Talk of the Town: All those clothes for a three-hour tour!

Summer is travel time right? So what comes to mind when I say “three-hour tour.”

Who can forget that zany sitcom, “Gilligan’s Island?”

"Gilligan’s Island" is a show that achieved cult status through syndication. Panned by critics as silly and stupid, it lasted only three years as original episodes. If I were a gambling gal, I’d wager that on any given day, some station, somewhere is showing reruns of "Gilligan’s Island."

You all know the tale. A small charter boat, the S.S. Minnow sets sail from Hawaii with a Skipper (Alan Hale) and one crewman, Gilligan (Bob Denver). The passengers are the millionaire (Jim Backus) and his wife (Natalie Schafer), the movie star (Tina Louise), the farm girl Mary Ann (Dawn Wells) and the professor (Russell Johnson).

The Coast Guard gives them a bad weather report, they get caught in a storm and end up on an uncharted island.

Gilligan is forever scheming to get them rescued. As luck would have it, Gilligan isn’t the Einstein of the island and was usually knighted with a whack on the head with the Skipper’s cap!

The skipper, Gilligan and the professor must have missed the boat. They only had one set of clothes while the others changed for every island occasion. And let’s be honest. The gals had packed a heck of a lot of clothes for a three-hour tour.

Anyway, the S.S. Minnow took off for a “three-hour tour.” Well, this so-called three-hour tour turned into 98 episodes of the comic adventures of seven castaways attempting to survive and ultimately escape from a previously uninhabited island where they were marooned.

"Gilligan’s Island" enjoyed solid ratings during its original run. Today, the title character of Gilligan is widely recognized as a comedic American popular culture icon, ranked, for example, at 122nd place in the July 2003 list of 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons compiled by VH-1 and People magazine.

Some Gilligan trivia, thanks to our friends at the Internet Movie Database:

Jayne Mansfield turned down the role of “Ginger”; Carroll O’Connor tested for the role of The Skipper.

Raquel Welch auditioned for the role of Mary Ann.

Jerry Van Dyke turned down the role of Gilligan.

The first season had the cast using cups that were made from real coconuts. However, they found that the cups were porous and soaked through like they were sweating. Thus in the later seasons, the coconut cups were ceramic replicas.

In the very first shot of the opening credits, the American flag over the harbor can be seen flying at half-mast. Reason: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, shortly before the shot was filmed.

In the credits, Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells were relegated to being simply “The Rest.” That changed in the second season when Bob Denver demanded that they be given an equal share in the credits, thus changing the lyrics to “The Professor and Mary Ann.” Sherwood Schwartz, who composed both themes, has said it didn’t occur to him the Professor and Mary Ann would turn into prominent characters.

The lagoon set (the same one used to make "Creature from the Black Lagoon" in 1954) was located at the CBS lot in Studio City, Calif. If sequences there were filmed too early or too late in the day, microphones would record rush hour traffic noise from a nearby freeway.

The island shown in the opening and closing credits is actually located in Kaneohe Bay, about a mile offshore from the island of Oahu, in Hawaii.

Schwartz said that he dreamed up the idea of the show because he wanted the castaways to represent a microcosm of society and he wanted to show how they worked together to help each other when in trouble.

The premise required that the characters use various devices that had to be constructed from only the various materials found on a tropical island. Thus the props had to be specially made and the prop department enjoyed the challenge which was a change of pace from simply bringing in the standard props from storage. The bamboo foot pedal-powered car used in one episode was a particular favorite with the cast queuing up to try it out.

Gilligan saved the Skipper’s life once when they were in the Navy. A depth charge had broken loose from its mount and was rolling across the deck. Gilligan pushed Skipper out of the way. Skipper would later say that Gilligan didn’t save his life, he only prolonged it.

The ship’s name, S.S. Minnow, was not named for the fish but rather for Newton Minow, head of the Federal Communications Commission in 1961. Minow was the one who called television “America’s vast wasteland." Sherwood Schwartz did not care for Minow so he named the soon-to-be shipwrecked ship after him.

Alan Hale Jr. was on location in Utah, filming a movie when he got a call to come back to Los Angeles to do a screen test for “Gilligan’s Island” (1964). Hale rode a horse to the highway, hitchhiked to Las Vegas and flew to L.A. to test with Bob Denver.

Southern Star Chapter #71, Order of the Eastern Star O.E.S, installed its 2008-09 officers on May 31 at the Masonic Lodge in Sahuarita.

Incoming officers are Jackie DeHart, worthy matron; Robert Garn, worthy patron; Jeanne Butler, associate matron; and Ronnie Dollgener, associate patron.

Installing officer was Imogene Richins, worthy grand matron of the Arizona Order of the Eastern Star.

The Order of the Eastern Star is the largest fraternal organization in the world to which both men and women may belong. Arizona has 39 active Star Chapters.

Worthy Matron Jackie DeHart had a wonderful surprise this past April when her late husband Ted was honored by the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association at its annual convention held in Alamogordo, N.M. Ted was a longtime member of NARFE and past president of the Alamogordo Chapter 698 and past president of the New Mexico Federation of Chapters of NARFE.

I’m off and packing for my three-hour tour.

rford@gvnews.com | 547-9740