‘Gilligan’s Island’ and Sherwood Schwartz Remembered by His Son (EXCLUSIVE)
Discover the challenges of selling the show to CBS and the latest on 'Gilligan's Island: The Movie'
There aren’t many television series that have remained a part of pop culture in the way that Gilligan’s Island has. The show, which ran from 1964 to 1967, started with a pretty simple premise of seven people from different walks of life finding themselves stranded on a desert island. And while it was something the critics hated, the audience has never let it go over the past 60+ years.
The show may have starred Alan Hale Jr., Bob Denver, Jim Backus and Tina Louis, among others, behind it all was series creator Sherwood Schwartz, who viewed the premise as something of a social experiment wrapped up in humor (though you might be hard-pressed to find too many people who would go along with that description).
In this exclusive interview, Lloyd J. Schwartz—son of Sherwood Schwartz and a successful writer/producer in his own right—reflects on his father’s career and legacy (which includes creating The Brady Bunch), recounting the challenges of getting the show produced in the first place and how those challenges persist as he has been attempting to launch Gilligan’s Island: The Movie since 1988.
Woman’s World (WW): Your dad applied to medical school, but didn’t get in, which is what led to him pursuing writing. In other words, had he gotten into medical school, we would not have Gilligan’s Island or The Brady Bunch.
Lloyd J. Schwartz (LJS): That’s right. He was in pre-med and living with my Uncle Al, but he was also a writer for Bob Hope on the radio—to make a little money, he would write some jokes for Bob Hope and get five bucks a joke or something like that. Then Hope told him that if he didn’t get into medical school, there’d be a place for him on the staff. That’s what eased him into starting to write.
WW: How important do you think radio writing was in terms of shaping his comic voice?
LJS: A hundred percent. There was no television, so he wrote for radio. In fact, when television started, it was filled with radio people. When we did The Brady Bunch, some of that was so ingrained in my dad that I had to take out radio tropes. He would write, “Look at that beautiful tree with some branches,” and I would say, “Yeah, you’re describing it when we could just see the tree.”
During the Second World War, they started Mail Call and GI Journal, for which the soldiers—Dad among them—would write. And then major stars would come in and do stuff for the soldiers, so he wrote material for Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Jerome Kern and every star of the time. When the war was over, he was invited back to Bob Hope, but he wanted to go his own way, which is why he started working on other shows.
WW: Your dad worked with Jim Backus on the radio and the TV show I Married Joan prior to him playing Mr. Howell.
LJS: We’re jumping around a bit, but when Dad wanted Jim to do Gilligan’s Island, the character of Mr. Howell wasn’t fully developed and he said to Jim, “I want you to do this show, but if you read the script, you won’t want to do it.” And Jim said, “Fine, I trust you,” and that was that.
WW: And Backus really enjoyed being a part of that show, didn’t he?
LJS: Yes, but the one who enjoyed it the most was Alan Hale, and that was because his father was a major star in silent and sound movies. He was always living in the shadow of his father and when he became the Skipper, he had an identity that he just adored — and he never took the hat off.
WW: Did your dad ever express his feelings about I Married Joan, his first TV sitcom?
LJS: He was very analytical about his life and career, and with I Married Joan, he thought that Joan Davis was like Lucille Ball, but not as good. After that, he worked on The Red Skelton Show for eight years, and that was an interesting situation. CBS approached him and said, “We want you to take over the writing for Red Skelton.” The previous head writer, I believe it was Ed Simmons, had left after a bad experience—Red wasn’t the warm, friendly guy people saw on TV. In fact, he once fired a gun at Ed Simmons’ feet. So, Ed decided he was done.
When CBS asked Dad to take the job, he refused. They asked why, and he said, “Because I like my feet.” But they really wanted him, so they asked, “Under what conditions would you do it?” And he said, “I’ll do it, but I will never meet with Red Skelton.” And that’s exactly what happened—he wrote for The Red Skelton Show for eight years without ever meeting him.
