You may know Barbara Eden as the iconic genie from "I Dream of Jeannie," but do
you know about her experiences with sexism? Bad marriages? The tragedy
with her son? Stay tuned as we reveal tragic details about Barbara Eden.
During the Great Depression, Barbara Eden's family shared their house with one of her aunts
and her husband. In her memoir "Jeannie Out of the Bottle," Eden revealed -
"My parents' financial existence was so perilous that we moved around a great deal. I attended
five different schools in San Francisco, and we lived in five different homes,"
She added that despite the financial hardship, the household remained positive, writing -
"In those far-off years during the Depression, however poor my parents were,
they still hadn't forgotten how to love, how to laugh, and how to dream."
Despite her family's unlucky circumstances, Eden developed a love for show business and
started studying singing. As The Bay Area Reporter noted, she even overcame
her financial situation to become Miss San Francisco in 1951. Eden recalled -
"I was studying acting, and my acting teacher said that I was shy.
She said if I could stand in a bathing suit in front of people, it'd help me."
She added that even if it was embarrassing, it still taught her a lot, saying -
"It was a wonderful experience. I was shocked when I won."
When Barbara Eden decided to take her skills to Hollywood, she had to deal with misogyny
from the industry — especially when it came to her body. She told The Sydney Morning Herald of
a depressing incident with a talent scout at Warner Bros., who showed Eden an image
of his own daughter and suggested that Barbara needed to have a bigger breast size like hers.
Eden recalled that the crude advice was dismaying,
but she tried to stay optimistic about her career, saying -
"I put it in perspective and realized that not every part
is written for a big-busted woman — so I decided to be a character actress."
As she told The Spokesman-Review in 1989, however, the story had an unexpected ending:
Eden saw that same agent on the Warner Bros. lot about half a year, saying of the exchange -
"He asked me who I was. I told him, and he didn't remember me. He said,
'We're going to screen test you. You're going somewhere.' So I always try to
remember that — to have faith in yourself, because things aren't always what they seem."
As Barbara Eden's career took off, her friends and managers encouraged her to
start dating other actors. As she revealed in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald,
she agreed to be set up on a date with Michael Ansara [on-SAR-uh], a star of the hit TV show
"Broken Arrow," and the pair formed an instant connection. As she recalled -
"I fell madly in love, as he was a kind man and a wonderful actor."
But Eden had a boyfriend already: a refrigerator deliveryman named Tony
who didn't take the news well when she told him that she wanted to break up.
He became so unstable that Eden had to ban him from the lot where she worked,
according to her memoir. When she received an alarming phone call from him one night,
Eden and Ansara raced over to save Tony from a suicide attempt. Eden wrote of the incident -
"To our great relief, Tony ultimately survived. But from that night on,
I viewed Michael with new respect."
They say that you should never meet your heroes,
and Barbara Eden learned that lesson early in her television career.
While guest starring on "I Love Lucy," Desi Arnaz [DEH-zee ar-NEZ], as allegedly pursued
her so aggressively that she had to literally, quote, "hide from him." She went onto write -
"Now, I'm not a prude, but as far as I've always been concerned,
married men are completely out of bounds to me. Desi seemed to pop
up wherever I was during rehearsal. My solution? To hide from him whenever I saw him coming."
Luckily, Arnaz seemed to get the message by the
time they finally shot their dancing scene together, to Eden's relief.
She still had a positive working relationship with Arnaz's wife, Lucille Ball, who liked her comedy
timing and reportedly considered putting her under contract. Eden told the Television Academy -
"Of course, I was in awe. [...] But she was so kind."
The comedy icon even invited Eden into her dressing room and helped the younger actor
with her dress, adding sparkles so that it would look better on-screen during the dancing scene.
They might have been one of the most iconic pairings in sitcom history,
but Barbara Eden had to fight for her co-star Larry Hagman to stay on "I Dream of Jeannie"
after his alcoholism worsened behind the scenes.
"He was very unhappy, in the show, [but] the minute we'd get in front of the camera
he was there. He was awake, he was there and he was doing it."
She recalled how she argued with producers who threatened to fire Hagman, saying -
"He was wonderful in that part. It would have been a huge mistake.
I'm sorry for him because he didn't like doing it, but he thanked me for saving his house!"
As Eden told The Sydney Morning Herald,
the sitcom's writing might have contributed to Hagman's unhappiness. She said -
"When the cameras rolled my co-star Larry Hagman was wonderful but he despised the scripts."
She added that at one point he even dramatically showed his
contempt for them by urinating on one, claiming -
"At that time Larry was drinking and taking diet pills — he really wasn't himself."
In 1971, tragedy struck when Barbara Eden lost her second child. She revealed to People -
"I carried my second son for almost eight months before the doctors told me
he had died in the womb." Despite the medical emergency, the actor returned to work right away.
Eden recalled that she lost weight and that her mental health had also taken a hit,
but she had no idea that her unhappiness could be attributed to postpartum depression, saying -
"I'd come home and look at my little boy who's adorable and think,
'I'm so lucky. I have this sweet child. I have a husband who loves me.
What's wrong with me?' And nobody told me what was wrong with me."
She explained that she didn't seek help because seeing psychiatrists
wasn't a common practice at the time.
