After Sherwood Schwartz’s hit sitcom “Gilligan’s Island” wrapped in 1967, actress Tina Louise, who played the glamorous movie star Ginger Grant, was finished. While most of Louise’s co-stars would return for “Gilligan’s Island” TV movies and spinoffs, she would stay away from the franchise, pursuing other film and TV projects as her whims dictated. Louise’s refusal to make more “Gilligan’s Island” after 1967 led to persistent rumors that she hated the show and didn’t enjoy her time on it. While Louise might have been a little cold to her co-stars, she has revealed that she never resented them for any reason, and actually very much enjoyed her time on “Gilligan’s Island.”
After “Gilligan’s Island,” Louise starred in several high-profile films, including the Matt Helm spy spoof “The Wrecking Crew,” the sci-fi horror film “The Stepford Wives,” and the made-for-TV sequel “Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby.” Her most recent performance came in 2019 in a film called “Tapestry.” Louise, now 90, is the only surviving member of the “Gilligan’s Island” cast.
Because she was doing so well for herself, Louise repeatedly refused to return for many extensions of “Gilligan’s Island.” Louise didn’t appear on the animated show “The New Adventures of Gilligan” (1974) or the animated sci-fi spinoff “Gilligan’s Planet” (1982). She also wasn’t in the movies “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island” (1978), “The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island” (1979), or “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island” (1981). Her character Ginger, however, was present for all of these spinoffs; it would be hard to explain why Ginger was able to escape from the island while her co-stars all remained stranded.
This means that multiple actresses had to step in for Louise, including, in at least one case, her old co-star Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann.
Ginger replacements #1 through #3
And TV history buffs will tell you, “Gilligan’s Island” was a huge hit, despite being pretty widely reviled by critics. Although it only lasted three seasons, “Gilligan’s Island” landed a pretty sweet syndication deal, allowing reruns to appear on one station or another for decades. “Gilligan’s Island” became a ubiquitous pop presence for multiple generations, with many kids seeing the bulk of the series without even trying.
As such, by 1974, interest in the series was still running high, and Sherwood Schwartz and Filmation created the animated spinoff “The New Adventures of Gilligan.” The new series more or less continued the original series uninterrupted, featuring the same premise and all the same characters. Ginger, however, went from having red hair to being a steel platinum blonde. The new Ginger was played by prolific voice actress Jane Webb, who played various well-known pop characters across all of Filmation’s catalog. As it so happens, Dawn Wells also didn’t return for “New Adventures” to voice Mary Ann. She was also played by Jane Webb.
In 1978, there were still vocal “Gilligan’s” fans, and the cast all returned to their roles, this time in live action, for the TV movie “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island.” Yes, the castaways were rescued, although fate ultimately would take them back to sea and see them stranded on the same island. Wells was back and Mary Ann, although prolific TV actress Judith Baldwin now played Ginger. Baldwin also played Ginger in the sequel “The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island” in 1979.
For the goofy, goofy movie “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island” — which featured not only the titular basketball team but an evil army of basketball robots — Baldwin stepped away and Constance Forslund took her place. She, too, has enjoyed a long and prolific TV career, most recently appearing on the series “Baskets.”
Gingers #4 and #5
And the culture at large still wasn’t done with Gilligan, even after all the silly Globetrotters nonsense. In 1982, Schwartz created a second animated series called “Gilligan’s Planet,” which was more directly connected to the original series and to “New Adventures” than it was to the live-action TV movies. On the show, the castaways built a spacecraft (!) and sailed to a lost planet somewhere in the galaxy. The castaways were also given a space alien pet called Bumper (voiced by producer Lou Scheimer). The entire cast returned, sans Louise, to reprise their roles once again. Dawn Wells, also playing Mary Ann, stepped in to voice Ginger.
The final actress to play Ginger is only included on a technicality, as she didn’t really play the Ginger Grant we all know and love. In the original, unaired pilot episode for “Gilligan’s Island,” Russell Johnson, Dawn Wells, and Tina Louise hadn’t been hired yet, and the show instead featured three different characters besides the Professor, Mary Ann, and Ginger. Instead, it was a high school teacher played by John Gabriel, and a pair of secretaries played by Nancy McCarthy and Kit Smythe. The secretaries were named Bunny and Ginger, meaning Smythe technically played Ginger first. She was, however, a completely different character than the movie star that Louise would play. She just happened to have the same name. The original pilot finally aired to the public on October 16, 1992.
Louise has, as far as I have been able to determine, never commented on the performances of Smythe, Wells, Forslund, Baldwin, or Webb. We, as fans, can comment on their performances all we like, however.
