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Gilligan's Island is an American sitcom created and produced by Sherwood Schwartz. The show had an ensemble cast that featured Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer, Russell Johnson, Tina Louise, and Dawn Wells. It aired for three seasons on the CBS network from September 26, 1964, to April 17, 1967. The series followed the comic adventures of seven castaways as they attempted to survive the island on which they had been shipwrecked. Most episodes revolve around the dissimilar castaways' conflicts and their unsuccessful attempts, for whose failure Gilligan was frequently responsible, to escape their plight.[1]

Gilligan's Island ran for a total of 98 episodes. The first season, consisting of 36 episodes, was filmed in black and white. These episodes were later colorized for syndication. The show's second and third seasons (62 episodes) and the three television movie sequels (aired between 1978 and 1982) were filmed in color.

The show received solid ratings during its original run, then grew in popularity during decades of syndication, especially in the 1970s and 1980s when many markets ran the show in the late afternoon. Today, the title character of Gilligan is widely recognized as an American cultural icon.

Premise

The two-man crew of the charter boat SS Minnow and five passengers on a "three-hour tour" from Honolulu run into a tropical storm and are shipwrecked on an uncharted island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Uncharted island

The island was close enough to Hawaii to clearly pick up Hawaiian AM radio transmissions on a portable receiver. The location given in the series varies.

In the first-season episode "'X' Marks the Spot", the radio warns that the Air Force will test launch an armed missile to strike a location near 140° latitude, 10° longitude. The Skipper calculates this as their island's location, based on their starting point when the storm hit before they "... drifted for that three days ... with the prevailing western current ...", meaning the deadly missile will hit the island.

Later in the first season, the episode "Big Man on Little Stick" has the Professor giving the position as "approximately 110° longitude and 10° latitude" without specifying which hemispheres.

In the third-season episode "The Pigeon", the island is placed about 300 miles (480 km) southeast of Honolulu.

Cast and characters

Main article: List of Gilligan's Island characters

Bob Denver is Gilligan, the inept, accident-prone First Mate (affectionately known as "Little Buddy" by "the Skipper") of the SS Minnow. Denver was not the first choice to play Gilligan; actor Jerry Van Dyke was offered the role, but he turned it down, believing that the show would never be successful. He chose instead to play the lead in My Mother the Car, which premiered the following year and was cancelled after one season. The producers looked to Bob Denver, the actor who had played Maynard G. Krebs, the goofy but lovable beatnik in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. None of the show's episodes ever specified Gilligan's full name or clearly indicated whether "Gilligan" was the character's first name or his last. In the DVD collection, Sherwood Schwartz states that he preferred the full name of "Willy Gilligan" for the character. Denver, on various television/radio interviews (The Pat Sajak Show; KDKA radio), said that "Gil Egan" was his choice. The actor reasoned that because everyone yelled at the first mate, it ran together as "Gilligan." On Rescue from Gilligan's Island, the writers artfully dodged Gilligan's full name when the other names are announced. Little is revealed about Gilligan's past, except that he was born in Pennsylvania, his occasional reference to best friend Skinny Mulligan and a one-time reference to his older brother and that he previously served on a destroyer with the Skipper where he saved the Skipper from a loose depth charge.

Alan Hale Jr. is The Skipper/Captain Jonas Grumby, the captain of the S.S. Minnow. Alan Hale Jr. was a longtime actor in B-Westerns and the look-alike son of Alan Hale Sr., a legendary movie character actor. Hale so loved his role that, long after the show went off the air, he still appeared in character in his Los Angeles restaurant, Alan Hale's Lobster Barrel.[2] In addition, Hale wore his Skipper outfit when four other Gilligan's Island cast members and he appeared on a few celebrity Family Feud shows. Although the Skipper was a father figure to Gilligan, Hale was only 14 years older than Denver. Gilligan pushed the Skipper out of the way of a loose depth charge when they were both serving in the United States Navy. Skipper is a World War II veteran, and served in the Seventh Fleet. In one episode, he describes his participation in the Battle of Guadalcanal. In the episode "They're Off and Running" (season 1 episode 28), Ginger is reading from a horoscope magazine and asks the Skipper his birthday, to which he responds, "May 5th." In moments of exasperation, the Skipper would swat Gilligan on the head with his cap. Just as often, the Skipper endearingly called Gilligan "Little Buddy". While everybody else called him "Skipper", the Howells usually called him "Captain".

