Trivia / Gilligan's Island

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: The Professor was deliberately, canonically written to not be interested in sex, and it shows in his interactions with Ginger, with a visiting socialite who falls for him, and his description to Ginger of how his first attempt at romance failed when he was younger. The writers had no way of knowing they had created an asexual character, as the term wasn't common yet outside of biology as a term for the most common form of cell divsion reproduction.
• Acting for Two:
  • In both animated series, Ginger and Mary Ann were both voiced by one actress: Jane Webb in The New Adventures of Gilligan, and Dawn Wells (the original Mary Ann) in Gilligan's Planet.
  • In one episode, Tina Louise played both Ginger and Identical Stranger Eva Grubb.
  • Not to mention, Bob Denver played a Russian spy made to look exactly like Gilligan who was investigating the castaways (complete with a sequence where they mirror each other's movements.) Jim Backus also played his own character, and an imposter Mr. Howell in one of the episodes.
• Actor-Shared Background: Alan Hale Jr. (Skipper) served in the US Coast Guard during World War II.^note The Coast Guard was incorporated into the Navy for the duration of the war, so the parallel fits exactly.
• Adored by the Network: A staple of syndication for decades, and in particular, the young WTBS-17 from Atlanta. This was likely the reason why Ted Turner, in his retention of the massive MGM library after having to sell back MGM/UA in 1986, kept this show despite relinquishing the rest of the UA library (barring the pre-1950 Warner Bros. library).
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Despite it being frequently utilised in parodies, there was no on-screen credit for the "And The Rest" lyric in the original show opening.
• California Doubling: The harbor the Minnow is seen sailing from in the opening credits (in the color seasons) is really the harbor at Newport Beach. The cave Gilligan sometimes hid in is located a little south from there, at Corona del Mar, and is still known today as 'Gilligan's Cave' by locals.
• Creator Backlash: For many years, Tina Louise absolutely refused to acknowledge the show or her part in it. She was the only surviving cast member to refuse to participate in the animated series or the reunion movies, which naturally resulted in her being portrayed in Surviving Gilligan's Island (which was co-produced by Dawn Wells, the cast member with which she was said to get along the least) as a vapid bitch while everyone else had no negative traits at all. Louise seems to have mellowed out in the years since, however — she occasionally makes jokes and references to the show on Twitter (even noting in her description that she is "still living on an island (Manhattan)"), she did occasionally attend reunion specials (and seemed to be having a good time in them), and she even paid tribute to Wells after the latter's death in 2020.
• Descended Creator: Harold Hecuba was played by Phil Silvers, whose production company Gladasya ("Glad to see ya," get it?) made the series.
• Edited for Syndication:
  • Syndicated repeats in the 1970s-80s had the ending theme with "each week" edited out, leaving "So join us here — my friends, you're sure to get a smile..." for fear viewers wouldn't know the show would be on again the next day, otherwise.
  • In the late 1980s, Ted Turner colorized the black-and-white first season for airing on TBS. Both versions are shown in syndication and cable.
• Executive Meddling: Sherwood Schwartz was a Determinator in regards of having the show greenlighted. Everyone hated the show when it was first pitched, right up to the original pilot, which was rejected by CBS. Schwarz plunged ahead despite all the negativity, and the show became one of the most popular comedies of all time. One documentary made about the show reveals that during the show's run the higher-ups had no idea why the show was popular and kept making changes; at one stage, they wanted Gilligan to gain a pet dinosaur.
• He Also Did: It's harder to say which was Jim Backus' biggest role: Thurston Howell III or Quincy Magoo.
• Hey, It's That Place!: Schwartz used the lagoon set and space capsule prop for his series It's About Time.
• Hostility on the Set: While the rest of the cast got along famously well, Tina Louise (Ginger) did not. She felt the show was beneath her and feared it would keep her from doing Shakespeare on stage as she really wanted. This attitude did not endear her to the rest of the cast (she and Dawn Wells, in particular, did not get along at all, and in a television film about the making of the show that Wells produced, Louise was portrayed as the clear antagonist of the story). They did apparently reconcile at some point, as Wells has positive things to say about Louise in her last interview prior to her death, and Louise paid tribute to Wells after she passed.
  • Bob Denver said that some of the hostility may have been because Louise was pitched that her character was to be the star of the show, although he expressed confusion that she would believe it, considering the show is named after the Gilligan character.
