Gilligan's Island

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Television series
German title Gilligan's Island
Original title Gilligan's Island
Country of production United States
original language English
Year (s) 1964-1967
length 25 minutes
Episodes 98
genre Sitcom
idea Sherwood Schwartz
music The Ballad of Gilligan's Island (written by George Wyle and Sherwood Schwartz , played and sung by The Wellingtons )
First broadcast September 26th, 1964 on CBS
German-language
first broadcast		 July 1966 on German television
occupation
Bob Denver
Gilligan
Alan Hale Jr.
Skipper Jonas Grumby
Russell Johnson
Professor Roy Hinkley, Jr.
Jim Backus
Thurston Howell III
Natalie Schafer
Eunice "Lovey" Wentworth Howell
Tina Louise
Ginger Grant
Dawn Wells
Mary Ann Summers

Gilligan's Island (original title Gilligan's Island ) is an American sitcom that premiered on CBS from 1964 to 1967 . It depicts the adventures of seven shipwrecked Americans who are stranded on a South Sea island and can therefore be assigned to the genre of the Robinsonade .

The 36 episodes of the first season were shot in black and white , the remaining 62 in color .

action

Before the narrated time of the first episode, the SS Minnow , an excursion boat from Honolulu , was caught in a tropical storm on a three-hour pleasure trip . The boat is stranded on an uninhabited tropical island with two crew members (skipper Jonas Grumby and his mate Willy Gilligan) and five passengers, and the following episodes deal with the lives of the castaways on their island and their futile attempts to leave it.

The history of the series and its protagonists was originally intended to be told in a pilot episode. After this was shot in November 1963, however, the producers decided to rewrite some characters significantly and to reassign some roles. The original pilot episode was only broadcast on TNT ( Turner Network Television ) in 1993 . Instead, the first episode (often incorrectly referred to as the pilot episode) began on the beach on Gilligan's Island. The stranded come to and their fate is conveyed to the viewer in a voice-over as a radio message. Such radio reports often appeared as action elements in the subsequent episodes - the radio of the SS Minnow was destroyed in the accident, but not the portable transistor radio, and so the castaways are well informed about the outside world.

The drawing of the seven characters corresponds not only to common role clichés in American society, but above all to their exaggeration in film and television. The five passengers of the SS Minnow are such a fabulously rich millionaire along with his wife, a brilliant professor, a film diva and an “innocent from the country”. Their standardized action patterns made the plot of the episodes mostly all too predictable, but they also contributed significantly to the popularity of the series with children.

Dream sequences

Dream sequences often served the creators of the series to cross the genre boundaries of the Robinsonade and to parody other genres. This inter- or also hypertextuality makes the series appear quite postmodern in part. Usually Gilligan dreams of a more or less absurd figure - Gilligan's trauma avatars are, for example

  • Lord Admiral Gilligan , who against pirates fighting
  • the secret agent 014 (a parody of James Bond / 007)
  • a stupid vampire on the run from " Inspector Sherlock " (The Professor) and Watson (Skipper)
  • Sheriff of a Wild West town protecting a duck from the residents' appetites.
  • in one episode, Gilligan is portrayed as Dr. Jekyll charged in court; his defense attorney Mary Poppins finds out that he transforms into Mr. Hyde every time food is discussed.

The other characters also occasionally have dreams. "Lovey" Howell dreams of the role of Cinderella , for example , and Gilligan appears as the fairy godmother.

Visitors to the island

Gilligan's island was visited quite often by different visitors over the course of the 98 episodes. It is one of the seemingly less likely premises of the series that, in contrast to the seven castaways, all visitors can leave the island again, but not inform the outside world about the whereabouts of the seven stranded. Among others, the following figures appeared on Gilligan's island:

  • Polynesian natives (who have radio equipment; however, it seems to have occurred to no one to send an emergency call)
  • a Hollywood producer. He steals the idea of ​​a musical version of Hamlet from the castaways and leaves them on the island so that they don't have to pay royalties. The role was played by Phil Silvers, who actually produced the series.
  • the rock'n roll band The Mosquitoes (played by the Wellingtons , who recorded the series’s theme song)
  • an exiled South American dictator
  • a big game hunter (played by Rory Calhoun )
  • the aviation pioneer "Wrong-Way Feldman" (played by Hans Conried ; the figure is based on the real aviator "Wrong Way" Corrigan )
  • a Japanese soldier in a one-man submarine believing World War II was still going on (played by Vito Scotti)
  • a mad scientist (also played by Vito Scotti)
  • in an episode based on the jungle book , Gilligan meets a wolf child (played by young Kurt Russell )
  • a ghost (played by Richard Kiel , who later became famous as "The Biter" in two James Bond films)

