The Brass Bottle | |
---|---|
Directed by | Harry Keller |
Screenplay by | Oscar Brodney |
Based on | The Brass Bottle by Thomas Anstey Guthrie |
Produced by | Robert Arthur |
Starring | Tony Randall Burl Ives Barbara Eden |
Cinematography | Clifford Stine |
Edited by | Ted J. Kent |
Music by | Bernard Green |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 87 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Brass Bottle is a 1964 American fantasy-comedy film about a modern man who accidentally gains the friendship of a long-out-of-circulation genie. It stars Tony Randall, Burl Ives and Barbara Eden.
The film is based on the 1900 novel of the same title by Thomas Anstey Guthrie. The novel had been adapted for the screen twice before, in the silent film era, in 1914 and 1923. It inspired the American fantasy sitcom I Dream of Jeannie , starring Eden.
Architect Harold Ventimore buys a large antique container that turns out to imprison a genie named Fakrash Alamash, whom Harold inadvertently sets free. Fakrash is effusively grateful for his release, and persistently tries to do favors for Harold to show his gratitude. However he has been in the brass bottle for a long time, and Fakrash's unfamiliarity with the modern world causes all sorts of problems when he tries to please his rescuer. Harold ends up in a great deal of trouble, including with his girlfriend, Sylvia Kenton.
The Brass Bottle was made on a modest budget and shot primarily on the back lot of Universal Studios, with a few exterior sequences made with rear screen projection, "giving the feature film the look of a standard sitcom from the era." [1]
The New York Times critic A. H. Weiler found the film "about as funny as your own funeral", and dismissed it as "one of the duller fantasies dreamed up by Hollywood's necromancers." [2]
Tony Mastroianni says The Brass Bottle is 'not a bad little movie" for what it is: "well-made but rather unpretentious." [3] Craig Butler calls The Brass Bottle a "silly and fairly predictable comedy, the kind that Hollywood was making in the early 1960s before it figured out that people were more and more getting this kind of fluff on television, where it was more at home." While not a great comedy, it is "pleasant, amiable and diverting". [4]
The Brass Bottle was released on DVD for Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only) as part of the Universal Vault Series in January 2010. [5]
Eden's role was instrumental in getting her cast as the star of the TV series I Dream of Jeannie , even though she did not play a genie in this film. [6]
This film was remade in Tamil by Javar Sitaraman as Pattanathil Bhootham (or Ghost in the City) in 1967.
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an American musician, singer and actor with a career that spanned more than six decades.
Larry Martin Hagman was an American film and television actor, director, and producer, best known for playing ruthless oil baron J. R. Ewing in the 1978–1991 primetime television soap opera Dallas, and the befuddled astronaut Major Anthony Nelson in the 1965–1970 sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. Hagman had supporting roles in numerous films, including Fail-Safe, Harry and Tonto, S.O.B., Nixon, and Primary Colors. His television appearances also included guest roles on dozens of shows spanning from the late 1950s until his death, and a reprise of his signature role on the 2012 revival of Dallas. Hagman also worked as a television producer and director. He was the son of actress Mary Martin. Hagman underwent a life-saving liver transplant in 1995. He died on November 23, 2012, from complications of acute myeloid leukemia.
Sidney Sheldon was an American writer. He was prominent in the 1930s, first working on Broadway plays, and then in motion pictures, notably writing the successful comedy The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947), which earned him an Oscar in 1948. He went on to work in television, where over twenty years he created The Patty Duke Show (1963–66), I Dream of Jeannie (1965–70), and Hart to Hart (1979–84). After turning 50, he began writing best-selling romantic suspense novels, such as Master of the Game (1982), The Other Side of Midnight (1973), and Rage of Angels (1980).
I Dream of Jeannie is an American fantasy sitcom television series created by Sidney Sheldon and starring Barbara Eden as a beautiful 2,000-year-old genie and Larry Hagman as an astronaut who possesses her bottle. Jeannie and Larry eventually fall in love and marry. Produced by Screen Gems, the show originally aired for 139 episodes over five seasons from September 18, 1965 to May 26, 1970 on NBC.
