I tried using Placed[] for the legends. When off the chart body they were orphaned. At the Center they became part of the image. Right-click and save everything works. Center was an unaesthetic position so I tried a few numbers (in a positioning system yet to be decoded). Zero (0) did a fair job.

mychart = 
 BarChart[{1, 2, 3}, ChartStyle -> "Pastel", 
  ChartLegends -> Placed[{"John", "Mary", "Bob"}, {0, Center}]]

The Head of mychart is still Legended.

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Plot legends has been a long and winding road. (With plenty of begging and pleading from me.) It is much improved, but perhaps not yet in a state of grace. It does seem that the output should be a Graphic, but I wonder if there are then issues making some of the drawing tools work properly, especially the nice Get Coordinates tool, which knows the actual coordinate values on the plot, not just the scaled values.