The protagonists

Gilligan

Gilligan is the SS Minnow's first mate and the real hero of the series. His trademark is a white sailor's hat . He is good-natured, but extremely simple-minded. It was he who was also responsible for the shipwreck, because the skipper had instructed him to cast the anchor, which Gilligan did - but without first mooring the anchor to the ship. Gilligan's stupidities again and again thwart the castaways' attempts to leave the island. Nevertheless, he is shown a lot of affection, especially by the women on the island.

Gilligan's full name has long been the subject of speculation. Alan Hale Jr. has stated several times that he always believed Gilligan's last name was Davis. In one episode of the series, Professor Gilligan introduces a beautiful South Sea islander. When she smiles somewhat disturbed, he adds the surname "Hohople" to the first name in order to preserve the form. Because of this episode, many fans assumed for a long time that Gilligan's family name was actually "Hohople". The case was resolved in 2004 when the series' first season appeared on DVD. In the attached documentary ( Before the Three Hour Tour ) it was stated that Gilligan's full name is Willy Gilligan .

The skipper

The skipper (captain) of the SS Minnow is called Jonas Grumby, but after the first season he was simply referred to as “Skipper”. He is a responsible and sensible man, and most capable of taking charge of the shipwrecked; however, Gilligan's fools often drive him to the brink of anger.

Thurston Howell III

Thurston Howell III is so extraordinarily wealthy that he took tens of thousands of dollars with him on the three-hour pleasure ride. On Gilligan's Island, he likes to wave wads of banknotes, but forgets that all his money doesn't help him on the island. On the other hand, the other castaways take for granted that Howell refuses to do any work.

Eunice Howell

Eunice Howell, nickname "Lovey", is Thurston Howell's wife. As a millionaire's wife, her demeanor may appear snobby at times, but at heart she is a good-natured and well-meaning person.

Ginger Grant

Ginger Grant is a Hollywood star with appropriate airs. Her name already indicates her role, because it is made up of the names of Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant , two stars of Hollywood's “golden age”. In conversations, she often goes out and about other (real) stars in order to give the impression that she is acquainted and friends with them. The show's producers originally planned her to be a sarcastic, sharp-tongued vamp, but actress Tina Louise refused to play the role that way. They finally agreed on a character who, according to Louise's description, was between Marilyn Monroe and Lucille Ball and whose styling was reminiscent of Myrna Loy .

In several episodes, a possible love affair between Ginger and the skipper is hinted at or initiated, but since the moral sensitivities in the 1960s, especially in the case of a family program, were still quite tight, this flirting was never allowed to become a relationship.

Mary Ann Summers

Mary Ann Summers is the stereotypical innocence of the country, the All-American girl . She is based on the character of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and therefore also comes from Kansas , more precisely from Winfield , where she ran a farm all by herself. So it is she who puts on a vegetable garden on the island and cooks all meals (mostly fish or coconut cake).

Ginger Grant is a friend of hers, even if she often treats her with condescension. Since Mary Ann is as naive as she is good-natured, she hardly notices this. She is also occasionally the object of, if not desire, the affection of both Gilligan and the professor. As in the case of Ginger and the skipper, these love affairs are only hinted at.

Professor Roy Hinkley, Jr.

Professor Roy Hinkley, Jr. has no fewer than six academic degrees and is therefore versatile. His specialty is botany, but he often uses the few materials available on the island to build technical equipment to make life easier or to help people escape. He is the most level-headed of the group and occasionally takes over their leadership in critical situations.

