Gilligan's Island

The death last week of Russell Johnson ignited some reminiscing among people of a certain age, namely baby boomers, about Gilligan's Island. Johnson played the Professor, one of seven castaways on a desert island. His death now leaves only two cast members living.

Gilligan's Island ran from 1964 to 1967. I was too young to remember watching it in first run, but I surely watched it in syndication, where it was an after-school staple. There were 98 episodes in its three years, and I've surely seen them all. Though I haven't seen an episode in well over thirty years, they are ingrained in my subconscious.

What's interesting is that for all the cultural changes that happened in the '60s, television remained pretty much locked in the dumb-down mode. Gilligan's Island was silly and inoffensive, with each week the castaways trying to figure out some way off the island only to have Gilligan screw it up.

The show and its characters are cultural touchstones now. Most anyone over forty can sing you the theme song, which gave us the exposition, how a "three-hour tour" ended up with the "Minnow would be lost." A debate rages on about Ginger or Marry Ann?--the two young women of the cast, Tina Louise as the Marilyn Monroe knockoff Ginger Grant or Dawn Wells as the girl-next-door Mary Ann Summers. I remember one episode in which they had a beauty pageant. Skipper favored Ginger, the Professor Mary Ann, and Mr. Howell of course his wife, Lovey. Gilligan was left to break the tie and chose the island's gorilla.

The unspoken sex was also something that I think everyone wondered about. When I was working for Penthouse I mulled over writing a piece about the "true" Gilligan's Island, full of debauchery. That the show presented the castaways as not really living in hardship--the bamboo huts looked as strong as steel, the clothes they wore were neat and clean, and they had everything they needed (Ginger seemed to pack a month's worth of clothes for a three-hour trip) made everything sanitized. There was one episode in which a big-game hunter lands on the island and we get a "Most Dangerous Game" thing, with him endeavoring to hunt them all down, and there was the constant threat from "headhunters," but otherwise danger was not a big component of the show.

I'm hard-pressed to explain the continued success of the show. I don't remember it as being all that funny. I suppose the creators of the show hit on the right mix of characters, because I think most people remember them rather than the plots. Each had their own distinctiveness, and were well filled out by the actors. Jim Backus' Mr. Howell has come to be the archetype of the Locust Valley lockjaw rich guys, while Johnson's Professor took the idea of the brainiac and gave it a little wrinkle--instead of being homely, he was good looking, but still clueless about the opposite sex. The byplay between Gilligan, the skinny dumb one, and the Skipper, the impatient fat one, echoes Laurel and Hardy (the Skipper was played by Alan Hale Jr., whose father was in many Laurel and Hardy movies).

Only Tina Louise and Dawn Wells are still alive. Louise thought the show ruined her reputation as a serious actress, and has had little to do with it since then, not appearing in the reunion movies, while Wells has embraced it, even appearing (as Mrs. Howell) in a stage musical version. A major Hollywood film version has been kicking around, and why not? Only this time, I hope Gilligan and the Skipper get some action.