• I Am Not Spock: Happened to many of the regulars, Bob Denver especially, but Tina Louise (Ginger) never got over it. To this day, she pretty much refuses to speak about the show. Averted with Alan Hale Jr. who embraced his character and made numerous public appearances as the Skipper.^note According to Russell Johnson, there was almost no difference personally between him and the Skipper; he frequently had his castmates on his own boat. Having already had a long distinguished career as a character actor, he was generally appreciative of a role that brought him recognition, especially among children.
  • Russell Johnson admitted to being upset at first by being typecast. He ultimately accepted that he would always be known as the Professor, saying that "it's brought a lot of joy to people, and that's not a bad legacy."
  • Even Tina Louise has warmed to the legacy of the show. Speaking on the death of her only surviving co-star, Dawn Wells, she noted that Gilligan's Island was being shared by generations of families since its cancellation, and that the show was a source of comfort during the turmoil of COVID-19. Her Twitter bio humorously notes that she is "still living on an island (Manhattan)," and she has made allusions to her show on social media.
• The Other Darrin: Ginger in the reunion movies was recast with Judith Baldwin (in Rescue from Gilligan's Island and The Castaways on Gilligan's Island) and then Constance Forslund (in The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island). She was voiced by Jane Webb on The New Adventures of Gilligan and Dawn Wells in Gilligan's Planet.
• The Other Marty: Ginger and The Professor, and Mary Ann (called "Bunny" in the pilot) were all replaced after the original pilot. Initially, Ginger was played by Kit Smythe, the Professor by John Gabriel, and Bunny, who became Mary Ann, was played by Nancy McCarthy.
  • The three of them were And the Rest in the original Expository Theme Song.
• Real-Life Relative: Bob Denver's son played Gilligan in a dream sequence version of Jack and the Beanstalk.
• Recycled Set: Over the course of the series, two Western-themed Dream Sequences were filmed on the Gunsmoke set. To further lampshade the connection, a rescored version of the Gunsmoke theme was used as incidental music in both.
• Screwed by the Network: Originally intended to have a fourth season, the show was cancelled at the last minute to make room for Gunsmoke. The latter was supposed to be cancelled, but was renewed at the last minute at the insistence of then CBS chairman William S. Paley, as it was the favorite program of Paley and his wife, Barbara Mortimer. Sherwood Schwartz was so furious that he took his next show to ABC.
• Spin-Off Cookbook: Mary Ann's Gilligan's Island Cookbook was written by Dawn Wells (who played Mary Ann), Ken Beck, Jim Clark and had a foreword from Bob Denver (who played Gilligan). Naturally, it has a lot of coconut pie recipes.
• Unfinished Episode: A fourth season was planned, but cancelled at the last minute. Story treatments of the Season 4 episodes are available, though a TV retrospective suggested that actual scripts had already been written.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Instead of Mary Ann, the cast in the first pilot included a blonde secretary named Bunny. Ginger was also a secretary instead of an actress, and the Professor was instead a high school teacher.
  • Raquel Welch auditioned for Mary Ann.
  • Jerry Van Dyke was approached for the part of Gilligan, but turned it down because he thought the show was "too strange". He then accepted the lead on My Mother the Car, which would become infamous for its premise in which his character's automobile is haunted by the ghost of his dead mother.
  • Carroll O'Connor was considered for the Skipper.
  • Russ Tamblyn turned down the role of Gilligan.
• Word of God:
  • Erika Tiffany Smith, played by Zsa Zsa Gabor, explained about the island and the Castaways, but couldn't offer the exact longitude nor latitude, plus no one could decipher her diary (which was written in Hungarian, which nobody in the Navy could read). The sailor who brought her could have told people but apparently, he "suffered a major coronary and died."
  • Gilligan's official first name is Willy.
  • Russell Johnson confirmed that the Professor is asexual, although nobody used that term in The '60s outside of biology to describe cell reproduction. He also stated that it was due to the censors demands that there be No Hugging, No Kissing due to the fact that the show had a large audience of children. It was a concern for his character because of the male castaways, he was the only seeming eligible bachelor, Skipper being a little old for the young ladies, Thurston being happily married to Lovey, and Gilligan being ruled out as his Manchild nature already worked to cancel out sex appeal. The Professor had intelligence, good looks, confidence, and was just young enough so the issue would have to eventually be addressed in his case.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Vito Scotti played both the Japanese sailor and Dr. Boris Balinkoff.
  • Denny Scott Miller played Duke the surfer as well as Tongo the ape-man actor.
  • Eddie Little Sky appeared in three unrelated episodes portraying island natives.

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