Eventually, he left—probably to do Gilligan’s Island, because he wanted to create his own projects. He never feared being out of work. He always had ideas. As for Gilligan, he had the basic concept: taking people from different walks of life and trapping them together where they couldn’t escape. He had always been fascinated by Robinson Crusoe and similar stories. One night, he woke up with the idea for Gilligan’s Island. He woke my mom to tell her, and she just told him to go back to sleep.
WW: Glad he ignored her.
LJS: Well, it was a difficult sell to Jim Aubrey, who was a tough executive at CBS. When Dad pitched the show, Jim wanted it to be about a skipper and his idiot assistant. He said, “Okay, so they get stranded on an island—but what happens in the second week?” Dad explained, “No, no, the show is about life on the island.” But Jim didn’t believe it would work. In fact, he was so skeptical that he commissioned another show, Bailey’s of Balboa, about a skipper and his bumbling assistant, just to prove his point. But Bailey’s of Balboa failed—while Gilligan’s Island became a hit.
WW: He also wrote the title song, which has become so iconic.
LJS: Yes, and that’s another great story. He went in to see Jim Aubrey—whose nickname at CBS, by the way, was The Smiling Cobra. That tells you the kind of guy he was—very sadistic.
So, Dad explained, Gilligan’s Island would have a theme song to introduce the premise. Aubrey and the network came back to him later, and Dad ended up writing the theme song himself. At the next meeting, he handed out copies of the lyrics. Then he said, “These are just lyrics. Songs are meant to be sung.” His agent, sitting next to him, kicked him under the table and whispered, “Sing.”
Dad joked that he wasn’t much of a singer, but he sang anyway. Aubrey listened and said, “Work on the second part of the lyrics.” At the time, it wasn’t the theme song we know today—it was originally a Calypso-style tune. You can still hear that version if you watch the original pilot.
And that’s how Gilligan’s Island finally got sold. But it didn’t test well at first. Aubrey assigned a CBS executive, Bill Froug, to oversee the show. Froug made changes that Dad didn’t agree with. For example, Dad didn’t like what he called “packing scenes.” If the characters were going somewhere, just go—you don’t need a whole scene of them packing and preparing. But the network added those kinds of scenes, and when they tested the pilot, it didn’t score well.
Dad knew it wasn’t his show at that point. He asked the production company for the film back, and the executive in charge basically shrugged and said, “What’s it to me? It’s like giving away guitar picks.” So Dad recut the pilot on his own dime and had it tested again. This time, it tested through the roof.
That’s when Jim Aubrey said something every creative person can relate to. He looked at my father and said, “Sherwood, I still hate your f—— show… but I’m putting it on the air.”
Now, jumping ahead to the cancellation of Gilligan’s Island—that was an interesting situation. The show had been bought for three years, and Dad was told it had been picked up for a fourth season. He didn’t assume anything—it was confirmed to him. Of course, in hindsight, you should always wait to see these things on paper.
It turns out that when CBS finalized its 1967 schedule, it went up to William Paley, the head of the network, for approval. He reviewed everything and signed off on it. But then his wife, Babe Paley—who, if you’ve seen Capote vs. The Swans, you know was quite a presence—looked at the schedule and asked, “Where’s Gunsmoke?”
She loved Westerns, and somehow Gunsmoke had been canceled to make room for Gilligan’s Island. The executives all looked at each other, scrambled to fix the situation, and put Gunsmoke back on the schedule. And just like that, Gilligan’s Island was gone.
WW: Despite the savage reviews from the critics, your dad believed in the show, right? He never looked at Gilligan’s Island as a dopey comedy.
LJS: He had a very serious underpinning to his work. When he first sold Gilligan’s Island and spoke to William Paley, he said, “What we have here is a social microcosm.” Paley—or one of his executives—responded, “I thought this was a comedy.” And Dad replied, “Well, it’s a funny social microcosm.”
His idea was to take people from completely different walks of life and force them to coexist. It was a very intellectual concept compared to most sitcoms, which often revolved around a simple premise—like young people living in an apartment, going to a bar and meeting people. There are plenty of shows like that. But Dad’s show had a deeper meaning, and he believed it was important.
