What happened to the cast of “I Dream of Jeannie”? See the stars more than 55 years later

JP MangalindanSun, October 25, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC

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Hayden Rorke, Larry Hagman, Barbara Eden, and Bill Daily on ‘I Dream of Jeannie’Credit: FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty

Television in the ‘60s loved a good secret. Bewitched hid a witch in the suburbs, My Favorite Martian passed off an alien as an uncle, and on Sept. 18, 1965, NBC premiered I Dream of Jeannie, which tucked a 2,000-year-old genie inside an astronaut’s Florida home.

Created by Oscar- and Tony-winning screenwriter Sidney Sheldon, who later turned out a string of best-selling novels, the series opens with Capt. Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman) crash-landing in the South Pacific. He rubs a bottle he finds on the beach, and out comes Jeannie (Barbara Eden), who falls hard for him and stows away for the trip home, calling him “Master.”

Bill Daily played Tony’s sidekick, Roger Healey. Hayden Rorke played Dr. Alfred Bellows, the Air Force psychiatrist who suspected, correctly, that something odd was happening at the Nelson house.

The show, which earned Sheldon an Emmy nomination, became a pop culture phenomenon that inspired everything from Jeannie dolls to casino slot machines. More than 50 years later, fans still ask Eden to do Jeannie’s blink. Here’s what happened to her and her castmates.

01 of 05

Barbara Eden (Jeannie)

Barbara Eden on ‘I Dream of Jeannie’; Eden in Los Angeles on June 27, 2026Credit: Silver Screen Collection/Getty; Tommaso Boddi/Getty

Barbara Eden played Jeannie, whose devotion to her master drove five seasons of chaos and earned her two Golden Globe nominations.

Eden wrote in her memoir, Jeannie Out of the Bottle, that Sheldon had seen her in The Brass Bottle (1964), a comedy about a man whose own bottle held a genie. Still, he screen-tested beauty-contest winners before meeting the actress for tea at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

“I think he’d finally decided that he needed a comedian to play Jeannie,” she told Emmy Magazine in 2022.

Eden also left her own mark on the character’s famous blink. “It was supposed to have been just the blink and I added the arms,” she told Entertainment Tonight in 2024. Once a trade columnist wrote about her navel, NBC’s censors made sure it stayed covered.

The Tucson native made an early mark in television in the series version of How to Marry a Millionaire, the big-screen rom-com featuring Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall. Eden played Loco Jones, a character based partly on Betty Grable’s role in the film. She also found regular work in movies for a few years — including as Elvis’ love interest in the Western Flaming Star (1960).

After I Dream of Jeannie, Eden starred in Harper Valley PTA (1978) and its TV spinoff. She reunited with Hagman on the final season of Dallas and, in 2006, onstage in Love Letters. In 2021, she cowrote a children’s book, Barbara and the Djinn, about a girl who meets a genie. Four years later, at 94, she returned to Love Letters, opposite Hal Linden.

Eden has been married to Jon Eicholtz, her third husband, since 1991. Her son Matthew, whom she shared with her first husband, died in 2001.

02 of 05

Larry Hagman (Tony Nelson)

Larry Hagman on ‘I Dream of Jeannie’; Hagman in Dallas on Nov. 15, 2012Credit: Silver Screen Collection/Getty; Cooper Neill/WireImage

Larry Hagman played Tony, the astronaut hiding a genie from NASA.

The son of Broadway star Mary Martin, he had worked on the New York stage and the soap The Edge of Night before landing the part. In his 2001 autobiography, he called the show “good, wholesome, escapist fun, with a healthy dose of sexual tension.”

Eden, who told Emmy Magazine in 2022 that he was one of the best actors she ever worked with, also called him “his own worst enemy.” His on-set outbursts didn’t win over the crew, she said, though he was always kind to her.

The native Texan first established himself as a guest player across television before landing a few big-screen supporting roles, namely in a pair of acclaimed Sidney Lumet dramas, Fail Safe (1964) and The Group (1966). But it was Jeannie that made him a star.

Once the hit sitcom wrapped, he found his signature role as J.R. Ewing, the scheming oilman of CBS’s iconic primetime soap Dallas. Hagman claimed that restaurants in Arab countries and Israel would shut down when the show aired, telling The Hollywood Reporter in 2010, “so I was a peacemaker for at least an hour.”

