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Before she charmed her way into audiences’ hearts as a genie in “I Dreamed of Jeannie,” Barbara Eden was working alongside The King.
On Saturday, the actress participated in a panel at Christmas Con in Pasadena, California where she was asked about her 1960 film “Flaming Star,” which featured Elvis Presley.
The 90-year-old joked that she “didn’t have a romance with Elvis like most of his leading ladies did,” but insisted that the then-25-year-old was “a gentleman.”
“I’d come on the set, and he’d get me a chair,” the star recalled, as quoted by People magazine. “Actors don’t do that. You can sit on the floor, they don’t care. And in between shots, when they were fixing the lights and everything, he’d get his guitar out and he’d sing. Wonderfully, he’d sing… And we used to talk. We talked a lot.”
Barbara Eden is held by Elvis Presley in publicity portrait for the film ‘Flaming Star’, 1960.
(Photo by 20th Century-Fox/Getty Images)
According to Eden, their conversations often turned to her marriage at the time to Michael Ansara.
“He said, ‘How do you have a marriage in Hollywood? How do you do this with all the stuff going on?'” Eden shared. “And I said, ‘You know, for us, it’s our job. This is how we make money. That’s it.’ He said, ‘Well, I met this girl in Germany.’ And he said, ‘I’m not too sure, she’s awfully young.’ But he didn’t tell me how young! Yeah, 14 years old. And I said, ‘Well, you know if the two of you are a team, you’ll be fine.'”
“Little did I know,” Eden added.
While Presley was in the Army and stationed in Germany, he met a 14-year-old named Priscilla Beaulieu. They married more than seven years later in 1967. The following year, they welcomed Presley’s only child, a daughter named Lisa Marie Presley.
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American rock n’ roll singer and actor Elvis Presley (1935 – 1977) with his bride Priscilla Beaulieu after their wedding in Las Vegas, circa 1967.
(Getty Images)
Eden and Ansara would later attend Presley’s show in Las Vegas.
“I’ve seen a lot of people work, but this was the most thrilling thing I’ve ever seen,” Eden recalled. “All those guitars! Elvis was fabulous. He was just wonderful. And I remember him that way, not the later years. Because he was beautiful and a lovely man.”
According to the outlet, Eden also spoke about what it was like appearing in a 1957 episode of “I Love Lucy,” which was her third job in Hollywood.
“[Lucy] was in her dressing room, and she’s like, ‘Barbara, come here, come here,’” Eden recalled. “… She said, ‘Do you like that dress?’ And I said, ‘I love it. It’s fine, it’s fine, everything’s wonderful.’ She said, ‘Take it off.’ So I take it off. Do you know that Lucy and her assistant sat there and put those shiny things [rhinestones] on that dress? They punched them in. But it was to make the dress look better.”
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Barbara Eden, US actress, in a publicity portrait for the US television series, ‘I Dream of Jeannie’, circa 1967. Eden starred as ‘Jeannie’ in the sitcom.
(Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
“That was Lucy,” she shared.
Eden said that Ball wanted to sign her at the time. However, she had already signed with Fox.
“I often wonder how wonderful it would’ve been to work with her as a coach and a teacher,” said Eden. “But Lucy, I’ll never forget her.”
Back in 2017, Eden described Presley as “a hard worker” who was “well brought up” to Fox News Digital.
Barbara Eden Attends Christmas Con 2022 at Pasadena Convention Center on August 06, 2022, in Pasadena, California.
(Photo by Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images)
Then in 2021, Eden told Fox News Digital that Presley was “just a dear to work with.”
“Again, no huge ego sticking out,” she shared. “He was very sure of himself. He knew what he was and what he wanted to accomplish. He was grounded, which I loved. And he was wonderful to work with. He cared about what he was doing. He knew the role was demanding and hard, but he worked just as hard at it. And he was really good. I just loved him.”
