Greetings over your interweb devices
“Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for Lola
La-la-la-la Lola.”
In the early 1960s the Space Race gripped the fascination of the whole world. In the U.S. our astronauts were heroes nonpareil, reflecting a go-go lifestyle of speed and style inspiring every boy like me (and, thankfully, some forward thinking girls, too) to want to be a part of the space program. In the U.S.S.R. their cosmonauts were also held in the highest regard, but the lifestyle transfer to the average citizen was not within the realm of possibility.
Produced during that craze, “I Dream of Jeannie” (IDOJ) was a Screen Gems sitcom about an astronaut who finds himself temporally lost on a deserted island. Half buried on the.beach, he finds an ancient bottle, rubs the container and out pops a genie (Barbara Eden scantily clad in a classic Hollywood harem outfit) offering to grant his every wish. For the next five seasons, Captain (later Major) Tony Nelson found himself embarrassed, enraged, and ultimately entranced by Jeannie’s supernatural antics. He ultimately gave in and married her during the final season. It was not only a big hit on NBC, but it played its own part in keeping alive the high-flying, swinging, and yet all-American image of our rocket-jockeys.
About forty years later, Screen Gems (which had been the television arm of Columbia Studios) was one of the entities folded into Sony Pictures and Television International (SPTI). Jeannie was part of the portfolio which SPTI was showing to different countries for possible adaptation and Russia, home of the cosmonauts, was interested. “The Nanny” worked successfully in so many countries, I believe, because it was basically a variation on a classic fairy-tale, “Cinderella.” IDOJ was certainly based on an even older tale, and one beloved in many cultures, although in the traditional story the genie was male. The difficulty here, though, was that the main twist on this tale wasn’t just the change of gender of the magical figure, it was the anchoring of the premise in the space program. Most of the original plots depended on themes of astronaut training, the first mission to the moon, even NASA publicity needs. If you were buying into the adaptations, you were buying the space angle, too.
In 2007 there were still men and women going into space, and though we’d “won” the space race, all of the flights, ironically, were originating from Russian Federation launch pads by that point. The sexiness of the entire space program was over and where the names of Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Gagarin, Titov, and Tereshkova (1st woman in space) were all well-known to their native citizenry in 1965, few residents of either country could name a current space traveler.
How to rescue the show? One option was to make it a retro show — after all, “Mad Men” was brand new that summer and was highly regarded by critics and the public and rekindling style trends from that earlier time. Why not set the show in those “swingin’ sixties?” That might work for a U.S. crowd, but the sixties were neither swinging in Russia, nor were they particularly fun in much of any way.
Ultimately, the challenge was to somehow make flying into space in the modern day sexy again. (Of course, the sexiness of the relationship between Tony and Jeannie carried a lot of that load.) While resurrecting the objectification of Jeannie might have been a big bone of contention if you tried bringing it back in the US of 2007 (and impossible to try now) — that was the least of the worries in Russia. Just where such a woman as this temptress was from proved a greater sticking point. From the U.S. perspective, we had the unlikely, almost Nordic image of Ms. Eden in our memories — blonde, buxom, yet somehow, wholesome. Though we presented a few very good possibilities in that mold, our Russian counterparts, who, after all, should know their target audience better than we weren’t buying it. Perhaps mysterious, swarthy, and from closer to the Middle East might fit their ideas better. Still no luck. At one point, they were so desperate as well as confused, one of our local producers brought in a woman who had some experience in avant-garde theater . . . and was a rather manly former Russian Volleyball Olympian. Though we tried desperately not to succumb to the propaganda stories of our youth, it was hard to believe that there weren’t at least some intense hormonal treatments in the background of this athlete-turned-actor. (She is pictured center top in the montage.). Sadly, even had this woman been funny (which she wasn’t), she was outside of consideration. Disappointing as it was, though no surprise, alternative lifestyles were not readily embraced.
During one man’s audition for the ‘Roger Healey’ character, he was doing a great job and making people laugh . . . and then the game of ‘telephone’ began as one person in the room started the rumor and it moved across the room. I could not understand what they were saying, but as each person heard the whisper, they ceased to laugh. It made it to the other side of the room, and this actor went from a “that was good, we’ll certainly call you back,” to a curt, “thank-you, now good day to you, sir.” I was later told the rumor was that he was gay.
Perhaps it was just as well that the project did not succeed. The many pictures above show some of the auditions we had, during which these poor women had to perform in one of the same three harem outfits shown center bottom. Worse still, the rumor was that one outfit had been recently used by a chimp for an animal act — I’m not entirely sure which one (or that there was really any truth to the rumor) but given the circumstances, that may have been the least of the indignities these women had to endure.
By the time they threw in the towel, some six months’ work was invested prior to my arrival (including a fully realized pilot which all the producers insisted be recast and reshot), and another two with me there. Though we arrived nowhere with IDOJ, most of the people with whom I worked on this project, would soon go on to the adaptation of “Everybody Loves Raymond” (known locally as “The Voronins). There is a terrific documentary made by Phil Rosenthal called “Exporting Raymond,” which documents the making of that project. In fact, Igor, who directed most of our casting efforts with Jeannie, and was also a terrific actor in his own right, would go on to play the “Raymond” role in the project — which was so successful, that multiple additional seasons were commissioned, so that they could continue making the show.
To one and all, Be Safe-Stay Healthy