Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/19/the-cast-of-gilligans-island.html
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Went in feeling skeptical, but by golly, that was delightful to watch!
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That was surprisingly delightful indeed. I was surprised by how great everyone looked – apart from Jim Backus, who seemed a bit out of it. Natalie Schafer (Mrs Howell) and Alan Hale (Skipper) hadn’t aged a day. Also interesting to hear Russell Johnson, in 1988, declare it canon that the Skipper was asexual.
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It’s great they finally got off that damned island.
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Happy they had Tina Louise instead of Judith Baldwin or Constance Forslund.
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It wasn’t that long since they had worked together. Here they are in 1981:
Although, Tina Louise hadn’t worked with them since the original show.
Really loved this. I was surprised that Alan Hale didn’t mention his restaurant among his other business ventures. OK… checking my sources, by 1988 he had shut it down and started the travel agency. Sadly he died less than two years after the Fox TV Late Night reunion aired, of cancer of the thymus at the age of 71.
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That was nice. I miss nice. They all seemed so friendly and personable! This trips two nostalgia buttons for me! The 80’s and watching old shows from the 60’s as a kid in the 1970’s.
I was struck most by how little Alan Hale had changed in the 25 years since the show had aired. It was also a bit jarring to hear young Gilligan’s/Maynard G. Kreb’s voice coming out of 50 something silver haired Bob Denver. Also, you could tell he wasn’t terribly fond of having to wear the sailor hat. He had taken it off, almost immediately after his interview was over by about 12 minutes in. Alan Hale never takes off his Skipper cap. Like he says in his interview, it’s become his alter-ego and he doesn’t seem to mind. Natalie Schaffer, who would have been pushing 90 in this interview, seems quite sharp and funny.
Dawn Wells looks spectacular, even with the 80’s hair! It’s amusing to think that she’s the same age in this clip as I am now!
Sun Country wine coolers!
Also, Mary Ann > Ginger.
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That Sun Country commercial was 80s awesome.
That awesome commercial was so 80s that it felt like a parody.
And speaking of 80s, yay for late-80s overused Memphis!
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At the start, the interviewer brings up to Denver that the re-run longevity is due in part to it being perfect after-school fodder. That’s certainly how I saw it, along with that other Sherwood Schwartz syndication monster, The Brady Bunch. Every. Damn. Day. Which in itself is enough of a cultural touchstone that the ultimate school nostalgia movie, Dazed and Confused, opens with the kids trying to list every Gilligan’s Island episode on the blackboard from memory, then segues into the girls giving it a feminist critique in the ladies room.
I guess back when there were 3 networks you could make a show for the mental level of a child and the family as a whole would agree to watch it in prime-time, but it’s actually difficult for me to believe that these Schwartz shows ever aired in the evening because they’re soooo stupid. I can barely watch them any more yet I totally love them because they were fairly excellent kids’ programming when I was on that level.
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