The broadcast of Gilligan’s Island aired for the last time on April 17, 1967. The show experienced modest critical reception but maintained strong ratings performance which led everyone to anticipate its return in the following fall with a fourth season. CBS needed to fit Gunsmoke into its programming lineup at the very end since the show was a personal favorite of Babe Paley who served as wife to network president William Paley. The show crew cut Gilligan and left the cast members floating in the Pacific Ocean according to broadcast information.
Gilligan’s Island continued its broadcast run forty-eight years after its original cast members hosted their final wrap party. After syndication distribution the show has continuously aired its replays across 30 different languages throughout the world. Everyone should sit comfortably to listen to stories about these well-loved shipwrecked survivors.
1. IT WAS INTENDED TO BE A “METAPHORICAL SHAMING OF WORLD POLITICS.”
One day in a public speaking class at New York University, the professor had students compose an impromptu one-minute speech on this topic: If you were stranded on a desert island, what one item would you like to have? Sherwood Schwartz was a student in that class, and the question so intrigued him that it remained lodged in the back of his mind for many years.
After working for some time as a comedy writer for other shows, Schwartz decided to pitch his own idea for a sitcom. Thinking back to that desert island question, he thought it would make for an interesting dynamic to have a group of very dissimilar individuals stranded together and have to learn to live and work together. The island would be “a social microcosm and a metaphorical shaming of world politics in the sense that when necessary for survival, yes we can all get along,” Schwartz explained in Inside Gilligan’s Island: From Creation to Syndication. Schwartz quickly discovered after his first few pitch meetings that words like “microcosm” and “metaphor” were not very helpful when trying to sell a comedy.
2. GILLIGAN’S FIRST NAME IS WILLY.
After getting a green light from CBS for the pilot, Schwartz went about assembling his cast. He chose the name of the bumbling first mate—Gilligan—from the Los Angeles telephone directory. Gilligan’s first name was never mentioned during the series, but according to Schwartz’s original notes, it was intended to be “Willy.” Yet Bob Denver always insisted that “Gilligan” was the character’s first name. “Almost every time I see Bob Denver we still argue,” Schwartz once admitted. “He thinks Gilligan is his first name, and I think it’s his last name. Because in the original presentation, it’s Willy Gilligan. But he doesn’t believe it, and he doesn’t want to discuss it. He insists the name is Gilligan.”
3. SCHWARTZ WANTED JERRY VAN DYKE TO PLAY GILLIGAN.
Jerry Van Dyke was Schwartz’s first choice to play the lead, but Van Dyke said that the pilot script was “the worst thing I’d ever read.” On the advice of his agent, Van Dyke accepted the lead in the short-lived (and critically panned) My Mother The Car instead. “I had a lot of problems with the agency, because they were trying to push me into taking [Gilligan’s Island],” Van Dyke recalled in an interview. “But that’s the joke: I turned it down and took My Mother the Car. But, again, it was really good, because I’d [have] been forever known as Gilligan. So that worked out, too!”
4. ALAN HALE GOT TO HIS AUDITION VIA HORSEBACK.
The Skipper was the toughest, and last, character to be cast. Schwartz auditioned dozens of actors (including Carroll O’Connor), but no one was quite right; he wanted someone strong and commanding, sometimes blustery and short-tempered, but able to show a genuine affection for Gilligan even when smacking him over the head with his hat. Alan Hale was filming Bullet for a Bad Man in St. George, Utah when he got the casting call for Gilligan and was unable to get time off for a screen test. So he had to sneak off set after a day of filming, which was no easy task. In Surviving Gilligan’s Island: The Incredibly True Story of the Longest Three-Hour Tour in History, it was revealed that Hale made his way to Los Angeles to read a scene with Bob Denver via horseback, hitchhiking, airplane, and taxi cab. He reversed the process after the audition and made it back to Utah just in time to resume filming his western the next day.
5. THE ASSASSINATION OF JFK DELAYED PRODUCTION ON THE SERIES.
The pilot for the series was filmed over several days in November of 1963 on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. The last day of shooting was scheduled for November 23, 1963 in Honolulu Harbor for the scenes showing the S.S. Minnow embarking on its fateful three-hour tour. Late in the morning on November 22, a crew member ran to the set and announced that he’d just heard on the radio that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. As Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President, it was announced that all military installations (including Honolulu Harbor) would be closed for the next two days as a period of mourning. Filming was delayed by several days as a result, and in the opening credits—as the Minnow cruises the harbor—the American flag can be seen flying at half-mast in the background.
6. THE MILLIONAIRE’S WIFE REALLY WAS A MILLIONAIRE.
Natalie Schafer, who played Mrs. Lovey Howell—and allegedly only accepted the invitation to play Mrs. Howell because it meant a free trip to Hawaii to film the pilot—was a real-life millionaire. During her marriage to actor Louis Calhern, the couple had invested heavily in Beverly Hills real estate at a time when a house on Rodeo Drive could be purchased for $50,000.
When she died in 1991, Schafer bequeathed a large chunk of her fortune to her favorite teacup poodle (she had no children), with instructions for that money to be donated to the Motion Picture and Television Hospital after the pooch’s passing. Said hospital now has a “Natalie Schafer Wing.” Rumor has it that Schafer also left a tidy sum to Gilligan’s Island co-star Dawn Wells (Mary Ann), who lived with and helped care for Natalie as she battled breast cancer.