Jeannie Out Of The Bottle by Barbara Eden

boyfriend, Al Ansara.
    In October 1957, a month before I met Senator Kennedy, How to Marry a Millionaire was rising in popularity and I now had top billing on the show. I’d even managed to move out of the Studio Club and into an apartment of my very own on Sunset.
    One morning, Booker McClay called me into his office and in no uncertain terms told me that it was high time I stopped hanging out with my boyfriend, Tony, a nice guy who delivered refrigerators for a living, and went out on the town with someone important in the business, so I’d see and be seen.
    Before I could protest, Booker went on, “Barbara, you’re in a hit series. You’re a TV star. You get fan mail every week. Those fans expect you to be seen around Hollywood on the arm of a sexy date, and so do I.”
    I stifled a yawn.
    I suppose I could have used my relationship with Tony as an excuse for not wanting to play the Hollywood social game, but that wasn’t true. From the first, I’d made it clear to Tony that I didn’t plan on going steady with him and that I was going to date other people.
    I did meet actor Robert Vaughn at the Studio Club and go on one date with him. He was studying at UCLA at the time and was working extremely hard, but there was no chemistry between us and we never went out again.
    Since then, Tony had suited me just fine and I wasn’t remotely interested in dating another actor. But Booker just wouldn’t take no for an answer. He insisted that I go to astrologer Carroll Righter’s birthday party on Halloween as the date of Michael Ansara, one of Twentieth Century Fox’s major stars, who was playing Apache chief Cochise to great acclaim in the TV hit Broken Arrow.
    Tony or no Tony, the prospect of a blind date with some actor utterly underwhelmed me.
    Michael, it later turned out, felt exactly the same way at the thought of meeting me. His exact words to Booker were “Why should I go out with some actress I don’t know when I’ve already got so many girls in my life that I do know?”
    But Booker was relentless, the date was set, and I was left wondering whether I ought to bone up on the Chiracahua Apaches and their current problems. In short, I expected Michael to arrive for our date sporting a shoulder-length bob and carrying a bow and arrow, just as he did in Broken Arrow.
    Booker arranged for Michael and me to first have dinner at the Tail of the Cock, a restaurant on La Cienega, then to go on to the Halloween party, where photographers (who’d been tipped off in advance) would be waiting to grab a shot of us together. Mission accomplished, Booker McClay style.
    However, things didn’t go according to Booker’s plan. From the moment Michael and I sat down to dinner, we didn’t stop talking. We talked and talked and talked and talked, and practically closed the restaurant. We never did make it to the Halloween party, so Booker’s photographers didn’t get their pictures, and he was livid with both of us.
    But Michael and I didn’t care. We were far too busy falling madly and hopelessly in love.
    Soon after, I left for Manhattan on the How to Marry a Millionaire publicity tour. While I was away, Michael called me every night, and our relationship deepened.
    By the time I left Manhattan to return to Los Angeles, I knew that Michael Ansara was the man for me, that I wouldn’t be dating anyone else, that I wanted our relationship to be exclusive.
    But Michael, a decisive man with very little self-doubt, wanted more. One afternoon, without any warning, he showed up on the How to Marry a Millionaire set. He kissed me, then held out a white paper bag.
    “Oh, goody!” I said. “Candy!”
    My mouth started watering. I foraged inside the bag for the candy, and pulled out a diamond engagement ring instead.
    “I think it will fit,” Michael said laconically.
    It did. It fit perfectly. A metaphor, in more ways than one, for our relationship and, I hoped, our future together.
    Nevertheless, I wasn’t quite prepared to