Free Jeannie Out Of The Bottle by Barbara Eden

that Desi Arnaz was a world-class philanderer. It was common knowledge in Hollywood that he had a taste for young, curvaceous blondes and that Lucy was deeply unhappy about Desi’s infidelity. Worse still, he was blatant about his activities, and once even publicly boasted, “A real man should have as many girls as he has hairs on his head.”
    Now, I’m not a prude, but as far as I’ve always been concerned, married men are completely out of bounds to me. I made up my mind then and there that no matter how handsome Desi might be (and he was extremely handsome), no matter how persuasive (and with that Latin-lover charm, I had no doubt at all that he would be), I wouldn’t succumb to his romantic blandishments. I wouldn’t cause any trouble or hurt Lucy in any way.
    Besides—and this has always been true throughout my career—when I work, I don’t play. I focus single-mindedly on my role and won’t allow anything or anyone to distract me from it. Usually that’s very easy, but not on I Love Lucy, where Desi seemed to pop up wherever I was during rehearsal.
    My solution? To hide from him whenever I saw him coming. Not a particularly subtle ploy, I know, but I was unable to come up with anything more effective.
    During rehearsal, Lucy took me aside and said, “You’re good, Barbara. You don’t usually find a pretty girl who can project and be funny at the same time. But make sure to put that pretty little face of yours out there. Let the camera love your face. Don’t look away from it.”
    That was Lucy. So different from Ann Sothern, and generous almost to a fault to a younger actress.
    The day of the final shoot, I locked my dressing room door, put on my dress for the show (a nice if not particularly flattering number), and then tiptoed out, hoping against hope that Desi wasn’t around and waiting to pounce on me.
    Instead, I bumped straight into Lucy’s assistant, who informed me that Lucy wanted to see me in her trailer dressing room at once.
    Oh boy! I thought. Have I done something to make her mad?
    I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I was still petrified. I followed the assistant into the trailer, where Lucy ordered, “Take that dress off.”
    Literally trembling from head to foot in fear, I did what she told me.
    Then she handed me another dress.
    Remembering Ann Sothern, I looked at it and thought, Probably a sack dress.
    Then I put it on. It was the tightest, sexiest dress I’d ever seen, one that showed off all of my curves.
    “Take it off again,” Lucy said.
    I did, and she and one of her friends spent more than an hour adding sparkles all over the dress so that it would look even more shiny and glamorous.
    Now that’s the kind of woman Lucille Ball was. She was really smart and really dedicated to her show, and even though she realized that Desi was actively pursuing me, she still put me in that dress because she knew it was right for the character and right for the show. The show meant everything to her, more, even, than her hurt pride over her cheating husband.
    Even to this day in Hollywood, you still hear stories about how Desi broke Lucy’s heart, but she still put her show first because she was smart and she was a professional.
    Funnily enough, when I finally filmed the scene in which Desi and I dance together, he turned out to be a complete gentleman on camera and kept his distance from me. I was vastly relieved.
    Afterward, the director took me aside and said, “You know, every time we have a young girl in the show and Desi goes after her, Lucy suffers so much. You were the first one who handled things professionally. Thank you.”
    Lucy also obliquely thanked me for evading her husband’s advances: she offered to put me under contract for her new production company, Desilu. By then, though, it was too late. Twentieth Century Fox had finalized their offer for me to become one of their contract players, and it was far too good for me to turn down: seven years at $200 a week. I