Girl of the Day - The Magical Wife (Elizabeth Montgomery and Barbara Eden)

When I was growing up in the 1960s, most mothers stayed home while dads went to work and the kids went to school.   So, from both the dads' and the kids' perspective, magical things happened while Mom was home alone.   Laundry miraculously cleaned itself and folded itself and put itself away.   Food miraculously appeared in the refrigerator and pantry, and dinner was miraculously ready when we got home.   The house miraculously cleaned itself.   And, meanwhile, Mom was beautiful and perfect and sweet and smart and read books and volunteered in the community and.... how exactly did she get all that done?   It must have been magic! 

In retrospect, then, it probably was predictable that TV shows of the 1960s often centered on the "magical Mom," who accomplished all that she did through actual Magic.   Two of the biggest hits were Bewitched with Elizabeth Montgomery and I Dream of Jeannie with Barbara Eden.   Montgomery played about the hottest witch ever seen who unaccountably was married to a nebishy advertising executive, and Eden played a genie discovered by an astronaut after splashdown.   Needless to say, they were both the first crushes of probably millions of American boys, and it's easy to see why:

Point of personal privilege:  these gals have nothing on the Regular Wife, who also works magic on a daily basis.