“They would like you to come up with an idea for a show and meet with them in Hollywood. How soon can you do that?”
“How about Monday?”
I’d had an idea about doing a show with a genie. I knew that genie projects had been done, but they had always consisted of a giant man, like Burl Ives, coming out of a bottle, saying, “What can I do for you, Master?”
I thought it would be intriguing to make the genie a beautiful young nubile girl, saying, “What can I do for you, Master?” That was the project I decided to create for Screen Gems.
My agent had taken me literally and had made an appointment for a meeting on Monday at Screen Gems. It was now Friday. On Saturday morning, I called in a secretary and started dictating a brief outline of the genie script. As I progressed, however, I began to put in more dialogue and camera angles and soon I thought I might as well write a full teleplay. I went back to the beginning and dictated the entire script. It was finished by Sunday night, just in time for me to race to the airport to catch my plane to Los Angeles.
The meeting at Screen Gems went well. I met Jerry Hyams, one of the top executives, Chuck Fries, and Jackie Cooper, a former child actor who was now head of Screen Gems Productions. They were enthusiastic about the teleplay.
“How would you like to have your own company and produce it here?” Jerry Hyams asked.
I thought about The Patty Duke Show. No one had ever told me that I could not do two shows at once. “No problem,” I said.
The deal was made.
When I returned to New York, there was a message waiting for me that Screen Gems had already made a deal with NBC for I Dream of Jeannie. I would now have two weekly situation comedies on the air. I was bicoastal.
Jerry Hyams arranged for me to see the pilot of a new show about to go on the air. I loved it. I thought it was charming and was going to be a big hit.
“How would you like to produce it?” Jerry Hyams asked.
I shook my head. Instead of saying yes, which I wanted to do, I said no. There will be times, with no warning, you will lose control of your words and your actions.
Bewitched turned out to be an enormous hit.
We were shooting The Patty Duke Show in New York and we were going to shoot I Dream of Jeannie in Hollywood. Since I was producing Jeannie and I was deeply involved, I began hiring some writers for The Patty Duke Show. I found myself flying to Hollywood almost every weekend. I spent my time on the plane working on Patty Duke scripts, and three days a week preparing Jeannie. The Beverly Hills Hotel became my home away from home.
On my next trip to California, all hell broke loose. Mort Werner, the head of NBC, sent for me. He was grim.
“I have a memo here from our standards and practices department, Sheldon.” He shoved it at me.
As I started to read it, I realized what had happened. The network had awakened to the fact that in those closely censored days, they had bought a show that was about a nubile, half-naked young woman, living alone with a bachelor, constantly asking, “What can I do for you, Master?” They had panicked. The memo was eighteen pages long. It contained orders like:
They must never touch each other.
We will see Jeannie go into her bottle to sleep alone.
We will see Tony go into his bed to sleep alone.
Jeannie must never go into Tony’s bedroom.
Never let Tony go into Jeannie’s bottle.
And on and on for eighteen pages.
When I finished reading, Mort Werner said to me, “What are you going to do about it? This network cannot afford to air a show like this.” The word “cancellation” hung in the air.
I took a deep breath. “I’m doing a comedy. I don’t intend to make it titillating. There will be no sexual innuendoes or double entendres.”