59 Fun Facts About I Dream of Jeannie

I Dream of Jeannie, a sitcom about an astronaut, ended the year after which real-life milestone?

The first Moon landing came in July 1969, and Jeannie's last new episode aired the following May. One writer called the timing fitting, since a Moon shot had once seemed as magical as anything she could do.

The future Major Nelson holds what rank when I Dream of Jeannie begins?

Captain Nelson and his friend Roger are both promoted late in the first season. They celebrate in Reno, where Roger smuggles Jeannie along to improve his luck at the casino tables.

In I Dream of Jeannie, Tony is Air Force, but Roger Healey serves in which branch?

Army astronauts were pure fiction when Roger Healey arrived in 1965. NASA did not choose its first, Robert Stewart, until 1978, and he reached orbit only in 1984.

In I Dream of Jeannie's pilot, what happens when the rescued Tony reports that he met a genie?

Nobody believes him: his story is put down to delusions brought on by his ordeal on the island. From then on he stops explaining Jeannie and starts covering for her, which drives the whole series.

In I Dream of Jeannie, Jeannie is introduced as a genie of what age?

2,000 years is no idle boast: in one first-season episode she spots her own ancient slippers in a museum and takes them back, which puts Tony on the short list of theft suspects.

Colonel Alfred Bellows, played by Hayden Rorke, holds what job at NASA?

Psychiatrist. Dr. Bellows keeps witnessing Jeannie's magic and tries to show his superiors that Tony is crazy or hiding something, but he can never prove it and they never believe him.

What does Jeannie usually do to work her magic?

Crosses her arms and blinks: with a nod of the head, that is how Jeannie grants a wish. In the pilot a blink conjures the helicopter that rescues Tony from her deserted island.

Under what circumstances does Jeannie lose her powers?

When she is shut in a closed space, Jeannie is helpless: she cannot leave her corked bottle, and in one four-part story a month locked in a safe would make her the servant of whoever opened it.

Jeannie's scheming sister, also played by Barbara Eden, is told apart on screen by what?

A brunette wig, worn with a green harem outfit, marks Jeannie's sister. She first traps Jeannie in the bottle to take her place, and she is still scheming to steal Tony after the wedding.

Which 1960s sitcom star played Jeannie's uncle Sully?

Jackie Coogan, the boy from Chaplin's The Kid and later TV's Uncle Fester, plays Sully. His offer to make Jeannie a queen back home sends her away, and losing her finally pushes Tony to go after her and announce their engagement.

Which Rat Pack entertainer plays himself in a 1967 episode of I Dream of Jeannie?

Sammy Davis Jr. is the general's favorite entertainer, and Tony has promised to book him for a NASA party. He is already performing elsewhere that night, so Jeannie conjures a duplicate Sammy.

I Dream of Jeannie was widely seen as NBC's answer to which hit ABC sitcom?

Bewitched reached ABC in 1964, a year before Jeannie arrived on NBC, and the two magical comedies were compared from the start. Sheldon wrote that he had been offered the witch show to produce and turned it down.

Which 1964 Barbara Eden film inspired Sidney Sheldon's idea of a beautiful female genie?

The Brass Bottle cast Burl Ives as the genie and Eden as the hero's mortal girlfriend. Sheldon wrote that screen genies had always been giant men like Ives, so he made his a beautiful young woman.

What did executives refuse to pay for in season one of I Dream of Jeannie, at about $400 an episode?

Filming in color was the extra they would not fund, and season one alone is in black and white. Sheldon wrote that he offered to pay the difference himself and was told not to throw his money away.

Which legendary Looney Tunes director created I Dream of Jeannie's animated opening sequences?

Friz Freleng animated the titles, which retell the pilot: an astronaut's capsule comes down by a beach, he uncorks a bottle, and Jeannie dances out to kiss him. His studio, DePatie-Freleng, also animated the Pink Panther.