As the sitcom star told The Sydney Morning Herald,
the hidden trauma from her miscarriage affected her marriage to Michael Ansara. She admitted -
"My deep depression destroyed our relationship."
Although Barbara Eden's marriage to Michael Ansara lasted fifteen years, the miscarriage of
her child was too traumatic for it to survive in the end. She revealed in her memoir -
"Michael and I did try to talk about our marital problems,
but every time we talked, the chasm between us grew deeper."
Eden finally asked for a divorce, which shocked Ansara, and they were separated by 1973.
As The Spokesman-Review reported, Eden was particularly heartbroken when she
got remarried and left California to live with her new husband in Chicago.
The relocation meant that her ex-husband now had custody of their son, Matthew,
who was deeply affected by the split, as Eden found out years later. She wrote in her memoir -
"I still regret our divorce, because the repercussions it would one day have on Matthew
would turn out to be cataclysmic. Had I been able to look into a crystal ball at that time,
I would have stayed in the marriage until Matthew was an adult. But I didn't."
Barbara Eden's second marriage didn't last long, as she told The Sydney Morning Herald -
"When I met Chuck Fegert in 1977 I was lonely.
He was handsome, intelligent and initially loads of fun,"
She recalled how Fegert, who worked in marketing,
swept her off her feet after the heartbreak of her first divorce. She
received a nasty shock after eight months together, however: he was still married.
According to her memoir, Fegert managed to persuade Eden that it didn't matter since he
was getting a divorce anyway, but her mother never really forgave him — even though he did his best
to charm her with his salesman skills. And there were other problems with her husband,
as she observed later, like his need for attention and fame.
In her interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Eden revealed -
"Once we married he began to run with a crowd that drank and used cocaine.
He then became abusive, so I left."
Barbara Eden was always close to her mother, who inspired her to start singing as a young child.
The actor told The Sydney Morning Herald -
"Each night, we'd do dishes and she'd sing Gilbert and Sullivan ditties. I'd join in and, through
her, developed a passion for singing. She always encouraged me and I knew she was there for me."
Years later, Eden's mother was sadly diagnosed with lung cancer
and died in 1986. Eden wrote in her memoir -
"That final illness was cruelly drawn out and caused her a great deal of pain and suffering."
She added that her normally serene mother had hidden the disease for a while, writing -
"I later learned through one of her friends that she had been having difficulty breathing
at night for a very long time beforehand, but she continued to ignore her symptoms,
and never gave me a clue, either. My guess is that she simply followed her own dictate
and rose right above it — until, of course, it was impossible for her to do so anymore."
When Barbara Eden returned to Los Angeles in 1983,
she was met by a nasty shock: her son Matthew Ansara was now unrecognizable. She told ABC News -
"He wasn't the happy warm boy that I'd known."
She revealed that Matthew had been hiding a secret drug addiction from his parents for years.
After Matthew turned 19, his famous mother found out that he had been using drugs since age 10,
later telling The Sydney Morning Herald -
"It should never have happened."
She revealed that a neighbor of theirs in the San Fernando Valley
first introduced her son to marijuana, which he had been growing himself and sharing with
local kids. Even years later, the actor still found this fact painful, insisting -
"At no time should drugs be available to children."
She joined forces with her ex-husband Michael Ansara to tackle the problem
by sending Matthew to rehab, but her son's addiction wasn't easily solved. Eden spent
14 years dealing with Matthew's multiple stays in rehab. As she told People -
"At first we didn't recognize the behavior — the sleeping and the
bouts of anger that would come up all of a sudden with this charming, darling boy."
"Friends of mine said, 'Barbara have him tested.
Somethings… definitely have him tested.' And we were told that he was definitely using."
Eden eventually turned to tough love, admitting to ABC News -
"He was told he did not have a home with me if he was going to use drugs,
he had to leave. And he left! His father and I were frantic. We were looking for him everywhere."
Matthew ended up becoming homeless for periods of time, with Eden saying -
"I would always bring him food. I wanted to see my son, but I didn't trust him."
The defining tragedy of Barbara Eden's life came in 2001 when her son died from a heroin overdose.
Matthew Ansara had been sober for a while and was working as a bodybuilder at the time.
He had also gotten engaged to his girlfriend. Eden told ABC News -
"Apparently he had taken a hit of heroin and he hadn't had it in quite a while,
I guess. It killed him. It stopped his heart."
This loss was absolutely crushing for the former sitcom star,
who partially blamed herself, admitting to People -
"I don't think there's anything worse than to lose your child. As a parent,
I had a lot of guilt and anger."
She added -
"I began to speak with parents who were going through the same thing.
I think parents should know that it's not a bad thing to be strict with your child. If you know
what's going on, you have a chance to help. Ultimately it's up to them, but there's hope."
Eden also reflected on her son, remarking that Matthew was a,
quote, "beautiful human being, inside and out" when he was sober, going on to say -
"Even though he was 35, he was still my baby."
"You haven't failed anybody. Your dad loved you. And I love you more than anybody on this earth."
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues,
help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website
or contact SAMHSA [SAM-suh]'s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
If you or someone you know is struggling with domestic abuse,
please call or chat online with the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.