Richard Stanford Cox, known professionally as Dick Sargent, was an American actor. He is best known for being the second actor to portray Darrin Stephens on ABC's fantasy sitcom Bewitched. He took the name Dick Sargent from a Saturday Evening Post illustrator/artist of the same name.
Barbara Eden is an American actress and singer, who starred as the title character in the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie (1965–1970). Her other roles included Roslyn Pierce opposite Elvis Presley in Flaming Star (1960), Lieutenant (JG) Cathy Connors in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), and a single widowed mother, Stella Johnson, in the comedy film Harper Valley PTA (1978) and in the television series of the same name.
William Edward Daily was an American actor and comedian known for his sitcom work as Major Roger Healey on I Dream of Jeannie and Howard Borden on The Bob Newhart Show.
Jeannie is an American animated television series that originally aired for a 16-episode season on CBS from September 8 to December 22, 1973. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera in association with Screen Gems, and its founders William Hanna and Joseph Barbera are the executive producers. Despite being a spin-off of sorts of the television sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, Jeannie has little in common with its parent show. In this version, the title character is rescued on the beaches of southern California by a high school student, Corey Anders. Jeannie is accompanied by genie-in-training Babu, and they become companions to Corey and his best friend, Henry Glopp, both of whom also help Jeannie and Babu adjust to their new home as well as life in Los Angeles. The series was marketed towards a younger demographic than I Dream of Jeannie.
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Emmaline Henry was an American actress best known for playing Amanda Bellows, the wife of Dr. Alfred Bellows, on the hit 1960s situation comedy I Dream of Jeannie.
William Henry Rorke, known professionally as Hayden Rorke, was an American actor best known for playing Colonel Alfred E. Bellows on the 1960s American sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.
Starik Khottabych is a Sovcolor Soviet fantasy film produced in the USSR by Goskino at Kinostudyia Lenfilm in 1956, based on a children's book of the same name by Lazar Lagin who also wrote the film's script, and directed by Gennadi Kazansky. In the United States, the film was released theatrically by Sovexportfilm, with English subtitles, under the title The Flying Carpet through Artkino Pictures in 1960.
I Dream of Jeannie... Fifteen Years Later is a 1985 American made-for-television fantasy-comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures Television which premiered on NBC on October 20, 1985. It is the first of two reunion films based on the 1965–1970 sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.
I Still Dream of Jeannie is a 1991 American made-for-television fantasy-comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures Television which premiered on NBC on October 20, 1991. It is the second and final reunion film based on the 1965–1970 sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.
"The Lady in the Bottle" is the pilot episode of the American fantasy sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. It was written by series creator Sidney Sheldon and directed by Gene Nelson, and originally aired on NBC on September 18, 1965. It would not air again until Fall 1970, when the series went into syndication.
Genies or djinns are supernatural creatures from pre-Islamic and Islamic mythology. They are associated with shapeshifting, possession and madness. In later Western popular representation, they became associated with wish-granting and often live in magic lamps or bottles. They appear in One Thousand and One Nights and its adaptations, among other stories. The wish-granting djinns from One Thousand and One Nights, however, are the divs of Persian origin, not the Arabian djinns.
How to Break Up a Happy Divorce is a 1976 American made-for-television comedy film starring Barbara Eden and Peter Bonerz, written and produced by writer partners, Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso. It was broadcast on NBC on October 6, 1976.
Just Our Luck is an American sitcom that aired on ABC for 13 episodes from September 20 to December 27, 1983. Created by brothers Lawrence and Charles Gordon, it was considered a modernized version of the 1960s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie and starred Richard Gilliland as a mild-mannered TV weatherman for KPOX-TV, and T. K. Carter as a hip, fun-loving 3,000-year-old genie who is freed by Gilliland after being imprisoned in his bottle for nearly two centuries.
The Brass Bottle is a 1923 American silent fantasy comedy film produced and directed by Maurice Tourneur and distributed by First National Pictures. The original 1900 novel The Brass Bottle by Thomas Anstey Guthrie was produced as a Broadway play in 1910. A 1914 silent followed. Both silent versions are lost. A 1964 adaptation starred Tony Randall and Barbara Eden.