In which Florida town does Major Nelson live?

Cocoa Beach is a real town just south of the Kennedy Space Center, yet the series was shot in a Hollywood studio. The first season's opening even called it 'a mythical town in a mythical state called Florida'.

The building shown as Nelson and Healey's NASA offices was really a NASA center building at which California site?

Edwards Air Force Base is home to NASA's flight research center in Southern California. Its main entrance played the astronauts' Florida workplace, and NASA says visitors often recognize it.

The house used as Major Nelson's home had earlier been the family home on which sitcom?

Father Knows Best came first: the Andersons' house stood on a studio backlot in Burbank, California. It was then Mr. Wilson's home in Dennis the Menace before it became Major Nelson's 'Florida' address.

In June 1969 Barbara Eden kissed which astronaut on the cheek weeks before his moon launch?

Buzz Aldrin got the kiss at a Florida celebration of Barbara Eden Day, where, she later wrote, photographers kept egging her on. Less than three weeks later he was on his way to the Moon aboard Apollo 11.

Why can't Jeannie pose for her own wedding photographs?

Genies don't show up on film, the 1969 wedding episode reveals. With NASA wanting pictures of its astronaut's big day, Jeannie conjures a mechanical double to pose in her place.

When Eden returned to the Space Coast in 1996, the town honored the show with a street sign reading what?

I Dream of Jeannie Lane arrived late: the town was slow to embrace its sitcom fame, and the street was renamed 26 years after the show ended. A Jeannie lookalike contest followed in 2004.

According to the first season, who turned the once-mortal Jeannie into a genie?

The Blue Djinn wanted to marry her, and when she refused he made her a genie and sealed her in a bottle. Season three quietly rewrote this, making her whole family genies from birth.

Who composed the familiar 'Jeannie' theme used from the second season onward?

Hugo Montenegro wrote the bright melody after Sidney Sheldon decided the first season's music, by Richard Wess, was wrong for the show. He also had a 1968 hit with his cover of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme.

Which Marx brother turns up as himself in the 1967 episode The Greatest Invention in the World?

Groucho got the part by phoning creator Sidney Sheldon, as Sheldon told it, to recommend a guest who was 'young and handsome and brilliant': himself. By Sheldon's account he wrote the episode a week later.

Nick at Nite's Jeannie promos mashed the theme with which Suzanne Vega song, a hit in a DNA remix?

Tom's Diner became 'Jeannie's Diner', a parody by Mark Jonathan Davis that Suzanne Vega put on her 1991 album of cover versions.

What was Jeannie's famous bottle before it became a television prop?

A Jim Beam bourbon decanter, sold for Christmas 1964 at about $5.99. The auctioneers who later sold the first one say the pilot's director, Gene Nelson, spotted it in a liquor store window.

When I Dream of Jeannie went to color, Jeannie's bottle was repainted mainly in which colors?

Pinks and purples replaced a first-season bottle of dark smoked glass with gold filigree, colors that black-and-white film never showed.

Jeannie's long-lost dog Djinn Djinn turns invisible and attacks anyone wearing what?

A uniform sets him off, which is bad news in a house full of Air Force officers. Tony also has to keep Mrs. Bellows from adopting the magical mutt.

Why did the prop bottles used for Jeannie's smoke effect keep breaking?

The heat and chemicals inside did the damage: the smoke was made in the bottle itself, and the glass often cracked. The crew reckoned about a dozen painted decanters were used over the run.

In 'Hurricane Jeannie', made as the series finale, what does Dr. Bellows finally do before Tony wakes up?

Learns Jeannie is a genie: trapped at the Nelsons' by a storm, he watches her work magic and Tony confesses everything. Then Tony wakes up, and the doctor is none the wiser.

In season two, NASA's computer works out Jeannie's long-forgotten birthday as which date?

April 1 it was. Roger got the date from the computer and turned it into a guessing game, until an impatient Jeannie used her magic to force it out of him and he admitted she was born on April Fools' Day.