A 1995 liver transplant turned him into an organ-donation advocate. Hagman married Maj Axelsson in 1954, and they had two children. He died of complications from leukemia on Nov. 23, 2012, at 81, partway through filming TNT’s Dallas revival.

Eden paid tribute to her former costar on social media: “Larry was the center of so many fun, wild, shocking… and in retrospect, memorable moments that will remain in my heart forever.”

03 of 05

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Bill Daily (Roger Healey)

Bill Daily on ‘I Dream of Jeannie’; Daily at the 2006 Big Apple Comic Book, Art, Toy and Horror Expo in New York CityCredit: Bettmann Archive; FilmMagic

Bill Daily played Roger, Tony’s fellow astronaut and co-conspirator, across 131 episodes.

He learned about the job secondhand. Daily explained on Larry King Live in 2003 that he’d been lined up for My Mother the Car when a producer on that show told him the plan had changed.

“They sold I Dream of Jeannie, and you’re on it,” he recalled. “That’s how I found out.”

Born in Des Moines and raised in Chicago, Daily did stand-up in the Windy City, where he met Bob Newhart, who once worked as his accountant. From 1972 to 1978, Daily played Howard Borden, the jet-lagged neighbor on The Bob Newhart Show. Because he had dyslexia, Daily memorized his lines for both series.

After his own ‘80s sitcom, Small & Frye, lasted three months, he played a psychiatrist on ALF and led the New Mexico Film Commission.

Daily died of natural causes in 2018 at the age of 91. Eden remembered him on social media as “our favorite zany astronaut.” His son J. Patrick Daily told Variety, “He loved every sunset, he loved every meal — he just decided to be happy about everything.”

04 of 05

Hayden Rorke (Dr. Alfred Bellows)

Hayden Rorke on ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ in 1969; Rorke on ‘I Dream of Jeannie... 15 Years Later’ in 1985Credit: NBCU Photo Bank; Gary Null/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

Hayden Rorke played Dr. Bellows, the Air Force psychiatrist who was certain Tony had lost his mind, for the show’s entire five-season run. The part made him a network TV fixture, though he was hardly new to the business.

Born in Brooklyn in 1910, Rorke started out performing Shakespeare and other classics in repertory theater. After a run of Broadway shows, he made his film debut in Michael Curtiz’s This Is the Army (1943) while serving in World War II. Once he settled in Hollywood, he worked regularly in films through the 1950s, often in smaller parts, including An American in Paris (1951).

Sci-fi fans may know him as astronomer Emery Bronson from When Worlds Collide (1951). His film résumé also includes Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955) and the Rock Hudson-Doris Day rom-com Pillow Talk (1959).

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The character actor played Ulysses S. Grant more than once, including in Disney’s 1963 TV movie Johnny Shiloh. All told, his credits spanned hundreds of stage productions and dozens of films, plus such classic shows as I Love Lucy and Perry Mason.

He returned as Bellows in the 1985 reunion TV movie I Dream of Jeannie… Fifteen Years Later.

Rorke died of cancer in 1987. He was 76.

05 of 05

Barton MacLane (Gen. Martin Peterson)

Barton MacLane on ‘I Dream of Jeannie’Credit: NBC

Barton MacLane played Gen. Peterson, Tony’s commanding officer and the man stuck listening to Dr. Bellows’ theories.

A football standout at Wesleyan University, MacLane landed his first movie role in The Quarterback (1926) thanks to his athletic ability, then trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

He went on to appear in more than 120 features, mostly as tough guys. In the late 1930s, he played detective Steve McBride in Warner Bros.’ Torchy Blane mysteries, and he traded blows with Humphrey Bogart in two John Huston films: The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). He’d even worn a general’s stars before, as Gen. Arnold in The Glenn Miller Story (1954).

MacLane died of pneumonia in 1969 at age 66. He was survived by his wife of nearly 30 years, actress Charlotte Wynters.

Where can I watch I Dream of Jeannie?

I Dream of Jeannie is currently available to stream on Tubi.

on Entertainment Weekly

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”