Cocoa Beach celebrates 40 years of I Dream of Jeannie

What is sillier? A television show about a Genie and a astronaut or a Florida town celebrating the show's 40th anniversary even though the town had just a vague connection to the show?

I'll let you decide in reader comments for me. It's 40 years since I dream of Jeannie aired and like other silly 60's sitcoms it is still running strong in re-runs. To be truthfully honest I prefer most sitcoms of that era to what are produced today. I'll take silliness over sexual innuendo 90% of the time. Bring back Hogan's Heroes!

Anyway I watched IDOJ when living in New York as a child. Then I got saturated with this sitcom again in the early 90's. After my wife's arrival in the US in 1989, she used to enjoy watching the show every morning. WOR from New York used to have it on at 8 a.m. every weekday morning and Dear wife rarely missed it. The black and white episodes were never shown but can be seen now on Nick at Nite.

Any way, have fun Cocoa Beach. Traffic Jam- Outside the Beltway

By MIKE SCHNEIDERA
Associated Press

COCOA BEACH -- This city has been linked to ``I Dream of Jeannie'' ever since a jingle in the opening of the TV show's first season in 1965 told how a rash but comely genie followed Capt. Tony Nelson ``back to Cocoa Beach, a mythical town in a mythical state called Florida.''

Now, in an arms-crossed nod and blink to its perpetuity in television reruns, Cocoa Beach's 13,000 residents are marking the 40th anniversary of the show's first episode with a celebration Friday.

Although none of the cast members will attend, there will be two Jeannie look-a-like contests, music and the serving of a mixed drink with secret ingredients called Jeannie's magical potion.

All this, despite the fact that the show never was filmed in Florida and that its creators would have given a more accurate portrayal by setting it in Houston, where astronauts actually trained and lived.

``They probably thought that that was the (astronauts') headquarters,'' joked actor Larry Hagman, who played Nelson, in a telephone interview from California. ``I don't think it would have made any difference if it was in Calcutta.''

Series creator Sidney Sheldon (yes, the same author of those guilty-pleasure novels) had a relative who lived in Cocoa Beach and decided to set the show there because of the U.S. space program's connection to the area in the public's mind, said Lori Walters, director of the Florida Space Coast History Project at the University of Central Florida.

``Let's face it ... Cocoa Beach conjures up visions of palm trees, surfing and the beach. Houston conjures up petrochemicals,'' Walters said.Despite being filmed in a Hollywood studio, the NBC show made regular nods to Cocoa Beach, which is on a narrow peninsula just south of the Kennedy Space Center.

Nelson read the fictitious Cocoa Beach Herald newspaper. In one episode, a motorcycle cop with a prominent Cocoa Beach badge on his chest pulled over Jeannie for driving a car from the back seat, said Walters, a major fan of the television show.

Edwards Air Force Base, close to Los Angeles, was used sometimes as a stand-in for the Kennedy Space Center, and other California locales were used in place of Florida ones, said actor Bill Daily, who played Maj. Roger Healey on the show.

``It's pretty funny if you look at some of those old Jeannies, it's supposed to be shot in Cocoa Beach but in the background you have mountains _ the Hollywood Hills,'' Daily said from New Mexico.Cocoa Beach restaurant owner Rusty Fischer said Sheldon, once on a visit, asked permission to use the name of his restaurant, Bernard's Surf Restaurant, in the show.

``They did and every now and then you would hear, 'Well let's make a reservation at the Surf,''' Fischer said.The city has been slow to embrace its Jeannie heritage. It didn't rename a city street"I Dream of Jeannie Lane'' until 1996, 26 years after the show ended, and only last year began a Jeannie look-a-like contest, which Daily attended. A full festival was delayed because it was in the middle of last year's hurricanes.

The city's business community hopes to make the Jeannie contest an annual event much like Key West has an annual Ernest Hemingway look-a-like contest, said Leslie Taylor, event coordinator for the Cocoa Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.

During the course of the show's five-season run in the late 1960s, star Barbara Eden visited Cocoa Beach for ``Barbara Eden Day'' in which she was honored with a parade. During the last season, in 1969, Eden and the rest of the cast came to Cocoa Beach for a publicity stunt meant to spotlight the television wedding between Jeannie and Nelson.