TV Verdict

As much as it seems like she’s lived a charmed life, Barbara Eden would probably be the first to tell you it simply isn’t true – at least, not entirely.

She’s been featured in a plethora of television series. She’s starred on stage in everything from The Sound of Music to The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to Love Letters to The Odd Couple. She’s starred in some 20 feature films. She’s been a headliner in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Atlantic City. And of course, there was that little TV comedy she did in the mid-1960s called “I Dream of Jeannie,” which was met with more than a touch of success.

The enduring, indelible image of Eden is as a shapely, gorgeous blonde, about 30, in that revealing genie getup. It has always been thus since the 1965 premiere of “Jeannie,” which ran five seasons and 139 episodes – and made her a star forevermore. The show continues to rope in a new generation 39 years after it left the first-run air in 1970, seen 14 times weekly on cable’s TV Land and in syndication the world over.

Yet there is the sense from chatting with the deliberate, soft-spoken and unfailingly gracious Eden that there remains a bit of lingering heartache; that an event which took place some eight years ago continues to eat away at her and always will. It’s the death in 2001 of 35-year-old son Matthew Ansara, her only child, from an accidental heroin overdose.

“Someone who had lost a child once told me – and it’s true – that no matter what happens to you for the rest of your life, there’s always a piece of you missing,” is how Eden puts it on the rare occasions when she is up to discussing it. “You can laugh, you can go to parties, you can have fun, but…”

So it would be wrong to say that Eden has moved on from the wrenching tragedy. She never fully will. And yet, she continues to embrace life as best she can. At 75 (on Aug. 23), she’s still working, too.

Eden’s latest project is the Hallmark Channel Original Movie “Always & Forever,” which premieres Saturday, October 24 (9/8c) on the channel. The film co-stars Dean McDermott (“Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood”), Rena Sofer (“24”) and Max Gail (“Barney Miller”) along with Eden in the story of high school sweethearts who go their separate ways, only to reunite and find the fire rekindled at their 20-year reunion.

Eden portrays the mother of Grace (Sofer), a meddler who feels she knows what’s best for her daughter in terms of romance even more than her daughter does.

“I had great fun doing the film,” Eden asserts. “I feel like it was a positive role because whatever I was doing for my daughter was for her own good. I guess that would qualify me as an interfering mother (laughs). Not that I’m that in real life. I have to say that Rena was just a delight to work with. The whole shoot was just kind of a breeze.”

But of course, the thing that everyone still likes to talk about is a role that wrapped nearly 30 years ago and found her playing a 2,000-year-old character who addressed her co-star as “Master.” There is simply no getting around the fact that Eden and Jeannie are forever, inextricably entwined.

Yet you’ll never hear Eden complaining about it lo these many years later. Far from it, in fact. In her mind, “I Dream of Jeannie” hasn’t embodied a blend of blessing and curse but simply 100% blessing. Really and truly.

“Yes, people bring ‘Jeannie’ up to me every day of my life,” she admits, “but I’ve never resented that. I’m glad people like her. She’s easy to live with. It’s a clean-cut fantasy that your mother would approve of. The only issue is when kids still ask me all the time to cross my arms and bob my head, because then they look around and want something to happen.”

Clean-cut fantasy, indeed. Eden was even barred from showing her belly-button on camera due to the stringent decency rules of the time (just as they shot Elvis from the waist up on “The Ed Sullivan Show”).

What many may not realize is that after “Jeannie” went to the big lamp in the sky, Eden didn’t exactly disappear. Her nightclub act flourished. She began a slew of made-for-TV movies, starring in an average of two a year throughout the 1970s and nearly that many into the ‘80s and early ‘90s. She didn’t want for anything and was in fact too busy to think about any imagined career limitations her role in “Jeannie” may have imposed.

“I honestly had no time to resent anything,” she maintains. “That’s the interesting part.”

Eden still is friends with her “Jeannie” co-star Larry Hagman, whom she sees once in a while, but with whom she will always have a tight bond. “He’s a lovely man,” she says of Hagman, “and I feel like we did something very special together. It just astonishes me how much staying power ‘Jeannie’ has to this day. It still reruns all over the world.”

Oh, and all of that stuff that the Jeannie does, like materialize objects and control situations with a cross of the arms and a blink of the eye? Eden believes that a form of that is possible no matter how preposterous it may have seemed on the series.

“I honestly do,” she confirms. “Metaphysics covers a wide territory. But I do believe that we’re all connected metaphysically. While I’ve never seen any actual proof of the ‘Jeannie’ kind of magic, I don’t think it’s all just hocus-pocus. There could be something to some of it.”

The show’s enduring popularity was driven home for Eden when she was paid a visit some six months ago by four men from France, tourists who had come from Paris to Beverly Hills specifically to visit Eden and give her a gift because they loved “I Dream of Jeannie” so much.

“Imagine that!” she marvels. “They brought me a tiny Eiffel Tower and flowers and just wanted to tell me how much they love me and the show. They made the trip just for me! They were very polite and well-dressed. It was really a thrill.”

This would have been pretty much unimaginable back when “Jeannie” began shooting. Eden was a working actress, and this was simply a job she was happy to have. What made it difficult at the outset was the fact that Eden was pregnant, forcing the producers to skillfully hide this maternal condition during the series’ first 13 episodes.

“I’m not sure how skillful they actually were,” Eden admits, “but being pregnant made me feel very good.”

More recently, Eden was busy over the winter starring in a stage production of Love Letters in Maine. She loves to work but sometimes turns it down now in order to travel and spend more quality time with her third husband, Jon Eicholtz, to whom she has been married since 1991.

It’s also important to Eden to stay in shape. She goes to spin class three times a week and works out with weights regularly. She finds that it enables her to relax and helps her in her work, which remains hugely important.

“I grew up with a very strong work ethic in my family,” Eden says. “Integrity and honesty have always been big for me as well. But I think what’s helped the most is my determination never to let the small stuff bother me. No matter what it is, I just take 10 deep breaths and deal with it. And it always seems to work out.”

“Always & Forever” premieres Saturday, October 24 (9/8c)

Film encores: Saturday, October 24 (11pm/10c), Sunday, October 25 (1am/12c) and (9pm/8c), Friday, November 6 (9pm/8c) and Saturday, November 7 (3pm/2c).

Interview and photo courtesy of Hallmark Channel