Jeannie Out Of The Bottle Read Online Free PDF

wife and daughter, the Claremont Hotel was built in the style of an imposing English castle. It was the ideal setting to launch my cherished dream of becoming a singer.
    My first song was “Blue Moon,” and as I sang to an audience of tourists and businesspeople sipping cocktails, I made sure to lower my soprano voice in the hope that I would sound more grown-up, maybe even sexy.
    From the stage, I could just make out my mother in the front row, because then—and always—my astigmatism meant that most of the faces in the audience were blurred. It was both a blessing and a curse, particularly when I was playing Las Vegas in later years and could never be entirely sure whether the crowd was focused on me or on their dinner, whether they were chatting or enjoying my act.
    The flip side of my astigmatism, by the way, is that sometimes when I’m walking through a hotel lobby or boarding a plane and smile in the direction of a group of people, when I get closer to them I find out that they are total strangers. Consequently, more men than I’d care to remember have jumped to the conclusion that I’m trying to pick them up when I am not!
    Anyway, that first night at the Claremont glided by like a beautiful dream, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I wanted to perform again as often as possible. Fortunately, in a community like San Francisco, word traveled fast, and soon I was receiving offers to sing at other venues. Next thing I knew, I was entertaining at the officers’ club at Fort Ord and performing in USO shows, mostly at Camp Roberts, not far from San Francisco.
    One memorable night, dressed to kill in an elegant peach satin gown, I walked out in front of an audience of fifteen thousand GIs, all hooting, wolf-whistling, and stamping their feet. Then the band struck up the first notes of the song I was supposed to sing: “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.”
    All of a sudden, my mind went blank and I just couldn’t remember the first line of the song. Even though I hadn’t sung a word yet, the audience started throwing coins at me (I never figured out why). Through it all, I just kept smiling into what looked like a vast black pit. I felt like passing out, but no such luck.
    So I leaned over to the bandleader and told him to start again and play “Blue Moon” instead. He did and rescued me, although that evening will always remain in my memory as one of the most embarrassing of my entire life.
    But I’m jumping ahead. During my time at the Conservatory and then at City College, although I was living at home, I still wanted to earn a living, so I worked four hours a day in a local department store, selling and wrapping gifts. Later I got another job operating an IBM machine at the Wells Fargo bank, and in between I did my fair share of babysitting for friends and neighbors. Consequently, during my teens, I was mostly all work and very little play because my primary focus in life was on performing and on my singing career.
    My mother changed all that when one night after watching me rehearsing for the band, she looked at me thoughtfully and said, “Barbara Jean, you are hitting every note perfectly. The trouble is that the lyrics don’t mean a thing to you. You aren’t feeling a single word that you’re singing.”
    After I recovered from my hurt feelings, I took a deep breath, conceded that she was right, and agreed to start acting lessons right away. By some quirk of fate, my mother had just finished listening to Carol Channing being interviewed on the radio and had heard Carol mention that she’d studied acting at Elizabeth Holloway’s drama school, right there in San Francisco. When my mother told me about the interview, I enrolled for night classes there as well.
    After a few weeks, Miss Holloway, a tiny woman who always had a colorful chiffon scarf draped around her neck, sent for me and, to my delight, offered me a scholarship to study acting full-time at her school.
    I jumped at the