Even now, when people dismiss it as simple or silly, you’ll find that Gilligan’s Island is studied in TV and theater arts programs. There are academic papers written about it—I’ve read a few—and most of them assume Sherwood Schwartz never intended any deeper meaning. But he absolutely did. That said, it wasn’t about the Seven Deadly Sins. Some people insist that each character represents one of them, but that’s a bit of a stretch. Still, he appreciated that people tried to analyze and redefine his work in new ways.
It was always important to him, and he wrote several episodes that carried deeper messages. His favorite was “The Friendly Physician”—or maybe it was “The Little Dictator”—where Nehemiah Persoff played a dictator who gets marooned on the island and gradually takes over. When you watch that episode today, you can see parallels to real-world events that aren’t so different.
WW: Was he surprised by the continuing interest in the show?
LJS: People would ask my dad, “Did you ever think the show would become such a pop culture phenomenon?” And he would always say, “Of course.”
The crazy thing is, despite how beloved Gilligan’s Island is, we’ve been trying to get a movie made since 1988. My book on this whole saga is called Invitation to a Shipwreck. I’m on page 600—and there’s still no movie in sight. Over the years, so many people have come and gone, executives have made promises, key figures have passed away—it’s a long, sad and often ridiculous story.
Every now and then, you’ll see headlines about a Gilligan’s Island movie being in development, but nothing ever comes of it. The biggest problem? When we meet with studios, they act like they know better than us. Instead of trusting the people who actually created and understand the show, they dictate how it should be done. And, inevitably, they fail.
The smartest executive we ever dealt with was Deanne Barkley at NBC when we did Rescue from Gilligan’s Island. At the time, Fred Silverman was president of the network, and he was the one who bought it.
When we met with Deanne, we asked, “How would you like to work? Do you want to see an outline first? Notes? A first draft?” She simply said, “You know something? I don’t get Gilligan’s Island. I don’t know why it works. Why don’t you guys just go make the film?”
And that was it. We never spoke to her again about it—we just made the movie. And that’s how it should be done.
WW: And it’s incredible that it isn’t, given that both Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch have been handed down from generation to generation. For that reason alone, you’d think that there would be some respect.
LJS: My sister and I—we’ve written together several times—were discussing the idea of a Gilligan’s Island movie. We were at a meeting with an agency when this smug agent told us, “Nobody knows Gilligan’s Island anymore.” We disagreed. “We think they do.”
So he said, “I’ll prove it.” He called for an intern. The intern came in, and the agent asked, “Have you ever heard of Gilligan’s Island?” “Oh yeah, sure! The Skipper, Ginger, the whole thing.”
The agent frowned. “Give me another intern.” A second intern came in—same result. Frustrated, the agent said, “Fine. You said worldwide? Let’s really test it. Get Raj.” A guy from India walked in, and the agent asked, “Have you ever heard of Gilligan’s Island?” Without hesitation, Raj replied, “Sure. The Skipper, Ginger…” You don’t even have to make this stuff up.
WW: Considering the way that Gilligan’s Island has lived on, what’s your view of your father’s legacy?
LJS: He was always thrilled. He loved being who he was, and he was delighted with the continuing impact of the show, delighted with it. He was brought into the TV Hall of Fame, he got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
But the funny thing is that people come up to me all the time, saying, “It must have been great working with your father; he was a genius.” My dad was not a genius. My dad was very talented and very hardworking. I don’t know that I’ve ever met a genius. I consider Tennessee Williams a genius. Shakespeare was a genius, but there’s not very many of them. Dad had his hand on the pulse of what he thought popular entertainment should be. If that’s a mark of genius, then maybe that’s his genius, knowing that.
And then also just being totally passionate and tenacious about what he wanted to do and thrilled with the ratings. I mean, reviews meant nothing to him. When Gilligan was called the worst show in history or Brady Bunch, the worst show of all time, he didn’t care about that. He said, “My shows are not meant for the reviewers,” and now people are still writing that they were great. That’s what would make him happy.
Coming soon: Lloyd J. Schwartz remembers Sherwood Schwartz and his other longest-lasting creation, The Brady Bunch.
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