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A made-for-TV movie covers some well-traveled territory - the behind-the-scenes travails of the castaways on Gilligan's Island - but it's still a nice trip.
By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV critic
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 12, 2001
First, let me be honest. I am a Mary Ann kind of guy.
To understand that, know this: Some folks say all males fit into two categories -- Mary Ann or Ginger guys -- based on which female character they had the hots for while watching Gilligan's Island (if somebody liked the Professor or Gilligan, well, that's another conversation).
And as intoxicating as Tina Louise's hourglass-figured movie star Ginger was, this sitcom junkie couldn't help falling for the girl-next-door charms of Dawn Wells' Mary Ann.
"Mary Ann is the marrying kind . . . (a woman) you would trust and depend on," said Wells a few months ago, in an admittedly biased observation.
"It's become a real thing: the sex symbol vs. the girl next door," added the actor, a sixtysomething whose wholesome beauty hasn't diminished with the years. "A guy who wants a Ginger . . . it's a fun date. A guy who is looking for a Mary Ann is a guy who wants a relationship."
Why all this talk of Ginger and Mary Ann today? Because CBS has rolled out yet another behind-the-scenes movie about a boomer TV legend: Surviving Gilligan's Island: The Incredibly True Story of the Longest Three-Hour Tour in History.
These days, you can expect to hear critics apologizing for wasting words on a lightweight TV movie about what may be TV's most lightweight series ever. But not here.
At a time when the nation is engaged in a military conflict, what better subject to turn to than the ultimate in escapist TV entertainment?
"When Desert Storm took place, I got a letter from a fan who said he was 18, scared to death, never been away from home and didn't know if he would live or die," Wells said, noting that her reply was postmarked the day his regiment entered Kuwait City.
"As the sun would go down, (he said) you could hear the American boys teaching the foreign soldiers the Gilligan's Island theme," she added. "Why did this bring them together -- because we were all misfits, or trying to work together? You can't guess. But the show did mean something."
After 37 years and endless repeats on TV, that much is certain. Perhaps the biggest weakness of Surviving Gilligan's Island is that it never quite manages to capture that magic, despite halfway decent impersonations of Alan "Skipper" Hale Jr. by Eric Allan Kramer (The Hughleys) and Jim "Mr. Howell" Backus by Steve Vinovich.
On the surface, CBS' movie unfolds like previous nostalgia exercises we've seen on The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch, featuring actors that kind of resemble the stars of the series.
But this film employs an interesting technique, nabbing Wells, Bob "Gilligan" Denver and Russell "the Professor" Johnson -- all the surviving Gilligan's cast members except Louise -- to serve as narrators throughout the movie.
That brings scenes where the real-life Wells counsels her youthful doppelganger on how to wear her hair on screen, or Denver reprises the Gilligan's gag where he had to ride a makeshift bicycle to generate electric power.
What works about this movie is that it embraces an essential fact about Gilligan's Island: Other than, perhaps, Hogan's Heroes, it is probably the worst sitcom to earn status as a TV legend in the history of the medium.
To its credit, Surviving Gilligan's Island doesn't dodge this painful reality, noting that former Coach star Jerry Van Dyke was initially favored by network executives to play Gilligan.
"It was the worst script I ever read," says Van Dyke during a cameo on Surviving Gilligan's Island. "I was looking for a hit, and this sure wasn't it. Besides, my agent had me up for a sure-fire hit, a series called My Mother the Car."
As Van Dyke notes about that show a moment later, "I've had longer showers."
That's the ultimate message of this TV movie, which even dares to show some of the series' stars -- notably, Louise and Natalie Schafer, who played Mrs. Howell -- insulting their own show. (Schafer is shown bursting into tears upon learning that Gilligan's Island had been picked up by the network in 1964; she only did the pilot episode to get a free vacation in Hawaii.)
Despite the derision of network executives, actors, critics and many others, people loved Gilligan's Island. And even those who made the show, 35 years later, can't say why.
Creator Sherwood Schwartz, who appears as himself in the movie and is also played by a younger actor, said he conceived of Gilligan's Island as a microcosm of society -- with the rich, working class, intellectuals, celebrities and middle class all forced to work together (Schwartz would later create another tribute to late '60s sitcom banality, The Brady Bunch).
But forget such highfalutin talk. As Surviving Gilligan's Island points out -- transitioning between scenes with the same silly sound effects they used on the show -- people just dug the innocent spirit of it all.
"Nowadays, people ask why Gilligan's and the Skipper's hammocks are so close together, but nobody thought of that back then," said Wells, who has homes in Redington Shores, though she's now based in California. "Maybe there's always been a need for some of that (innocence). For children, especially."
Wells didn't seem to get much respect during the show's run. Though the movie says she got more fan mail than any other actor on the show, it also portrays an incident when TV Guide magazine said it was taking photos of Wells, Louise and Denver for its cover, only to later crop Wells out.
Still, despite Denver's status as the show's star and mascot, Wells' unabashed acceptance of the series makes her the star of Surviving Gilligan's Island. It also helps that she served as the movie's executive producer and worked for years to get it made.
"I've never been negative about (Gilligan's Island)," said Wells, an entrepreneur who has written a cookbook, acts in plays and runs an annual "boot camp" for actors from her ranch near Jackson Hole, Wyo. "We are a phenomenon that's gone on for 37 years. And you're greeted with love all over the world. What's wrong with that?"
The ride came to an unexpected end in 1967, when CBS canceled the show despite ratings placing it in the Top 20. Wells said the wife of authoritarian CBS chairman William Paley insisted that the network avoid canceling her favorite show, Gunsmoke, forcing it to jettison Gilligan's Island to make room.
But thanks to the magic of reruns, the show has lived on -- through three decades, three reunion movies and now this TV movie.
"There's a lot more to me . . . (and) there's a lot more to my life than Mary Ann," Wells said. "But it's given me . . . and the public joy. You're not going to do a series and then hope it fails, are you?"
AT A GLANCE: Surviving Gilligan's Island: The Incredibly True Story of the Longest Three-Hour Tour in History airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on WTSP-Ch. 10. Grade: A-. Rating: TV-PG.