I Dream of Jeannie was inspired by...........

[Fallon97]

I Dream of Jeannie was inspired by:

A Thousand and One Nights (1945) ( a female genie falls in love with her master and becomes jealous of his fiancee. Hmmm......sounds very familiar )

1001 Arabian Nights (1959) (a cartoon)

Afrita Hanoum: The Genie Lady (1950) (another female genie who has a crush on her master ).

Aladdin (1958) (a cartoon)

Aladdin and His Lamp (1952)

Aladdin's Other Lamp (1917)

Alf's Button (1930)

Bowery to Bagdad (1955)

Jack the Giant Killer (1962)

Life Is a Circus (1960)

Starik Khottabych (1956)

The Boy and the Pirates (1960) (a boy finds a bottle on the beach and out pops a genie).

The Brass Bottle (1964) ( a genie causes problems and mischief for his master who tries to hide the genie from his girlfriend (Barbara Eden ), friends, and co-workers).

The Genie (1953) (The love between a genie and a human is chronicled).

The Singing Princess (1949) (a cartoon featuring genies).

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

The Twilight Zone: The Man in the Bottle (1960) ( a Twilight Zone episode where a man purchases an old bottle and finds a genie inside).

The Twilight Zone: I Dream of Genie (1963) (another Twilight Zone episode about a man rubbing a lamp and smoke comes up in the form of a genie).

The Wizard of Baghdad (1960) (about a clumsy genie).

Where Do We Go from Here? (1945) ( a movie about a genie).

There was even a television sitcom called Al Haddon's Lamp 1952, where Buddy Ebsen played a genie.

Wow! There sure were a lot of genie movies!

[TV Knowledge Fan]

....was certainly influenced by "The Brass Bottle", which was released shortly before he wrote his pilot script in late 1964. Whenever he discussed how he came to create "JEANNIE", he often remarked, "Instead of someone big and fat, like Burl Ives, coming out of a bottle, why not a beautiful young girl who says, 'What can I do for you, Master?'". Obviously, he saw the film and remembered Ives (but not the fact that Barbara Eden was Tony Randall's co-star in that one). One of the key scenes in the movie, where "Harold" {Randall} has to explain why to his future in-laws why his apartment looks like "an Oriental palace" (complete with servants and "harem girls"), was "borrowed" by Sheldon for his pilot episode, where Jeannie blinks "Master" into the same atmosphere in HIS living room {"Art thou not pleased, Master?"/"Yes...NO! Look, they're liable to lock me up right now...!!"}, just before his fiancee and her father, the General, unexpctedly arrive [they never see it, though].

By the way, "The Brass Bottle" was first filmed as a silent feature in 1923 (apparently a "lost film" today), adapted from a satiric English novel by "F. Anstey" {Thomas Anstey Guthrie}, originally published in 1900.

[Jude The Obscure]

I need to see if Netflix has The Brass Bottle--I'm sure intrigued to watch it!!

[catlover79]

Originally Posted by Jude The Obscure

I need to see if Netflix has The Brass Bottle--I'm sure intrigued to watch it!!

I'd like to see that one, too.

[CAJeannieFan57]

If not, it is definitely worth checking on an auction site or Amazon's used section, for a copy for yourself. I think it's a film worth owning. It has been released on DVD, too.