What were Barbara Eden's extra veils and waist-up camera shots hiding in I Dream of Jeannie's first season?

Her pregnancy: Eden offered to be replaced when she found out, but Sidney Sheldon kept her, raised the camera and piled on the veils. She filmed until her eighth month, feeling, she wrote, like a walking tent.

In 'The Case of My Vanishing Master', how does NASA hide Tony's absence on a secret project?

A lookalike takes his place at the base and at home, where he soon meets Jeannie. She takes his chatter for a proposal, and Roger has to stop her marrying the wrong Tony.

Before Jeannie, Barbara Eden starred in a 1950s sitcom about three Manhattan roommates, based on which Marilyn Monroe film?

How to Marry a Millionaire reached television in 1957 with Eden as Loco, one of three husband-hunting roommates. Her Loco refuses to wear glasses around men despite very poor eyesight, the trait Monroe's character had in the film.

Never a top-25 hit in prime time, how did I Dream of Jeannie find its lasting audience?

Through syndicated reruns, which began in 1971. Its best prime-time season finished only 26th, yet Sidney Sheldon wrote forty years on that it was still playing all over the world.

Which M*A*S*H star played Tony in 1985's I Dream of Jeannie… Fifteen Years Later?

Wayne Rogers, M*A*S*H's Trapper John, stepped in because Larry Hagman was tied up with his own hit series. Barbara Eden wrote that Hagman didn't want to switch horses in midrace, and that Rogers was very good.

What was the second I Dream of Jeannie reunion movie, in 1991, called?

I Still Dream of Jeannie sends Tony off on a secret mission, and genie law says Jeannie must find a temporary master or leave Earth for good. She settles on her son's guidance counselor.

Which future Star Wars actor voiced surfer Corey Anders in the 1973 cartoon Jeannie?

Mark Hamill took his first voice-acting job as the high-school surfer who rescues Jeannie on a California beach, four years before Star Wars. Voice work later became his second career, most famously as the Joker.

Which former Three Stooges member voiced the bumbling genie-in-training Babu in the 1973 cartoon Jeannie?

Joe Besser voiced Babu, whose spells began with a cry of 'Yapple dapple!' and tended to misfire. Besser had been the third Stooge in the team's last Columbia shorts of the 1950s.

Which future Charlie's Angels star played Roger's girlfriend Tina in I Dream of Jeannie's final season?

Farrah Fawcett, seven years before Charlie's Angels made her a star, appeared twice in 1969 as Tina, including the episode in which Jeannie's meddling lands Tony's plane in Cuba.

After I Dream of Jeannie ended, creator Sidney Sheldon found even greater fame as what?

A bestselling novelist: he dictated his first thriller, The Naked Face, in the mornings and went back to producing television after lunch. It came out in 1970, and by his count his books sold over 300 million copies.

While writing Jeannie scripts, Sheldon was simultaneously writing for which other sitcom he had created?

The Patty Duke Show was still shooting in New York when Sheldon sold Jeannie in Hollywood, which left him, in his own word, bicoastal. He signed some Jeannie scripts with pen names because his credit was turning up too often.

After Roger Healey, Bill Daily played sitcom neighbor Howard Borden on which 1970s series?

The Bob Newhart Show cast Daily as Howard Borden, the airline navigator from across the hall who kept dropping in on the Hartleys to borrow things and mooch a meal.

Larry Hagman went on to his most famous role, oil baron J.R. Ewing, on which series?

Dallas made Hagman's scheming J.R. a worldwide villain from 1978. Barbara Eden joined him for five episodes of its final season as LeeAnn De La Vega, a wealthy old flame out for revenge on J.R.

Larry Hagman was the son of which Broadway musical star?

Mary Martin was Peter Pan in the 1954 Broadway musical and the original Maria in The Sound of Music, and she was seventeen when Larry was born. He had done a New York soap, The Edge of Night, before Sidney Sheldon screen-tested him.

