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February 11: Here on Gilligan’s Isle

lawrencebush
February 11, 2012

Tina Louise (Blacker), who played ‘Ginger,’ the sexy shipwrecked actress on television’s Gilligan’s Island, was born in New York on this date in 1934. Her mother was a fashion model; her father, a candy-store owner; her stepfather, a wealthy doctor. Tina Louise’s early pursuit of a serious acting career was perpetually beset by modeling and pin-up offers and gossip column attention, yet she did achieve status as a stage and film actress with such leading men as Richard Widmark and Robert Ryan, and became a member of the Actors’ Studio. (“I was there the same time Joanne Woodward was,” she later told an interviewer. “Nobody mentions it about me, though.”) She also recorded four music albums in the late 1950s, one of which featured Coleman Hawkins on sax. Her role on Gilligan’s Island permanently typecast her as a sex object and permanently seared her image on the brains of millions of heterosexual men watching the show between 1964 and 1967 (while their sisters, wives and daughters prepared the feminist revolution). Yet a recent poll of 8,000 men at retroCrush indicated that 65 percent would opt to be shipwrecked not with Ginger but with Mary Ann, perhaps because of her less intimidating, girl-next-door persona. After Gilligan’s, Louise had roles on Kojak, Bonanza, Married . . . with Children, and All My Children, among many other television shows. To see Ginger and Mary Ann women in action, look below.

“I had a great time since I was 17. A great time.” —Tina Louise