Gilligan’s Island aired for 98 episodes, beginning on September 26, 1964, and ending on April 17, 1967, and the 1st season’s productions were filmed in black-and-white! The show revolved around seven “castaways,” as dissimilar as could be, and their attempts to survive on an island upon which the shipwrecked crew had been “washed,” shaken but unhurt! In following episodes they also had several attempts to escape their plight, but the crew members were “always” unsuccessful, which was often blamed upon Gilligan, the star of the cast! However, he quite often was the one who in the end saved one or more of the others from some catastrophic flaw in their plans! (The trip began in Honolulu, shipwrecked as result of a typhoon, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, in uncharted waters.) As with many shows/movies today, the group, “unmatched” with each other in most ways, had to learn to not only “get along well” but also to work together to survive and possibly be later rescued.
The crew was composed of Bob Denver as Gilligan, the inept and “bad luck plagued” first mate—Alan Hale, Jr., as Captain Jonas Grumby—Jim Backus as Thurston Howell, III, Wall Street millionaire—Natalie Schafer as “Lovey” Wentworth Howell, Thurston’s wife—Tina Louise as Ginger Grant, Hollywood movie star—Russell Johnson as Professor Roy Hinckley, PhD.—DAWN WELLS as MARY ANN SUMMERS, wholesome farm girl from Winfield, Kansas—Charles Maxwell, uncredited voice of the recurring portable radio announcer.
Now in the mid-‘60s when this television show hit the airways, it was “panned” by most critics and LOVED by most viewers, and my friends and I (late jr. high to early high school) “fell in love” with two characters—Gilligan and Mary Ann—the first because he was so funny and likeable and had been a star we recognized from the Dobie Gillis Show, in which he played the funny, accident-prone “Beatnick,” Maynard G Krebs, and the second because she was so cuddly, innocent, “dingy,” “girl-next-door” BEAUTIFUL, gullible, and nice young lady that we all secretly would have “given anything” to have had as a girlfriend! Tina Louise, “Ginger, the movie star” was cast as the “beauty,” and she was, but not in the same way as Mary Ann! (5’ 4” tall, petite but with a “fetching” figure, gingham blouse and short-shorts ensemble and double pony tail/pig tails, perky hair, mid-rift revealing clothes, but not showing the “belly button.”)
Dawn Wells was born in Reno, Nevada, and recently succumbed to complications of COVID-19 at age 82. She was a Miss America Pageant candidate in 1959, which gave her a good pathway into an acting career and spots in many television shows, such as ‘’77 Sunset Strip”— “Bonanza”—“Hawaiian Eye”—“The Joey Bishop Show”—“Maverick”—and numerous others I don’t have room to mention.
But…..her big break came when she topped nearly 400 other actresses, who read for the role of “Mary Ann” in Gilligan’s Island. Her salary was reported to have been $750 per week, which sounds like a fortune to this teacher who earned lower than $7,000 per year his first year as a public school teacher and coach, but was so much less than the pay of “big shot movie stars” and especially less than the producers took home. Of course, they also had to invest the bigger sums to take a chance on the show’s success! Reportedly, about $100 million was made on re-runs alone!
One especially interesting detail is that one of the actresses she “beat out” for this part was Raquel Welch, and Wells joked that this was the only time she beat that star out of anything! Another interesting fact is that she had a role in 1992 on Baywatch, and the other actors and actresses “loved” her, and Bob Denver, who joined her as a guest star!
And, although Dawn Wells played a rather unworldly and simple farm girl quite often, she was very intelligent and well-educated, also becoming a well-known producer and author—but never distancing herself too much from the image and fame of a “much-loved” Mary Ann character in Gilligan’s Island.
I was talking to “a guy” the other day, and we agreed that we would have been “castaways” with the crew of the Minnow for free!
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