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I Dream of Jeannie is an American sitcom with a fantasy premise. Produced by Screen Gems, it originally aired from September 1965 to May 1970 with new episodes, and September 1970 with season repeats, on NBC. The show ran for five seasons and produced 139 episodes. more...

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The first season consisted of 30 episodes filmed in black and white and recently colorized for some broadcasts and a DVD edition. The other 109 episodes were filmed in color. The show has continued to air in reruns ever since. The show starred Barbara Eden as a female genie, and Larry Hagman as an astronaut who becomes her master, with whom she falls in love and eventually marries.

Show history

Original run

The series was created by Sidney Sheldon in response to the great success of rival network ABC's Bewitched series, which had debuted in 1964 as the second most watched program in the United States. Sheldon, inspired by the movie The Brass Bottle, starring Tony Randall, Barbara Eden, and Burl Ives as the genie Fakrash, came up with the idea for a beautiful female genie who wanted to grant her master's wishes, a stark contrast to the social ideas of what a genie was and what a genie looked like. Many Bewitched fans continue to propagate the rumor that producer William Asher was called upon unofficially to comment on the final script for the pilot episode of Jeannie. NBC was hoping Jeannie would recreate the successful ratings Bewitched was pulling at that time. Coincidentally, both shows were produced by Screen Gems Television.

Interestingly, when casting was opened for the role of Jeannie, Sidney Sheldon could not find an actress who could play the role the way he wrote her. He did have one specific rule: Sheldon said that he didn't want a blonde genie because there would be too much similarity with the blonde witch on Bewitched. However, after many unsuccessful auditions he called the agent for Barbara Eden who had costarred in The Brass Bottle and then had tea with her at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

In most episodes, Barbara Eden wears little more than her revealing \"Jeannie\" costume. Strangely, the censors allowed her to be depicted living in a house with an unmarried man, but would not permit Eden's navel to be seen. The makers of the series were also presented with the situation of filming around Eden's real-life pregnancy during the pilot season, without writing it into the storyline. Instead she wore many veils to hide her stomach and as her pregnancy progressed they began to use body doubles and film Eden only above the waist though her baby bump is visible in some profile shots.

After the original run

I Dream of Jeannie was a moderate success on NBC, but the show's popularity exploded when the series began playing in syndication. The reruns became one of the highest rated series during the 1970s. For example, when the reruns debuted on New York's WPIX, Jeannie won its time period with a 13 rating and a 23 share of the audience (Variety, October 6, 1971). The series average a 14 share and 32 share of the audience when WTTG in Washington, D.C. began airing the series (Variety, September 22, 1971). Across the board, the series was reaching a bigger audience in syndication than on NBC. According to the October 6, 1971 edition of Variety, it was the first off-network series to best network competition in the ratings, \"The big switch no doubt representing the first time in rating history that indies (local stations) have knocked over the network stations in a primetime slot was promoted by WPIX's premiere of the off-web Jeannie reruns back to back from 7 to 8 p.m.\" The show continues to have a cult following today. Hanna-Barbera Productions produced an animated series Jeannie in September 1973, which featured Jeannie (voiced by Julie McWhirter) and genie-in-training Babu (voiced by former Three Stooges star Joe Besser) as the servants of Corry Anders, a high-school student (voiced by Mark Hamill).

Read more at Wikipedia.org