Barbara Eden

At 92 years old, Barbara Eden has this physical status:

Barbara Eden (born Barbara Jean Morehead, 1931) is an American film, stage, and television actress best known for her role in "Jeannie" in the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.

Early years

Eden was born in Tucson, Arizona, on August 23, 1931, to Alice Mary (née Franklin) and Hubert Henry Morehead. She is a descendant of Benjamin Franklin. (For decades, her year of birth was thought to be 1934.) She and her mother moved to San Francisco, where her mother married Harrison Connor Huffman, a telephone lineman, by whom she had a daughter, Eden's half-sister. The Great Depression impacted the family, and Alice entertained her children with singing as a result of their inability to buy many luxury items.

Eden's first public performance was in the church choir, where she sang solos. She performed in local bands (led by Howard Fredericks and Freddie Martin) for $10 (roughly equivalent to $157 in 2021) a night in nightclubs as a teen. She became a member of Actor's Equity at the age of 16, 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 1949 and studied theater at City College of San Francisco for one year. Barbara Huffman was elected Miss San Francisco in 1951, and she also competed in the Miss California pageant.

Personal life: Jeannie Out of the Bottle

Eden wrote Jeannie Out of the Bottle, a Random House division of Crown Archetype, which was released on April 5, 2011. It debuted at number 14 on The New York Times Best Seller List, ranking it at number 14 on the New York Times Top Seller List.

Jeannie Out of the Bottle chronicles her personal life and Hollywood experience of more than 50 years, as well as intimate information about her early life, her rise to fame in her teens and early 20s, her co-stars, and her role in the lead up to I Dream of Jeannie. It also includes her marriages to Michael Ansara (1958–1974), Charles Fegert (1977–1982), and Jon Eicholtz (1991–present), and her "emotional breakdown" after her son Matthew Ansara's death of a drug overdose in 2001.

Eden revealed in June 2021, while discussing her children's book Barbara and the Djinn, that she and her partner Jon Eicholtz had recovered from COVID-19.

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Later career

Eden, Jeannie, appeared in The Barbara Eden Exhibition, an unaired pilot, as well as another pilot, The Toy Game. The Feminist and the Fuzz was her first television film. Although she is best known for comedies, the majority of these films were dramas, as she starred opposite her Jeannie co-star Larry Hagman in A Howling in the Woods (1971).

Anne Collins, a woman impregnated by extraterrestrials, appeared in The Stranger Within (1974). Eden starred as a policewoman-turned-private detective probing the disappearance of a missing heiress in the critically acclaimed TV film Stonestreet: Who Killed the Centerfold Model? (1977) She appeared in and co-produced the NBC-TV romantic comedy film The Secret Life of Kathy McCormick (1988). Opposites Attract (1990), co-starring John Forsythe, she appeared in and produced the romantic comedy television film Opposites Attract (1990).

She appeared in Harper Valley PTA's 1978 film, which was based on the popular country song. In 1981, a namesake television series was born. Eden played Stella Johnson in both the film and the TV series. It was a comedic version of Peyton Place starring Anne Francine, wealthy villainess Flora Simpson Reilly. Stella in one episode wore a blue and gold genie costume, while in another she played both Stella and her cousin Della Smith (similar to Jeannie's evil twin-sister role). It debuted on January 16, 1981, winning 11 of its 13 time slots in the first season. When it first opened on October 29, 1981, it was renamed simply Harper Valley. Eden became the spokeswoman for L'eggs pantyhose during this period and appeared in a number of print ads and television commercials for the brand from 1979 to 1983.

Eden appeared in the John Kander and Shelly Gross national production Women of the Year, starring Tess Harding Craig, alongside Don Chastain (as Sam Craig) and Marilyn Cooper from April 3 to September 16, 1984. Eden appeared in five episodes of Dallas' final season as the vivacious character LeeAnn de la Vega, reuniteing her with Hagman. In her last episode, the woman admits that Nelson (a production joke) was her maiden name, and that "Nelson" was the surname of Hagman's character and Eden's married name in I Dream of Jeannie). She appeared in the stage play Same Time, Next Year with Wayne Rogers in 1991, and she reprised her role as Jeannie in a television movie-of-the-week. In 1993, she appeared in an 11-city national tour of Don Knott's play Last of the Red Hot Lovers.

Eden appeared in films including Nite Club Confidential (playing Kay Goodman), The Sound of Music, Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific with Robert Goulet, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She has appeared in several television series, including 21 Bob Hope specials, The Jonathan Winters Show, The Jonathan Winters Show, This Is Tom Jones, Tony Orlando and Dawn, and Donny and Marie. Miss Barbara Eden, her debut on Dot Records in 1967, was released.

Eden appeared in the national touring production of The Odd Couple: The Female Version from 2000 to 2004, as Florence Unger opposite Rita MacKenzie as Olive Madison. Eden reunited with her long co-star Larry Hagman for a publicity tour in New York City in March 2006 to promote the first-season DVD of I Dream of Jeannie. They appeared on Good Morning America, The View, Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, Martha, and Showbiz Tonight, among other programs.

Hagman and Eden reunited in March 2006, this time onstage at the College of Staten Island and the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. This was Eden's first return to the academy after appearing in the 1956 Ziv Television Programs, The West Point Story. Eden appeared in Love Letters with Hal Linden in 2006 and was a guest-starring role on the Lifetime series Army Wives, written and produced by Katherine Fugate. She began filming the Hallmark Channel's Always and Forever, which aired in October 2009.

Eden was at the opening ceremony of the 21st Life Ball in Vienna, where Eden wore her famous Jeannie harem costume. Eden appeared in One Song, a film shot in Excelsior, Minnesota, in late 2013.

Eden has also performed voice work on Shimmer and Shine, the animated children's television series.

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