I Dream of Jeannie: Everything You Didn’t Know About The Show

If you’re a fan of TV shows from the 1960s and 1970s, you have undoubtedly watched at least some episodes of the hit show I Dream of Jeannie. This iconic show ran from 1965 to 1970 and enjoyed rave reviews from its millions of fans.

Because of strict censorship rules, anytime Jeannie and Tony were seen going into the bedroom together, she had to be shown leaving the room, even when she turned into the trademark wispy pink smoke.

Apparently, Barbara Eden was completely against Jeannie and Major Nelson getting married. She pointed out that Jeannie was not a human, first of all. However, she also knew that marriage would break the sexual tension of the show.

It’s likely that the producers and writers figured that with a fantasy show, why bother with fact-checking? Going back and watching old TV shows and movies, it’s always fun to catch the little mistakes that the writers didn’t really think about at the time.

In I Dream of Jeannie, legendary actor Larry Hagman played the role of Tony Nelson, a U.S. Air Force Captain, and NASA astronaut. In the show, Hagman’s character spent his daylight hours working for the U.S. government. However, at night, he went home to Jeannie.

Hagman went on to appear in a number of TV shows and films through the 1970s. Perhaps his best-known role came in the 1980s when he was cast as the notorious J.R. Ewing in the 1980s primetime soap opera Dallas.

In Season 1, Jeannie was mostly kept covered up. However, for the other seasons, Jeannie wore skimpy (by the standards of that time) harem costumes. Although in the modern era, her costumes would be considered to be fairly tame, in that time, showing the belly and some cleavage was definitely taboo.

Have you ever been the last to know something that had a huge effect on your life? Well, that’s what happened to Larry Hagman when I Dream of Jeannie was canceled. He showed up at the studio lot where the show was filmed and a guard broke the news to him.

Did you know that I Dream of Jeannie had a real lion live on the set? Apparently, Barbara Eden was really good with the big cat, and she reportedly warned Hagman to “stand very still” while he allowed the lion to smell him.

The actor Bill Daily is perhaps best known for his role on I Dream of Jeannie. Daily played Roger Healey, the colleague and best friend of Major Nelson. Daily’s character is the only person who eventually knew who Jeannie really was.

Later in his life, Daily took a role on the popular TV show The Bob Newhart Show. In the series, he played a neighbor of the Hartley family, Howard Borden. On the TV show Alf, Daily also played the role of Larry the psychiatrist.

The show has an iconic and much-loved theme song, but the first season didn’t have a song at all, as it turns out. When Season 2 was released, the audience got to hear the theme song for the first time.

William “Hayden” Rorke used the name Hayden as a stage name because it was his mother’s maiden name. However, it was his role as Dr. Bellows, the NASA psychiatrist, that made him famous. The show had a very small cast of characters, and “Dr. Bellows” was one of the most beloved.

In his role as Dr. Bellows, William Hayden played his last TV role. However, he did have other small roles in various films over the years, including in the hit movie Pillow Talk, which starred Doris Day and Rock Hudson.

Everyone knows that Major Nelson and Jeannie eventually got married, much to Jeannie’s delight. However, it was actually that episode that caused the show to end up getting canceled. NBC staged a fake wedding for Hagman and Eden before the show aired.

Regarding Jeannie, Barbara Eden says she always viewed Jeannie as a “tomboy” of sorts, although fans disagreed. Larry Hagman said in an interview that he thought Tony Nelson was “square” and didn’t understand why he wasn’t romantically interested in Jeannie.

The first season of I Dream of Jeannie was shot in black and white, and it was the only season that was. Subsequent seasons were in color, and that’s a good thing. However, this show holds the distinction of being the last network TV show to be in black and white.

While some stars don’t like being typecast because it can be bad for their career, Barbara Eden didn’t mind one bit. She’s proud of her role in I Dream of Jeannie and the show’s success. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Eden explained that Jeannie wasn’t human, but it was a “fantasy.”

Tons of actors and famous people have suffered from problems with alcohol and drugs, and Hagman is one of them. As it turns out, he wasn’t completely happy with the show and seemed to drink more with every season.

We have already explained the bedroom rules that couples on TV had to follow years ago, but there was another rule that the series had trouble with. The network censors wouldn’t let Jeannie’s belly button show, for some strange reason. 

Interestingly, many fans didn’t realize that Barbara Eden was playing her evil sister, and many fans even wrote to Barbara asking her who played the dark-haired actress. The fact is, Eden played both roles.

The first episode of I Dream of Jeannie was filmed in Malibu, California on Zuma Beach. In the show’s storyline, the beach represented a South Pacific deserted island, but it was actually right down the road in California.

