I’m watching this movie on Silver Screen right now. Natalie Schafer has a minor role as an actress. She was pretty hot back in the day, and still sounds like Lovey Howell.
The only other role I ever saw her in was a guest spot on The Brady Bunch.
I did a google search to see some pictures from her younger days. Kinda looks a little like Barbara Babcock.
Now that I think about it, they could have easily added more castaways to the program, sort of like how Oliver showed up on the Brady Bunch. What’s crazy is how some viewers talk about how great some of these old shows were. At the time, Gilligan’s Island and so many of the rest were widely criticized as horrible.
I think most of the nostalgia is from the 1970s reruns that awaited kids after school every day of the week.
I agree with Mr Fudd. I’ve heard that Hale was initially ashamed of his work as the Skipper. But, when kids started recognizing him from reruns, he took to wearing his Skipper hat and greeting fans as “little buddy”.
The SS Minnow was named for Newton Minnow, chairman of the FCC, who said that television was a ‘vast wasteland’. He was largely correct at the time. That didn’t mean that Gilligan’s Island wasn’t entertaining, as were other shows that shouldn’t be dismissed simply for their lack of depth. It certainly took some time before television included more quality and variety of programming that we see now. It’s still vast, plenty of wasteland, but also plenty of art, science, news, and history along with entertainment of all varieties.
Nitpick but the FCC chairman’s name was Minow.
I recall reading that Hale had a restaurant, and would dress in his Skipper clothes and talk to guests on most evenings.
Which was widely ridiculed and disliked by fans at the time, and retroactively became cited as an example of a show “jumping the shark,” as it disrupted the show’s chemistry.
Did a little research. Hale was co-owner of the Lobster Barrel located at 826 N. La Cienega Blvd in LA.
Oh right, I didn’t say it was a good idea. Just that they could have maybe kept the show going a couple more seasons that way. I disliked the Great Kazoo on the Flintstones as well.
Oliver struck me at the time as maybe the illicit love child of John Denver and Mrs. Brady or something.
The Cousin Oliver addition on the Brady Bunch was done for that very reason: producers realized that the cute kids were all now teenagers or young adults, and they hoped to extend the show’s longevity by adding back in a cute kid.
It didn’t work, anyway; the show was still cancelled at the end of the season in which they had added Oliver, and as infamous as “Cousin Oliver” is among TV fans now, the character only appeared in the final five episodes of the series.
Great Gazoo.
He does look like a little John Denver!
Yep. All us latchkey kids would rush home to then make something to eat (cereal, toast, bologna sandwich) and then plop down in front of TV to watch Gilligan’s Island, the Brady Bunch and the Flintstones. I’d be afraid to watch any of them today and taint my memory of them (I do know they were terrible).
Right. Been so long since this came up I forgot that little detail. Apparently Mr Minow enjoyed the joke and became friends with Sherwood Schwartz the creator and producer of the show.
Don’t know if anyone mentioned it, Russell Johnson served in WWII and was awarded several medals for his service as a bombardier on 44 combat missions in a B-25, which was eventually shot down.
It was the Partridge Family and Brady Bunch on Friday night, prime time! I recall my dad got a deal on frozen pizzas for $1 a piece, and would buy a stack of them, installed in the deep freeze in the basement. With dinner out of the way, it allowed mom and dad to un-ass the household, while us kids watched wretched television.
If you stayed up later than that, there was The Odd Couple, Room 222, and Love American Style.
Don’t forget Nanny and the Professor, with Juliet “I’m not just Hayley’s sister” Mills - this was from when primetime started at 7:30 Eastern.
Yep. I remember waiting a whole week to learn if Greg would survive his surfing accident - darned cliffhangers!
My favorite GI trivia is that the music was done by that John Williams and you can tell because the incidental music is pretty great. There are tunes I still can hum (e.g. the Gilligan gets super strong from radioactive Spinach music) even though I haven’t watched an episode in probably three decades.
I’m not exactly sure what it is you are getting at here. Or maybe I am…