Barbara Eden played single mother Stella Johnson in a 1978 film and a later sitcom based on which country hit?

Harper Valley PTA, a 1968 hit sung by another Jeannie, Jeannie C. Riley, tells of a mother who shames her town's gossips. Eden's low-budget film was a surprise success and became a sitcom in 1981.

Before Jeannie, Barbara Eden played opposite Elvis Presley in which 1960 western?

Flaming Star, directed by Don Siegel, gave Elvis a rare dramatic part as a rancher's son torn between settlers and his mother's Kiowa people. Eden wrote that he had his heart set on it being a critical success.

In I Dream of Jeannie's first season, what does Roger do when he discovers Jeannie's secret?

Steals her bottle, which makes him her new master. After sixteen episodes in the dark, Roger has Jeannie blink up mansions, cars and yachts until Tony gets Dr. Bellows wondering how he paid for them.

Early in season one, Jeannie breaks up Tony's engagement to Melissa, who is whose daughter?

His commanding general's daughter Melissa is Tony's fiancée in the pilot. Three episodes later Jeannie nudges her toward an old classmate, the general leaves for an ambassador's post, and neither is seen again.

Which country remade I Dream of Jeannie in 2012 as the weeknight sitcom Jeannie Aur Juju?

India got the Hindi remake, which ran on SAB TV every weeknight from November 2012. India Today's critics were unmoved, and weak ratings ended it in 2014 after the channel had granted one six-month reprieve.

Why did Sidney Sheldon fight NBC's order to marry off Tony and Jeannie?

It killed the romantic tension, Sheldon argued, but NBC's Mort Werner made a fifth-season wedding the price of renewal. The cast was horrified, Barbara Eden later wrote that the show jumped the shark, and it was cancelled within the year.

Which studio produced I Dream of Jeannie?

Screen Gems, the television arm of Columbia Pictures, asked Sidney Sheldon for a series and, by his account, had sold his genie script to the network before he got home to New York. Interiors were shot on Columbia's old Sunset Gower lot.

What was Barbara Eden famously never allowed to show on I Dream of Jeannie?

Her navel had to stay under the high waist of her harem trousers. When Laugh-In's George Schlatter planned to unveil it under a spotlight, the idea was blocked, by NBC's censors in Eden's telling and by Sidney Sheldon in his own.

Besides the genie and her evil sister, which relative did Barbara Eden also play from season four?

Her mother turns up in two season-four episodes with Eden in the part, after two other actresses had played her in season one. In the second she puts Tony under a sleeping spell, then falls for Dr. Bellows.

By Barbara Eden's account, which animal guest star sent Larry Hagman bolting off the Jeannie set and into the street?

A lion took one look at Hagman and roared, Eden recalled, and he bolted with the crew running after him. She was left alone on the set with the lion purring in her lap.

Under the censors' rules for I Dream of Jeannie, what could Jeannie's smoke never be seen doing?

Spending the night in Tony's bedroom was out: Eden recalled the ruling that if Jeannie's smoke slipped under his door, it had to be seen coming out again. Sheldon remembered NBC's memo of such rules running to eighteen pages.

Which of these famous TV addresses is Major Nelson's?

1020 Palm Drive is the address usually given on screen, and it made TV Guide's list of famous television homes. The other three belong to the Bradys, the Simpsons and the Munsters.

What did Barbara Eden title her 2011 memoir?

Jeannie Out of the Bottle, written with Wendy Leigh, came out in 2011. Its chapter All About Larry recalls a co-star so unhappy on set that Sidney Sheldon urged him to see a therapist.

Which actor, then Barbara Eden's husband, played both King Kamehameha and Major Biff Jellico?

Michael Ansara was married to Eden for the whole run, guested in three different parts and directed one of the last episodes. Star Trek fans know him better as the Klingon commander Kang.