BOAT SHOW - ‘Mary Ann’ sails into Vancouver

Dawn Wells became a pop-culture icon portraying Ginger's foil on Gilligan's Island

By John Mackie VANCOUVER SUN

Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island, will
appear with the S.S. Minnow at the Vancouver International
Boat show at BC Place

   Fifty years ago, Gilligan and the Skipper took the S.S. Minnow out on a three-hour tour. The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed, but thanks to the courage of the fearless crew the Minnow wasn't lost — it became a pop-culture icon, the TV series Gilligan's Island.

   The show only lasted from 1964 to 1967, but reruns have been syndicated all over the world and it's been translated into 30 languages.

   Dawn Wells beat out 300 women to land the role of Mary Ann, a wholesome farm girl from Kansas, who was a foil to Ginger, the sexy movie star played by Tina Louise.

   Now 75, she's in Vancouver for an appearance at the Van­couver International Boat Show at BC Place. She is appearing alongside the S.S. Minnow, which is now owned by Quality Foods, the Vancouver Island grocery chain.

   The effervescent Wells never made much money out of the series — she thinks she was paid $700 per week when it was on and doesn't receive residual royalties.

   This is a far cry from the profit made by Sherwood Schwartz, who produced the series.

   "I understand Mr. Schwartz made $90 million on the reruns alone," she says.

   Still, it's nice to be a pop cul­ture icon.

   "I get fan letters all the time,' she says.” I can't go anywhere in the world (without someone say­ing) Mary Ann! Mary Ann!' "

This includes the Vancou­ver Sun newsroom, where assignment editor Dan Cassidy instructed me to tell Wells that, "I always thought Mary Ann was hotter than Ginger."

   She gets told this a lot.

   "As a matter of fact, I've got a T-shirt that's a ballot that says `Ginger or Mary Ann, the ulti­mate dilemma,' " she says.

   "But it is the question. You can go anywhere and say `Ginger or Mary Ann,' you don't have to say what show it is everybody gets it. And I always win.

   "Somebody said `How do you like it?' “she laughs.”I don't know — I get 91 per cent of the votes! Why wouldn't I like it?" Asked what male character Mary Ann would have thought was the hottest, Gilligan, the Skipper or the Professor, she replies "the Professor, no question."

   Sadly, Russell Johnson, the actor that played the Professor, recently died.

   "He was a wonderful human being," says Wells.

   "We were very good friends. The first year we were `and the rest' (in the theme song). So we would send cards to each other, 'Love, and the rest.'

   "He was a lovely, lovely man. He had the best sense of humour of anyone, he just kept us in stitches. You would think Jim Backus would be. Gilligan was all physical comedy, he wasn't witty. But Russell was very witty."

   Wells was born and raised in Reno, Nevada, not Kansas. "Mary Ann came from Winfield, Kansas, Dawn came from the gambling capital of the world, (which had) legal prosti­tution and instant divorce," she laughs.

   "Now, how did that happen? But I was raised with Mary Ann values. Reno was a very good city to grow up in."

   She was Miss Nevada in 1959, and studied pre-med at Ste­phens College in Missouri and the University of Washington in Seattle. But she wanted to give acting a whirl, and landed the Mary Ann role. Asked if she had auditioned as Ginger as well, she laughed.

   "No, as a matter of fact," she says. "Never even considered it, they didn't want me.

   "There were three replace­ments — in the original pilot there were three secretaries, or schoolteachers. CBS said `Let's rewrite,' so they made a movie star, professor and Mary Ann.

Gilligan's Island cast: Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer, Tina
Louise; front, Russell Johnson, Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr.
and Dawn Wells

   "I tested with about 300 people in Los Angeles, and they were doing the same thing on the east coast. Ginger got cast first, and her agent negotiated for her to be in the position of billing right after the Howells. That's why the Professor and I were 'and the rest' the first year."

   The show was shot at various locales around Los Angeles. "We shot the footage, the still pictures, at the top of a mountain with pine trees,' she relates.

   "Which makes no sense. CBS Radford in Studio City is where the sound stage was, and we tried to film (the outdoor scenes) in Malibu, but it was too foggy. So they built a lagoon (for the island), about a mile from a freeway. About two years ago they filled it in for a parking lot."