Impact history

Gilligan's Island was unanimously panned by contemporary critics, but enjoyed great popularity with audiences and achieved quite high and stable ratings . Nevertheless, the series was canceled after three seasons. CBS had previously announced the discontinuation of the even more successful series Smoking Colts , but reversed the decision after massive protests from viewers, and so Gilligan's Island had to vacate its Monday evening slot to make room for the continuation of the Western format. The last episode of Gilligan's Island ran on September 4, 1967, and contrary to all expectations, the stranded people were not rescued from their island in this last episode either.

The series then ran as a repeat on various channels in the following years. It was only in the 1970s that Bob Denver, according to his own admission, noticed that the series did not disappear from the screen, and to this day it has remained a popular filler for program gaps, especially in the morning program. Generations of Americans have grown up with the series, and it is arguably one of the best known popular cultural myths in the United States. For example, “Ginger or Mary Ann?” Is a common question when it comes to what type of woman men prefer.

The image of the actors was so strongly shaped by the series that they mostly only played roles in later film projects that corresponded to those in the series. Tina Louise in particular, who reportedly shared the starry airs of her role, made this type casting responsible for the failure of her further acting career. Bob Denver, on the other hand, was one of the most popular comedians in the US and had a good living until his death.

Offshoot

In 1973 Sherwood Schwartz produced the Dusty's Trail series , which brings together figures similar to that of Gilligan's Island in a covered wagon in the time of the Wild West. Bob Denver again played the lead role. However, after only 26 episodes, Dusty's Trail was canceled.

1974-77 the successful animated series Gilligan's Island ( The New Adventures of Gilligan ) was broadcast; she rendered the format very faithfully. Except for the part of Ginger Grant and Mary Ann Summers, the characters were also dubbed by the actors of the old series.

Because of the series' continued popularity, CBS had the television movie Rescue from Gilligan's Island shot in 1978 . It aired in two parts on October 14th and 21st of that year. With the exception of Tina Louise, all of the original cast of the series participated; the part of Ginger Grant was played by Judith Baldwyn. In the film, the seven castaways are actually rescued from the island by a disk from a "Soviet" satellite that the professor uses for his barometer, with which he can predict a storm surge that will bring them to sea in their huts. When Gilligan tries to steam a fish on the boat, he sets fire to the hut, but forgets that wood is burning. But the smoke alerts the coast guard and the seven can be seen. The seven of two agents are seen during the rescue (meaning Soviet agents, Ivan and Dimitri, both speak with a Russian accent and when they are shown, an adaptation of the "Song of the Volga Tugs", the word "Russian" or "Soviet Union" can be heard "but does not appear in the whole film). They want the disk back and keep following Gilligan, who wears it on his neck. Skipper and Gilligan later try to get the insurance money for their new ship. All participants must confirm with their signature that the shipwreck was not Skipper's fault and therefore not insurance fraud. At the meeting, however, the heroes realized that they couldn't or don't want to get used to their lives before the shipwreck. The seven meet for a “class reunion” at Christmas time on Skipper's new boat, the SS Minnow 2 - and get caught in a storm again and stranded on the same island again. The film was originally supposed to be the pilot for a relaunch of the series, but this plan was then discarded.

In 1979 the television film The Castaways of Gilligan's Island followed , in which the seven are saved again. The Howells then open an exclusive holiday resort on the island, the other five are on site as silent partners. This film was also intended as a pilot for a slightly modified new edition of the series, in which (similar to The Love Boat , the American " dream ship ") different guests, played by prominent actors, were to stay on the island every week, but it ended nothing to this plan.

Probably the most absurd successor was the television film The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island in 1981 . Two villains ( Martin Landau and Barbara Bain , who also played in " Kobra, take over " and " Space: 1999 " (Moon Base Alpha 1)) appear on the island and try to find a valuable but unknown substance. Their endeavor is ultimately thwarted by the Harlem Globetrotters , a basketball show troupe. Jim Backus was already struggling with serious health problems at this time and therefore appeared only briefly at the end of the film - but this time with the heir to the family empire, which of course bears the name Thurston Howell IV.

In 1982, Gilligan's Planet was launched as a second-order offshoot . In this animated series, the protagonists of The New Adventures of Gilligan manage to build a spaceship and leave the island with it, but while trying to rescue them, they end up on an unknown planet. Again, with the exception of Tina Louise, the actors in the original series were the voice actors.

