Cousins Conjure Slavish Devotion for Shared Dreams of ‘Jeannie’

Saturday 7 p.m. Channel 4: “I Dream of Jeannie, the ‘90s Version.” Alfonso Luna moves in with Josef Rodriguez and he starts cleaning house. In a corner of a kitchen cabinet he comes across a dusty genie bottle and rubs it. Nothing happens, but the discovery does prompt the wacky cousins to confess a mutual love for the “I Dream of Jeannie” show. They start an antique business and begin collecting Jeannie items.

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OK, this plot doesn’t quite have the zing of the original ‘60s TV show, but what would you expect in the too-hip and politically correct ‘90s? Folks just aren’t going to buy the idea of a curvaceous blond Arab telling a WASPish astronaut, “Thou may ask anything of thy slave, Master”not in Al Bundy’s wildest dreams.

PC or no, the original “I Dream of Jeannie” has remained fresh for some audiences long after Jeannie’s bottle was uncorked. The show, which lasted five seasons from 1965 until 1970, now airs six times every Thursday night on Nickelodeon. Series star Barbara Eden is slated to donate a Jeannie bottle and leave her handprints Wednesday at the Santa Ana Planet Hollywood in a luncheon benefiting the Wellness Community.

And according to Rodriguez and Luna, there are still lots of Jeannie fanatics out there.

“We know several Jeannie collectors,” Rodriguez said, “but the sad realization is that they’re really psycho. There’s one guy who would die to have Barbara Eden’s original costume. So he could wear it. Fortunately, he’s in New York.”

Psycho may be a relative matter, particularly since we have photos of Rodriguez and Luna kissing their Jeannie dolls. Granted, we asked them to, but they could have said no.

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Luna, 37, is a first generation Jeannie fan, while his cousin Rodriguez, 27, didn’t start dreaming about her until the show was in rerun syndication. When Luna moved into Rodriguez’s apartment 2 1/2 years ago, he did indeed find a Jeannie bottle in the kitchen, though he had to be quite a fan to recognize it as such.

It actually was a 1964 Jim Beam whiskey decanter, identical to the ones Jeannie producer Sidney Sheldon had taken to be painted to arrive at the Middle-Eastern-looking urn used on the show. “Alfonso was so in awe of it, you’d have thought he did find a genie in it,” Rodriguez said.

Not long after that, the cousins had the bottle painted to be a replica of the one on the show. It became their good luck mascot in launching their part-time antiques-dealing business called Endangered Pieces. On weekdays, Rodriguez works for the Pennysaver while Luna is a custodian for the Brea Unified School District.

The bottle seems to have given them good luck so far. The apartment is furnished and decorated in ‘50s chic, and--though they were told they were very hard to come by--they’ve amassed a respectable trove of Jeannie items.

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The prize of those is one of the 10 original prop bottles used in the show. It is authenticated and they paid more for it than they’d care to say. It resides in a glass case with cherished personal mementos, such as Luna’s father’s violin and the flag from Rodriguez’s father’s burial.

They have several Jeannie dolls, valued at around $400, as well as one actually used in the show that is worth far more (it is from a 1966 episode where Jeannie turned a telescope into a Jeannie doll to please a child--and the toy’s manufacturers, one presumes). There’s a Jeannie game, Halloween costume, comics, books, and other trinkets, including a Mardi Gras coin from Metairie, La., commemorating the show.

They started up a videocassette of the 1965 debut episode as we talked. In it astronaut Capt. Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman) is stranded on a desert island and finds a mysterious bottle and, probably hoping it’s Jim Beam, pops the cork. Out steams Eden in bare-midriff harem suit, declaring “I’m your slave, Master,” which, of course, causes Nelson to do nothing but fret and worry for five seasons.

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Of all the many things to have happened in their lifetimes, what made the cousins focus on a ‘60s sitcom?

Luna said, “I liked it because it was entertaining. It caught my attention that there was magic in it, and problems she’d get into and solve. I also liked ‘Bewitched.’ I watched a lot of TV but, Jeannie’s the only one I watched then that is still on my mind now. And compared to the programs today, it’s clean and there’s no violence in it.”

“And I think Barbara Eden’s beautiful,” explained Rodriguez. “She’s drop-dead gorgeous. And it’s such a very unique, different show. Even though people compared it to ‘Bewitched’ and ‘Bewitched’ may have been just as good in some ways, Barbara Eden really did it for me. She’s everything.”

Curiously, though, the pair haven’t taken much interest in Eden’s non-Jeannie roles, a respectable body of work including “Ride the Wild Surf,” “The Amazing Dobermans,” the TV movie “The Feminist and the Fuzz” and several episodes of “Dallas” with old co-star Hagman. Asked if they belong to the Barbara Eden fan club, Rodrigues responded, “We don’t want any part of it. They don’t really focus on Jeannie, but on the other parts of her career.”

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They claim to like all the episodes of the TV show, with a particularly warm regard for the first one.

“We have to have seen this at least 100 times. Every time we invite someone over we watch it. And every time it’s like we’re seeing it for the first time,” Rodriguez said. And indeed, as we sat there, the two stared, rapt, at the screen.

That first season, by the way, was in black and white, and in most episodes Eden wore a veil over her belly to mask the fact that she was pregnant.

Like many sitcoms, the basic premise of “I Dream of Jeannie” seemed at odds with reality. Not nearly so implausible as finding a genie in a bottle was the concept that Capt. Nelson (promoted to major in subsequent seasons) didn’t comport himself as others might when given a beautiful slave with magical powers.

Doubtless, millions of male Americans watched the program each week wondering, “Why, why why , doesn’t Tony Nelson just have Jeannie turn Admiral Bellows and everyone else into chewy dog toys and then have Jeannie slip into something more comfortable?”

Luna and Rodriguez have their own different, if entirely honorable, ideas about what they’d do if they had a genie.

Rodriguez said, “I would take away bigotry, the hatred in the world and would make sure everybody had happiness, because the world is going downhill and somebody needs to do something.”

“I’d do the same,” said Luna. “I’d end a lot of the selfishness and greed in the world, have a world where you could leave your home without locking your doors, a more happy place.”

And then?

“And then maybe wish for more time with Jeannie,” Rodriguez said.

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They tried to meet Eden once at a event where she was signing autographs, but the line was too long. They doubt they’ll be able to get out of work Wednesday to see her at Planet Hollywood.

In the meantime they fear they might be running out of Jeannie items to collect. They still need the coloring book and the doll in a blue outfit (they came in several colors), but they think they’ve cornered the market on the Jim Beam decanters, having about 100 of them in storage.

There was one Jeannie comeback, a 1985 TV movie. Rodriguez has mixed feelings about whether the show could fly in the ‘90s.

“It would probably offend a lot of people,” he said. “The master and slave thing probably wouldn’t go over too well with the women’s movement. But Jeannie could make it work, because she was by no means a slave. She had Nelson wrapped around her finger and she knew it.”