Read Online Jeannie Out Of The Bottle by Barbara Eden - Free Book Online Page A

Vegas acts but were appearing in different hotels, Johnny called out of the blue and invited me to spend the afternoon with him in his suite at Caesar’s, complete with his own private rooftop swimming pool. I considered Johnny’s invitation to be a friendly one, not romantic, and because I felt isolated and lonely in Las Vegas, I might have accepted. But my experience with the arid Las Vegas air was that if I went out in it for longer than a few minutes, I’d lose my voice entirely. I had two shows to do that night, so I couldn’t afford to risk it. I sent word to Johnny, couched in the most courteous of terms, that I couldn’t make it to his hotel. He was miffed, and from that moment on, whenever we met at parties or at other Hollywood events, his behavior toward me was cold, distant, and forbidding.
    My early appearances on Johnny’s show didn’t exactly catapult me to stardom, but they did help advance my career slightly. A short while later, I was chosen by a group of Los Angeles press agents to be one of fifteen “Baby Wampus Stars”—supposedly up-and-coming starlets.
    I enjoyed meeting the other girls, who included Jill St. John, Angie Dickinson, and Barbara Marx, who later married Frank Sinatra. A group of us were photographed for Life magazine at Harold Lloyd’s glamorous estate, which boasted a beautifully decorated and gigantic Christmas tree that he left up year-round.
    When I still failed to get any acting jobs, I posed for some pinup shots. There was never any question of my posing for anything salacious, although I did don a bathing suit for a photo session with the notorious Russ Meyer.
    Around that time, I was photographed in a bikini for the cover of Parade, the Sunday newspaper magazine. I considered that I looked fairly demure in the photographs. Unfortunately, my great-aunts Nora and Nell vehemently disagreed, and they called to issue a sharp reprimand. How could I display my body to the world in such a wanton way?
    As gently and kindly as possible, I explained that it was really a very modest swimsuit.
    However, they refused to be pacified until my grandmother stepped in and calmed them down a bit. But the fact remained that until they died, Great-Aunt Nell and Great-Aunt Nora never approved of my modeling.
    In many ways, though, they were on target. Modeling wasn’t really for me, and I basically disliked doing it. So I was thrilled when Wilt called with the good news that I’d been cast in a small part on The Ann Sothern Show, a popular TV series.
    My first on-screen appearance! I pored over the script excitedly and discovered that I was to play a fur-clad agent and deliver just three or four lines. I flashed back to Emma’s prediction and smiled to myself. Make my mark on TV? Not with just three or four lines, I wouldn’t.
    If I had indeed harbored any delusions of grandeur regarding my appearance on the show, they would have quickly evaporated when—just as I had finished in makeup—Miss Sothern (given what happened next, I can’t conceive of referring to her as Ann) stalked onto the set, a maid dressed in a classic black-and-white uniform in attendance. Then Miss Sothern swept right over to me, looked me up and down, turned around, and stalked away again. No response to my tentative hello. No smile, nothing.
    I stood frozen to the spot, not knowing what to do next. Then the makeup man beckoned me to come back to makeup again because, he said, he needed to fix my face.
    I sat quietly, bewildered and not quite understanding what was going on, while he redid my makeup.
    The truth became agonizingly obvious when I heard him whisper into the phone, “I’m sorry, Miss Sothern; there’s nothing I can do to make her look bad.”
    Before I could get over my shock at the implications of what he’d said, I was called back on the set again.
    There Miss Sothern fixed me with a look so glacial that it could have frozen Vesuvius.
    “We don’t need a rehearsal. Let’s just shoot this and