Oh, man that’s sad.
He was much more dead pan faced one minute and completely losing his mind the next. Seemed appropriate since he was married to a witch.
He and Elizabeth Montgomery had great chemistry. She and Dick Sargent had absolutely none.
I think my favorite episode of the series is the B&W one where he realizes he’s going to grow old and die, and she isn’t. Very poignant.
Ah. I remember that one.
That Girl was another '60s sitcom that was good in the first three seasons but rapidly went downhill afterward.
I was head over heels in love with Marlo Thomas when I was in sixth grade. (I actually had a girlfriend who looked a lot like her.) When I saw the episodes stripped on weekdays a couple of years ago, I was wondering why the hell Donald put up with her by the time the fifth season started.
Has That Girl ever been released on DVD? I remember it from when it was broadcast, and I recall liking it. It would be nice to get the DVDs of it.
While filming the movie They Came to Cordura (1959) with Gary Cooper and Rita Hayworth, he suffered a permanent, disabling back injury. In York’s own words, “Gary Cooper and I were propelling a handcar carrying several ‘wounded’ men down [the] railroad track. I was on the bottom stroke of this sort of teeter-totter mechanism that made the handcar run. I was just lifting the handle up as the director yelled ‘cut!’ and one of the ‘wounded’ cast members reached up and grabbed the handle. Now, instead of lifting the expected weight, I was suddenly, jarringly, lifting his entire weight off the flatbed – 180 pounds or so. The muscles along the right side of my back tore. They just snapped and let loose. And that was the start of it all: the pain, the painkillers, the addiction, the lost career.”[6]
RE Willy
I’ve read in a few places that Gilligan’s first name was Willy. I’ve also read interviews with Bob Denver that Gilligan’s first name was Gilligan.
Yeah, I don’t think there was ever any definitive canon on Gilligan’s full name (though I did know Roy Hinkley, Jonas Grumby, Mary Ann Summers, Ginger Grant, Thurston Howell III, and Lovey Howell).
And “Ginger Grant” is probably a stage name, but if so, they never revealed her “real” name.
I likewise recall Bob Denver saying something like Sherwood Schwartz feeling that if Gilligan had a first name, it would “probably” be Willy, but I don’t think that was ever definitively established. Unlike such names as Roy Hinkley and Jonas Grumby, which were actually mentioned in the first episode.
In retrospect, the main cast of that show was unlucky, health-wise (or cursed, if we’re following the witchcraft theme):
- Dick York, as you note, was forced to leave the show (and retire from acting) due to his back injury, and also had emphysema (he was a heavy smoker), dying from it at 63.
- Elizabeth Montgomery died from cancer at age 62.
- Dick Sargent died from cancer at age 64.
- Agnes Moorehead died from cancer at age 74; she had been in the cast of the film The Conqueror, which was filmed near the site of atomic bomb testing, and which is believed to have led to many of the cast and crew developing cancer.
- Alice Pearce (the first Gladys Kravitz) died of cancer at age 48, during Bewitched’s second season.
- Paul Lynde (Uncle Arthur) died of a heart attack at age 55.
Also, Marion Lorne (Aunt Clara) died of a heart attack before the start of the series’ fifth season, though she was already older (age 84).
He was never called anything other than “Gilligan” on the show, not even in the radio newscast announcing the disappearance of the Minnow. However, in the series typewritten format that was used to sell the series to the network, he’s specifically described as “Willy Gilligan.” (That page is actually shown in one of the GI histories on YouTube. Sorry, I don’t remember which one.)
I don’t know if That Girl is available on DVD, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
Colon cancer, as I recall, which is particularly nasty.
Lynde, who was a regular on Hollywood Squares at the time, was chronically obese as a child. When asked in an interview how he wanted to spend his retirement, he replied “I want to lie in bed and eat. I was a fat kid, and I’m going to be a fat old man!”
Marion Lorne and her klutzy successor Alice Ghostley (“Esmerelda”) had a scene together in 1967’s The Graduate. Lorne would continue to appear for some time in television commercials filmed before her 1968 demise, leading some to conclude the rumors of her death were greatly exaggerated.
Wow. Look at that with the others listed, and (I assume) smoking really did shorten lives!
I watch a lot of Universal (Adam-12, Dragnet, Emergency…) and it is amazing how many actors of that generation died so young! (and looked so old! Lynde was only 55?!)
I’m 61. I don’t feel old. And to see so many actors died younger than me, it’s shocking.
On the other hand, there’s Burt Mustin, a Webb regular. That guy didn’t START acting until he was 68! There’s still time for me to make it! Hollywood, here I come!
Lynde could often be seen smoking surreptitiously in his box on Hollywood Squares. He also had the appearance of a heavy smoker, like Kramer in that episode of Seinfeld.
Aside from Bewitched, I remember Dick York best from the time he played a doomed GI in the Pacific on Twilight Zone.
Sort of the TV version of the Scottish play.
Babylon 5 has been pretty rough on its actors as well.
Does anyone have any idea where the island is located? My best guess is Palmyra Atoll. Palmyra Atoll is a collection of islands and small islets south of Hawaii. It is of volcanic origin. Coconuts grow there. “Natives” live on some of the not so nearby islands in the area. And it has lagoons!
I would like to preemptively declare that anyone who says “it’s just a show” and that the location is unknowable is just a curmudgeon who doesn’t know how to have fun.
The island is obviously near Springfield.
The coordinates changed from time to time:
I read somewhere that it was originally supposed to be in the Caribbean (hence the Calypso theme song), but that would have made it much too easy to find.
3 hours away.
(b) Wentworth.
Ninjafied, but I did know the answer.