According to Sherwood Schwartz, a new Gilligan's Island film should be made in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

Quotes in other programs and series

Since Gilligan's Island is well known to most Americans, it is not surprising that the series has been widely quoted and parodied, and even mixed with other fictional worlds.

  • The youngest son of the Griffin family from the animated series Family Guy is named Stewart Gilligan Griffin in memory of Gilligan. (However, Gilligan's crew grade was not a steward , but first mate .)
  • Bob Denver played the role of Gilligan in an episode of Baywatch, among others . Dawn Wells was also there as Mary Ann.
  • Classically postmodern features took on this intertextuality in an episode of Alf , a series that served a similar segment of television entertainment as Gilligan's Island in the 1980s . In one episode, the alien Alf dreams of being stranded on the island with Gilligan, the skipper, Mary Ann and the professor. The professor builds a television that the islanders can use to watch a television sitcom about the Tanner family (Alf's host family).
  • Eddi has a similar experience in the episode "Die Schiffbrüchigen" in the second season of Baywatch - The Lifeguards of Malibu : While he is unconscious as a result of a fall, he dreams of being shipwrecked with his girlfriend Shaunie on a desert island. There the two meet Gilligan and his entourage.
  • In the last episode of the 7th season of Roseanne , broadcast in 1995, there is a similarly memorable scene: The cast of this sitcom become the cast of Gilligan's Island in a dream sequence : Dan becomes the skipper, Darlene becomes Mary Anne, Roseanne becomes Ginger, Jackie Gilligan, Leon and Bev to Mr. and Mrs. Howell. In the next shot, the surviving actors from Gilligan's Island take on the roles of their counterparts in the Roseanne set . It was Bob Denver, Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells' last appearance together. Tina Louise also took part.
  • Even in Disney's Darkwing Duck , a scene from Gilligan's island was parodied in episode 46 (The Wirrfuss program) . It runs as a television series in the main characters house.
  • In the feature film Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger , TV presenter Damon Kilian speaks in a telephone conversation with representatives of the totalitarian government that "you can't get higher audience ratings with repeats of Gilligan's Island".
  • In the sitcom King of Queens , Doug Heffernan tries to convince his wife Carrie with a comparison from Gilligan's Island to let his father-in-law Arthur move in with his half-brother. “Don't you understand? We're on Gilligan's Island and there is a boat on the other side of the island. Sail away with me Carrie! ”(Episode“ The Monkey Boy ”).
  • In the King of Queens episode “The Zero Diet”, the theme song from Gilligan's Island can be heard on TV, whereupon Doug says, “Oh my god. I'm fatter than the Skipper. ”In the German dubbed version, Doug says“ Oh my god, I'm fatter than Hoss Cartwright . ”, Which is due to the fact that Bonanza was better known in German-speaking countries than Gilligan's island .
  • The Simpsons also used the producer of the soap, in which Moe Szyslak auditioned for a role, a comparison from Gilligan's Island : "I wanted a Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island - Ugly ...".
  • In the film Galaxy Quest - Planless Through Space , Gwen DeMarco ( Sigourney Weaver ) tries to make the extraterrestrial Thermians understand that the science fiction television series Galaxy Quest is not about "historical documents". She tries to make this clear by saying: "You sure do not think that Gilligan's island is ...". It stops because the Thermians look down on the ground, concerned. Then their leader Mathesar says: "Oh, these poor people!" It is clear that the Thermians have seen Gilligan's island , but also consider it to be "historical documents". So the concept of a fictional plot is completely alien to you.
  • How I Met Your Mother : After Robin and Barney had sex, they talk about a three-hour boat trip and that it can't be that bad after all. Barney then says, "I think that's what Gilligan said too."
  • Bones: At the beginning of season 8, episode 16 , Booth solves a crossword puzzle at the breakfast table. When Bones interferes and finally tries to solve the puzzle himself, Booth realizes that Bones does not know "Gilligan's Island" and makes fun of it.
  • In the 2000 film Cast Away , the phrase "Coconuts are a natural laxative. These are things Gilligan didn't tell us. "

musical

There was even a musical about the series, which is about a rescue from the island. The piece was written by Sherwood Schwartz along with his son Lloyd, daughter Hope and her husband, Laurence Juber , ex- Wings guitarist who also wrote the music. It premiered in Los Angeles. The role of Gilligan was played by Grant Rosen .

