I Dream of Jeannie is an American fantasy sitcom television series created by Sidney Sheldon and starring Barbara Eden as a beautiful but guileless 2,000-year-old genie and Larry Hagman as an astronaut with whom she falls in love and eventually marries.

In the pilot episode, "The Lady in the Bottle", astronaut Captain Tony Nelson, United States Air Force, is on a space flight when his one-man capsule Stardust One comes down far from the planned recovery area, near a deserted island in the South Pacific.

When he rubs it after removing the stopper, smoke spews from it and a beautiful Persian-speaking female genie materializes and surprises Tony by kissing him.

A running theme throughout the series has Bellows as the only eyewitness to Jeannie's antics while Tony (and sometimes his best friend and fellow astronaut, United States Army captain and later major, Roger Healey) are also present.

A multiple-episode story arc revolves around a miniature Jeannie's becoming trapped in a NASA safe when it's accidentally locked.

Her final attempt in the series comes shortly after Tony and Jeannie are married, with a ploy involving a man played by Barbara Eden's real-life husband at the time, Michael Ansara.

Early in the fifth season, Jeannie is called upon by her uncle Sully (Jackie Coogan) to become queen of their family's native country, Basenji.

To regain favor, Tony is required by Sully to marry Jeannie and to avenge Basenji's honor by killing the ambassador from Kasja when he visits NASA.

[1] Sheldon offered to pay the extra $400 an episode needed for color filming at the beginning of the series, but Screen Gems executive Jerry Hyams advised him: "Sidney, don't throw your money away.

[5] "If you look at some of those old [episodes], it's supposed to be shot in Cocoa Beach, but in the background you have mountains — the Hollywood Hills," Bill Daily said.

Later, the entourage went to Lee Caron's Carnival Club, where Eden was showered with gifts and kissed astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the cheek, just two weeks before the Apollo 11 launch.

On August 24, 2012, Cocoa Beach City leaders honored the show with a roadside plaque outside Lori Wilson Park.

In a 1966 paperback novel I Dream of Jeannie, by Al Hine, writing pseudonymously as "Dennis Brewster", published by Pocket Books, very loosely based on the series, Jeannie (in the book, her real name is revealed as "Fawzia") and her immediate family were established in the story as genies living in Tehran hundreds of years before Tony found her bottle on an island in the Persian Gulf (instead of the South Pacific, as depicted on TV).

[citation needed] From the second season on, it was replaced by a new theme titled "Jeannie", composed by Hugo Montenegro with lyrics by Buddy Kaye.

Songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote a theme, called "Jeannie", for Sidney Sheldon before the series started, but it was not used.

Simply titled "Mischief", the theme was heard mainly on outdoor locations, showing the characters attempting to do something such as Jeannie learning to drive, Major Nelson arriving up the driveway, a monkey walking around, or reactions to Doctor Bellows.

This recording was later sampled in several songs, such as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's debut single "Girls Ain't Nothing but Trouble" (from their 1987 debut album Rock the House), and also for the Ben Liebrand 1990 re-release of American hip-hop artist Dimples D.'s single, "Sucker DJ".

[13] Jeannie's bottle was left in its original dark, smoke-green color, with a painted gold-leaf pattern (to make it look like an antique), during the first season.

In the pilot episode, several bottles were used for the opening scene on the beach; one was drilled through the bottom for smoke, and another was used to walk across the sand and slip into Tony's pack.

This was intended to be the series' final episode and is often shown that way in syndication.On several occasions, multipart story arcs were created to serve as backgrounds for national contests.

The year is quickly established as 64 BC, but only Roger is privy to the exact date and he decides to make a game out of revealing it.

In the fourth season, a two-part episode, "The Case Of My Vanishing Master" (January 6–13, 1969), concerned Tony being taken to a secret location somewhere in the world, while a perfect double took his place at home.

At the end of "Invisible House For Sale" (February 3, 1969), a special "contest epilogue" had Jeannie and Tony reveal to the audience the "secret location", Puerto Rico, followed by the name of the "Grand Prize Winner".

[15] It was the first off-network series to best network competition in the ratings: "The big switch no doubt representing the first time in rating history that indies (local stations) have knocked over the network stations in a primetime slot was promoted by WPIX's premiere of the off-web Jeannie reruns back to back from 7 to 8 pm.

[17] In Italy, the series aired on Rai 1 under the name Strega per amore (Witch for Love) from 1977 until 1980, then repeated on Paramount Channel from 2020 until 2021.

On August 27, 2013, it was announced that Mill Creek Entertainment had acquired the R1 rights to various television series from the Sony Pictures library including I Dream of Jeannie.

[19] On October 6, 2015, Mill Creek Entertainment rereleased I Dream of Jeannie: The Complete Series on DVD in region 1, though it did not port over both of the special features found on the first season of the Sony releases.

However, most consumers and reviewers complained that rather than true remastered HD, Mill Creek simply used an SD master upscaled to 1080i.

Barbara Eden starred in two made-for-television reunion films which followed the further exploits of Jeannie and Tony in the successive years.

In 1985, Wayne Rogers played the role of retiring Colonel Anthony Nelson in I Dream of Jeannie... Fifteen Years Later.