, an inane fantasy distinguished only by its questionable sexual politics--a topic Eden dismisses out of hand, pleading the show's status as simple entertainment. But what other reason is there for discussing it? Eden's descriptions of costar Larry Hagman's obnoxious on-set antics are amusing, but she shies away from exploring the profound psychological and emotional problems that must have generated such erratic and appalling behavior. There is authentic pain in her descriptions of an abusive marriage and the drug addiction and fatal overdose suffered by her son, but it's difficult to muster sympathy in the face of the author's overwhelming obliviousness in her response to these realities. Eden comes across as a nice person with a modicum of charm, but a more pointless memoir is difficult to imagine.
Irredeemably minor but inoffensive, like a half-remembered episode of a silly sitcom.
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
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