Re: Barbara Eden, I Dream of Jeannie at Lincoln High School in 1949

03/06/23 - posted by Holt Macon

Well, that was from her yearbook photo. There were plenty of other women even in that yearbook that looked much better than her.

However, I have to admit that just two years later I read she won the Miss San Francisco contest. I really don't see that she could have been good looking enough by those photos to win a beauty contest but she did. Maybe there was not enough competition or maybe they gave big credit to their personality and talents like singing and dancing. Of course on the Jeannie show they fixed her up to look much better.

Becoming Miss San Francisco seemed to be the turning point in her life because that gave her opportunities in Hollywood that she probably never ever would have got. She appeared on the I Love Lucy show and the Andy Griffith show and in a movie with Elvis Presley and in another movie with Clint Eastwood.
Who would not have wanted to be in a movie with Elvis or Clint Eastwood even if you were a guy. And to be on the Lucy Show, she had to feel like she was living in a fantasy world. From a school girl at Lincoln High, watching these stars on TV to just a few years later hob nobing with them in Hollywood and then getting her own TV series. How many people in SF ever did that?
She's a legend in her own time.