Gilligan’s Island: Part of our collective consciousness

The cast of the sitcom "Gilligan's Island".

Source: https://www.remindmagazine.com/gallery/gilligans-island-behind-the-scenes-photos/

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It was a three-hour cruise that stretched into decades, becoming an icon of pop culture. When we drove past the harbour in Campbell River today and I saw all the masts of the boats, I told my partner, “This looks like the opening credits for ‘Gilligan’s Island’.”

That got me thinking about the show and how it got new life in the ‘80s.

After school special
My earliest recollection of “Gilligan’s Island” was watching episodes playing after school on Channel 7 of the peasant vision dial. The premise was simple. The Skipper and his first mate Gilligan run the “S.S. Minnow” a boat they offer three hour tours with. One day, they are on a trip with a millionaire couple, a professor, a movie star, and a country girl. It is actually best explained in the opening theme song, which I learned through osmosis:

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship.

The mate was a mighty sailing man,
The skipper brave and sure.
Five passengers set sail that day
For a three hour tour, a three hour tour.

The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The Minnow would be lost, the Minnow would be lost.

The ship set ground on the shore of this
Uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan
The Skipper too,
The millionaire and his wife,
The movie star,
The Professor and Mary Ann,
Here on Gilligan’s Isle.

Bob Denver played Gilligan; Alan Hale Jr. played The Skipper; Jim Backus played millionaire Thurston Howell III; Natalie Schafer played his wife Lovey; Tina Louise played movie star Ginger Grant; Dawn Wells played Mary Ann; and Russell Johnson played The Professor.

They were left to their own devices, building huts, hunting and gathering for food, and relying on a few possessions, such as a radio, they had salvaged. With the Minnow too damaged to sail, many episodes were devoted to finding ways to fix the boat and sail back to civilization. I remember one where The Professor said he finally developed a nail that would work to fix the hull. When he tried to hammer it into wood, it just drooped like a house plant. The castaways were stranded another week.

Every week Gilligan would run into some kind of challenge, or the Professor would come up with yet another way to try and get everyone off the island. The castaways had their share of visitors whether a lost pilot and a surfer, or other denizens of the island such as natives. They also found ways to entertain themselves, also to comic effect.

The episodes I saw were in colour. A few years later “Entertainment Tonight” was doing a nightly retrospective of classic comedies, and did a segment on “Gilligan’s Island”. It was then I discovered the show was initially shot in black and white and there were a lot more episodes than the ones I had seen many times.

In total, “Gilligan’s Island” ran for three seasons, from 1964 to 1967, for 98 episodes and a pilot. Yet it lived on in syndication, where I saw it more than 15 years later.

Finally rescued?
Soon, I heard word and I am not sure where, that a new “Gilligan’s Island” movie was being made. That was at a time when a lot of reunions for shows from the 1960s were being made.

The rumours were true, and I am pretty sure I saw commercials for the reunion.

“Rescue from Gilligan’s Island” aired in two parts, separated by a week, in 1978. The castaways finally get off the island by tying their huts together and riding out a storm that takes them back to communication range and ultimately civilization. Now they have to figure out what they have missed and how to move forward. They would all have trouble fitting back in over the next year.

I really enjoyed part one, but was sad because I knew I would miss pretty much all of part two, I think because I had a floor hockey game. We got back just in time for the ending. They are all on a reunion cruise aboard the “Minnow II”, the Skipper's new boat, celebrating their first Christmas since being rescued. History repeats itself as the castaways are stranded again. Gilligan then emerges from the jungle with a piece of the “S.S. Minnow” sign. They were back on the same island they were initially marooned on.

The entire cast reprised their roles except Tina Louise who was in a dispute with the producers. The role of Ginger Grant was subsequently taken over by Judith Baldwin.

Rescued again
I had no idea what happened next, until it was too late. It was at some sort of family gathering at my place because my brother and some of my older cousins were there. I had been out playing with some younger cousins when I went in the house. They were all gathered in the living room watching a show, that looked oddly familiar.

My brother said it was “Gilligan’s Island”. I thought that odd. He went on to explain it was a resort island now. Everyone had got off the island again.

Oddly, I did not want to see what happened without seeing the show from the beginning, so I did something else.

I never did see that second movie, “The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island” which came out in 1979.

However, I sort of did see how they got off the island in a different way.

One last look
We got to visit Gilligan’s Island one more time in 1981, and the only time in the ‘80s. Again, I somehow found out about this third sequel movie either from “TV Guide” or maybe “Entertainment Tonight.”

I was struck by the title “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island”, mixing two elements I would never have put together.

At the outset, it showed a history of the castaways from first getting stranded, then getting rescued, to getting stranded again, and the second time they got rescued. There was no narration to really explain what happened, just clips from previous shows, including one showing the castaways hopping a makeshift plane. That was their second escape. Seeing that posed more questions than answers.

Then it was on to the new show. The resort was in full swing, now under the management of Thurston Howell IV. As it turns out Jim Backus was in poor health so the mantle passed to his character’s son. This time around a couple played by Martin Landau and Barbara Bain want to take over the island for a rare element it has. Interestingly, they were married in real life at the time and had appeared in a number of other shows together. However, they are stopped with the help of the Harlem Globetrotters. The movie climaxes in an exhibition game between the Globetrotters and a team of evil robots. After everything is resolved, Jim Backus makes a brief appearance as Thurston Howell III.

That would be the last of “Gilligan’s Island” as we know it.

The series would also spawn two cartoons “The New Adventures of Gilligan”, airing from 1974 to 1977, and “Gilligan’s Planet”, which aired for 12 episodes in 1982 and 1983.

Parting thoughts
Even though “Gilligan’s Island” ended three years before I was born, I still remember it well, especially the antics of Gilligan, the creativity of the professor, and the interplay of all the characters.

The show has become part of the language of pop culture. Since I started writing this, I watched a brand new episode of the TV series “9-1-1”. One of the characters cannot contact a friend on a cruise ship. She tells her partner she is concerned. What if something has happened?

“It’s not the ‘Minnow’,” her partner responds.

That just shows how entrenched “Gilligan’s Island” is in our collective consciousness.