LOS ANGELES (AP) - Henny Backus, the widow of actor Jim Backus and an actress who debuted as a Broadway showgirl in the 1920s, died Dec. 9. She was 93. Backus was best known for her role as Cora Dithers in the 1968 sitcom “Blondie,” which also starred her husband. The couple wrote several books based on anecdotes from their 46-year marriage, including “What Are You Doing After the Orgy?”, “Only When I Laugh” and “Forgive Us Our Digressions.” After her husband died of pneumonia in 1989, Backus wrote “Care for the Caretaker,” which offered practical suggestions for people taking care of seriously ill relatives or friends. Backus got her start in the Broadway show “Earl Carroll’s Vanities.” During the Depression, she joined an acting group that included Orson Welles, whom she dated. Her husband played the billionaire Thurston Howell III in the sitcom “Gilligan’s Island.” He was also the voice behind the bumbling, myopic Mr. Magoo in an animated series and played James Dean’s father in the 1955 film “Rebel Without a Cause.”
And who could forget her as the headhunter mother who only wanted the best for her obese daughter on that special episode of GI? They seemed to have had one of the happier Hollywood marriages; on the last full reunion of the GI cast (the Ross Shafer show) she had to escort him onto the stage because he was too feeble to walk himself and Natalie Shafer was too old to support him.
Speaking of Natalie Shafer, I must recommend the movie Surviving Gilligan’s Island (available through Netflix) as one of the best made-for-TV-about-TV movies. You’ll absolutely LOVE Natalie by the end. (Shafer to Dawn Wells after being invited to go get hotdogs at Pink’s: “Are hotdogs good? I’ve often wondered…” [and she was being completely serious], plus the stories of her reticence in telling her age and in why she would not be physically intimate with men are both moving.)
The Backus’s had a lovely home, incidentally; there are pictures on the GI section of Find a Death.
Not to spoil any part of the movie I mentioned, but she was absolutely adamant about never telling her age. There’s a great scene in the movie in which she’s discussing the death of her husband:
When she died and her true age was revealed (she was in her 90s, making her in her 60s during GI and almost 80 at the time of the last godawful reunion movie) everybody was stunned.
Probably the richest of the Castaways in real life due to real estate investments, she bequeathed a large portion of her multimillion dollar estate to her poodle.
A funnier part that I won’t ruin is her reaction upon learning GI was picked up by the network.