I was not aware of it then, but every morning Larry opened a bottle of champagne and began drinking. It never affected his work on the set. He always knew his lines and was never less than adroit. But the pressure began to show.
One morning, after a reading, I asked the actors if there were any problems. All of them said they were satisfied. When I got back to my office there was a call from Gene Nelson.
“I need your help, Sidney. Larry’s in his dressing room, crying. He won’t come out.”
I went to Larry’s dressing room and we talked for a long time. Finally, I said, “Larry, I’m going to do everything I can to help you. I’ll write scripts where the plots will revolve around you.”
And so, I began to write scripts to build up Larry’s character and make him more prominent. But when an actor is in a show with a scantily dressed actress as beautiful and enticing as Barbara Eden, it is very difficult for him to become the star.
Larry became more and more miserable, and it was upsetting everyone on the set. Barbara was very patient with him. I finally had another talk with Larry.
“Larry, do you like this show?”
“Sure.”
“But you’re not happy doing it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Sure you do. You want to be in a show where you’re the star.”
“I guess so.”
“You’re a very important part of this show, Larry. But if you want to stay in it, you have to take the pressure off yourself. I think you should see a psychiatrist. And I wouldn’t wait.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I will.”
A short while later, he told me he had made regular appointments to see a psychologist. It helped to a degree, but the tension was still there.
CHAPTER 32
At the start of the second season, Jeannie went to color. I was hiring other writers to help me carry some of the load, but I was dissatisfied with many of the scripts they turned in. A lot of writers believed the best approach was to pile fantasy on fantasy. They wanted Barbara to meet a Martian or some other fantasy character. I felt that the success of the show depended on a bedrock of reality: the incongruity of putting Jeannie in ordinary, everyday situations.
As an example, I wrote a script with the following premise: Tony was away at work, and a man from the IRS came to his house and was greeted by Jeannie. To impress her visitor, Jeannie blinked in wall-to-wall genuine Rembrandts, Picassos, Monets, and Renoirs.
“See,” she told a stunned tax investigator, “my master is very rich.”
Tony had to get out of it.
In another sequence, Tony was having Dr. Bellows over for dinner. Jeannie thought the house was too small, so she blinked in an enormous ballroom, an ornate dining room, a huge garden, and a large swimming pool. Tony has to explain the transformation to Dr. Bellows.
From February 1966 to April of the following year, I wrote thirty-eight consecutive scripts under my own name. In Hollywood, screen credits are the criteria by which a writer exists. Everyone fights to get a credit because that leads to the next job. I had a problem. I felt that I was getting too many credits. My screen credits on Jeannie read: “A Sidney Sheldon Production . . . Created by Sidney Sheldon . . . Produced by Sidney Sheldon . . . Written by Sidney Sheldon . . . Copyright by Sidney Sheldon.” It felt to me like an ego trip. I called the Writers Guild and told them I was going to start writing for the show under three different pseudonyms: Christopher Golato, Allan Devon, and Mark Rowane. From then on, my doppelgängers wrote many of the scripts, and I had one fewer credit.
After the first year of Jeannie, Gene Nelson had other offers and decided to leave the show. I knew I was going to miss him. I used a variety of directors, most often Claudio Guzmán and Hal Cooper.
And the show went on.
Sammy Davis, Jr., was over at our house one night for dinner.