How Russell Johnson Felt About Working With Tina Louise

The traditional Nineteen Sixties sitcom “Gilligan’s Island” follows a handful of very completely different people who all grow to be marooned collectively when their ship, the Minnow, runs aground on a abandoned island. The sequence ran for 3 seasons and was reasonably common throughout its preliminary run, solely to grow to be much more common in time by means of syndication. Sadly for a few of the stars of the sequence, filming “Gilligan’s Island” itself was sort of like being on that island, because the actors have been in fixed shut contact with each other and there have been some severely conflicting personalities. 

Actor Russell Johnson, who had the extremely essential function because the Professor, steadily the voice of cause on the island, sadly, got here to remorse taking part in the character or starring on “Gilligan’s Island” within the first place. He, sadly, grew to become typecast as a result of present’s recognition, which derailed his profession a bit in his eyes, however in keeping with a few of his recollections in his 1993 memoir, “Right here on Gilligan’s Island” (through MeTV), it feels like he additionally had some regrets as a result of a little bit of a character battle with Tina Louise, who performed Ginger the film star. 

In line with Johnson, Louise did not like taking part in Ginger though the function had been tailor-made particularly for her abilities, which he discovered puzzling. Ginger was vampy however harmless, a sort of idealized Marilyn Monroe sort who stole the hearts of audiences. Whereas the function did result in Louise being typecast as nicely, having issue discovering roles that weren’t simply carbon copies of Ginger, Johnson makes it sound like she took her distaste for the character out on her co-stars even throughout the present’s filming. He defined that she might be relatively moody on set, saying, “On any given day, we did not know whether or not Tina was going to be Ginger Grant or Eva Grubb.” 

Eva was a personality that Louise performed for one episode who deliberately got here to the island to attempt to get away from civilization. Whereas Ginger was outgoing, bubbly, and candy, Eva was a misanthropic and manipulative curmudgeon. That is not a really type comparability, although Johnson might need had some financial causes for his malcontent. 

In his memoir, Johnson defined that the forged was supplied the possibility to make some huge cash, however Louise was the one holdout, costing all of them:

“When our present started drawing good audiences, we have been all approached about making forged appearances. The cash would have been phenomenal for all of us. In simply two weekends of appearances, we might have made hundreds. The supply was for all seven of us or no supply in any respect. However for some cause, Tina was positively not .”

Being stored from making a complete lot of cash is certainly one cause to be grumpy together with your former co-star, and since Johnson had nothing however good issues to say about the remainder of his castmates, it feels like a few of his different beef with Tina Louise might need had extra to do with the cash than along with her precise habits. For her half, Louise has cleared up the rumor that she hated engaged on the sequence, so possibly no matter discontent there was between the 2 actors was blown a bit out of proportion when Johnson seemed again upon all of it. Hopefully, issues weren’t actually too unhealthy between them, as a result of the lighthearted enjoyable of “Gilligan’s Island” should not make anybody depressing.