Long before he was convicted of murder, Phil Spector was a music producer, singer, and songwriter of wide acclaim. In an episode of I Dream of Jeannie, Jeannie was attempting to become a singer, and Spector appeared on the episode.

It may have looked like Barbara Eden was living an easy life as Jeannie, but the fact is, she was so physical in her costumes that they were constantly getting caught on the heels she wore on her feet. That’s easy to imagine because the billowy pants would do that.

Did you ever wonder what happened to the original genie bottle from I Dream of Jeannie? As it turns out, Barbara Eden held onto the bottle for years. She eventually donated it to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

One thing that fans didn’t know was that the bottle wasn’t actually an expensive prop. It was made out of an old Jim Beam whiskey decanter from the early 1960s. The 1964 decor item was the simplest solution the props department could find.

For one episode, a fictitious band called “The Monkees” showed up. The band had their own TV show in real life, and it aired on the same network that Jeannie aired on. Because of this, they were able to pull this cameo off and deliver a great episode.

When the show was abruptly canceled, the entire set of I Dream of Jeannie was burned down to the ground. Why did they do this? Well, the producers knew that it was going to be expensive to try to store this set’s props, so they just destroyed it to save themselves the hassle.

In 1985, Columbia Pictures Television decided to produce a reunion movie for NBC based on the TV show. The movie was titled I Dream of Jeannie…Fifteen Years Later and the plot centered on Major Nelson getting a promotion.

The show’s title isn’t just a play on words for the word “genie,” which made the fantasy show what it was. There was actually a song in 1854 called “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” which was written by Stephen Foster.

Barbara Eden is a gorgeous blonde and did a great job playing a blonde genie. However, her hair color nearly cost her the role that she became famous for. The producers wanted to distance themselves from Bewitched and they looked for a non-blonde actress for the role of Jeannie.

We’ve already shared the story about Barbara Eden trying to convince a cranky Larry Hagman to make friends with a lion, but there was another lion story that surfaced. Reportedly, at one time, the lion let out a gigantic roar and every man on the set fled the area.

The I Dream of Jeannie producer Sidney Sheldon saw a movie called The Brass Bottle that had the same storyline as the show he envisioned. It was this movie that served as the inspiration behind the hit TV show.

While Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie were two hit fantasy sitcoms of the 1960s competing against each other, they shared more in common than you may think. They actually shared a writer named James S. Henderson.

It wasn’t just technology that kept I Dream of Jeannie in black and white for the first season. One reason it was kept in black and white was because the “magic” trick used to create the smoke was challenging to pull off in color.

The famous bottle that Jeannie lived in when she wasn’t up serving Tony wasn’t just one color. It was changed to a different color when the show went from black and white to alive with color. Originally, the bottle was smoky green with an antique look.

Barbara Eden went to the Kennedy Space Center in 1996 to speak at a special event called “Jeannie Day.” Twenty-seven years prior to this, the last episode of I Dream of Jeannie aired. The mayor of Cocoa Beach, Joe Morgan, even named a street in honor of the show.

I Dream of Jeannie was centered around Florida, which was supposedly where the astronauts went to work at the time. However, that was purely fictional and isn’t true. By the time the show aired, NASA’s astronauts were already training at Houston’s Manned Spacecraft Center.

I Dream of Jeannie is a pop culture classic that remains popular even today. Although the show went off the air decades ago, young people still love watching it now and there have been many references to the show in popular culture.

If you happened to catch the sequel to The Brady Bunch called A Very Brady Sequel, you may have noticed one very special guest appearance. Barbara Eden actually revived her Jeannie role for the special, and she showed up at the second wedding of Mike and Carol Brady.

In one episode of I Dream of Jeannie, there was a character called “The Blue Djinn.”  This character was played by none other than Barbara Eden’s real-life husband, Michael Ansara. Some fans love going back and re-watching this episode knowing that the couple was actually married.

When Larry Hagman was filming the TV show Dallas in 1990, he enjoyed a five-episode arc with Barbara Eden. She appeared on the show as the character named Lee Ann De La Vega. However, she of course couldn’t go without a reference to I Dream of Jeannie.

The end of I Dream of Jeannie didn’t mark the end of Barbara Eden’s fame, although the role did define her career in many ways. She returned for two “Jeannie” movies and landed other roles on TV, including Harper Valley, PTA.

Of course, the home where Tony Nelson lived with Jeannie is no longer being used to film the show, but the original house is still standing. These days, the home, which sits on the Warner Brothers Ranch in Burbank, California, is used as the office for Ranch Operations.