Jim Backus is Thurston Howell III, the millionaire. Backus was already a well-known character actor when he took the part. The origin of the super-rich Howell character dates back to 1949 radio when Backus portrayed "Hubert Updike III" on The Alan Young Show. Also, in the inaugural 1962–1963 season (episode 31) of The Beverly Hillbillies, Backus basically plays the same character, this time as the eccentric millionaire Martin von Ransohoff. In the classic 1963 comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Backus played another Howell-like character, Tyler Fitzgerald, a boozy and rich airplane owner who briefly gets caught up in the race for the stolen money. Backus was perhaps best known as the voice of cartoon character Mr. Magoo. He reused some of the voice inflections and mannerisms of Magoo in the Howell role. He was well known for his ad-libs on the set. The character Howell was a Harvard graduate, a Republican, and a multibillionaire until his losses in the Great Depression left him a mere multimillionaire.

Natalie Schafer is "Lovey" Wentworth Howell, Thurston's wife, whom he affectionately called "Lovey". Schafer had it written into her contract that no close-ups would be made of her, but after a while in the series it was forgotten. Schafer was 63 when the pilot was shot, although reportedly no one on the set or in the cast knew her real age and she refused to divulge it. Originally, she only accepted the role because the pilot was filmed on location in Hawaii. She looked at the job as nothing more than a free vacation, as she was convinced that a show this silly would "never go".[3]

Tina Louise is Ginger Grant, the movie star. Louise clashed with producer Sherwood Schwartz because she believed that she was hired as the central character. Her character was originally written as a hard-nosed, sharp-tongued temptress, but Louise argued that this portrayal was too harsh and refused to play it as written. A compromise was reached; Louise agreed to play her as a Marilyn Monroe/Jayne Mansfield type. Louise continued to clash with producers over her role and was the only cast member who refused to return for any of the post-series TV movies, saying that the role had killed her career as a serious actress. She did, however, appear in a reunion of the cast on a late-night television talk show in 1988 and on an episode of Roseanne in 1995 when the Roseanne cast re-enacted Gilligan's Island. In the first season, Ginger often wore gowns that looked as if they were tailored from Minnow tarpaulins or similar substitute cloth (some had the name of the vessel stenciled on them). In the pilot episode, the character of Ginger, no last name (then a secretary), was played by actress Kit Smythe.

Russell Johnson is Professor Roy Hinkley, Ph.D. Actor John Gabriel was originally cast, but the network thought he looked too young to have all the degrees attributed to the Professor. Actually, "the Professor" was in fact a high school science teacher, not a university professor. In the first episode, the radio announcer describes him as a research scientist and well known scoutmaster. Johnson, who served as a bombardier in the Pacific during World War II, stated that he had some difficulty remembering his more technically oriented lines. Originally, he was not interested in the role, and was waiting for a TV show of his own, but his agent talked him into auditioning. He had done previous movies like It Came from Outer Space, This Island Earth, and a classic western where he shot Ronald Reagan in the shoulder. Johnson's role in the series was spoofed in a Bloom County comic strip for the Professor's technical expertise being unable to get the castaways off the island. This odd contradiction was played up in "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody song, "Isle Thing", when the Professor, who is brilliant enough to "make a nuclear reactor from a couple of coconuts" cannot "build a lousy raft".

Dawn Wells is Mary Ann Summers. Wells was a former Miss Nevada when she auditioned for the role. Her competition included Raquel Welch and Pat Priest. The pilot episode had a different character ("Bunny") played by actress Nancy McCarthy. After it was shot, the network decided to recast the roles of the Professor and the two young women. Mary Ann became a simple farm girl from Winfield, Kansas. In 1993, Wells published Mary Ann's Gilligan's Island Cookbook with co-writers Ken Beck and Jim Clark, including a foreword by Bob Denver. In February 2007, she starred as Lovey Howell in Gilligan's Island: The Musical, a musical stage adaptation of the TV show.

Charles Maxwell was the uncredited voice of the "Radio Announcer" (1964–1965). The castaways listened to his plot-advancing radio news bulletins in many episodes and usually with perfect timing to tune in at the exact moment the news they needed to hear was being broadcast.

Episodes

Main article: List of Gilligan's Island episodes

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