Gilligan's Island in Literature

Also in the literature has Gilligan's Island left their mark. In Thomas Pynchon's novel The Ends of the Parable, there is a plan for a sitcom called "The Komical Kamikazes", in which the two Japanese kamikaze pilots stationed on a desert island and their crazy radio operator await their suicidal mission. In Vineland (1989), a novel by the same author, the protagonist sings the introductory music of the series whenever he tries to feign insanity. There's a Gilligan-themed bar in David Foster Wallace's novel The Broom of the System .

In 2003 Tom Carson released a decidedly post-modern version of the material. His first novel Gilligan's Wake is not only based on James Joyce's Finnegans Wake in the title . Mary Ann ponders about it:

“ Yes, the island is beautiful; especially at night when the stars rise in the night sky. But we've been here for forty years ... anyway, we didn't make it out of this g *** damn island. "

And ultimately, the stranded also get to the reason why they are never allowed to leave the island:

“ Ginger was the first to figure out we had to be fictional characters. "

Gilligan's Island and the ARD

In July 1966, the ARD broadcasted 13 synchronized episodes of the series in the evening program “ARD vor 8” . The episodes involved were:

  1. Two on a raft ( Two on a raft )
  2. Hut construction ( Home sweet hut )
  3. Superstition ( Voodoo something to me )
  4. Hypnosis ( Goodnight, sweet skipper )
  5. The Gold Mine ( The big gold strike )
  6. By 3 million dollars ( Three million dollars or less )
  7. The dragon ( St. Gilligan and the dragon )
  8. Romance ( The matchmaker )
  9. Mysterious Voices ( New neighbor Sam )
  10. Das Götzenauge ( Three to get ready )
  11. The invention ( physical fatness )
  12. Magic ( It's magic )
  13. The swollen nose ( A nose by any other name )

In this country, Martin Hirthe (Skipper) and Wolfgang Draeger (Gilligan) spoke . The series was then repeated again from 1967 to 1986 in the evening program .

Others

  • In episode 96 ( The Pigeon ) the location of Gilligan's Island is mentioned. Accordingly, it is located 300 miles southeast of Honolulu . This would correspond approximately to the geographical position 18 ° 2 '  N , 154 ° 7'  W . The island would therefore be barely 120 km away from the island of Hawaii . In another episode, the professor is the location of the island, however, with 10 ° 0 '  N , 110 ° 7'  W at. Accordingly, it would be around 5000 km southeast of Hawaii.
  • The series was filmed in Echo Park in Los Angeles ; occasionally one can hear engine noises on the soundtrack from a nearby motorway. Today there is a parking lot in place of the lagoon. The pilot episode, however, was shot on the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i .
  • The opening music was changed twice and the text of the opening three times. In the original pilot episode, which was only broadcast on TNT (Turner Network Television) in 1993, a Sir Lancelot sings a text to a calypso rhythm. After the first season, the entrance music was changed and the text under it underwent two changes. While only five protagonists were named in the original version, Mary Ann and the professor were only mentioned as the rest . After these two characters had unexpectedly proven to be very popular, the text was changed so that "the rest" was also named.
  • In May 1991, the machine manufacturer Midway released a Gilligans Island pinball machine . This was the first pinball machine from the Williams / Bally group of companies to come onto the market with a dot-matrix display, even if the manufacturer had designed another pinball machine with such a dot display at an earlier point in time.

literature

  • Sherwood Schwartz: Inside Gilligan's Island . St Martins Press, ISBN 0-312-10482-0 .
  • Bob Denver: Gilligan, Maynard and Me . Citadel Press, ISBN 0-8065-1413-2 .
  • Russell Johnson: Here on Gilligan's Island . Perennial Lib, ISBN 0-06-096993-8 .
  • Sylvia Stoddard: TV Treasures: A Companion Guide to Gilligan's Island . St. Martin's Press 1996, ISBN 0-312-95797-1 .
  • Joey Green: The Unofficial Gilligan's Island Handbook . Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-38668-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stoddard 1996, p. 306.
  2. ↑ Text of the original pilot episode and the series episodes in comparison ( Memento from November 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1004

Web links