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Because the theme tune of “Gilligan’s Island” reminds us earlier than each episode, 5 passengers set sail on a constitution boat from Hawaii for what ought to have been a three-hour tour. After all, that three-hour tour finally changed into three seasons of Gilligan, his captain, and the passengers being stranded on an “uncharted desert isle,” the place their boat, the S.S. Minnow, ran aground.
The ship seen stranded on the sands of the South Pacific island within the opening credit was really an actual boat, which was destroyed particularly for “Gilligan’s Island,” mystifying an area man within the course of. However Sherwood Schwartz’s sitcom really used a number of totally different fashions for the S.S. Minnow, which was revisited all through the CBS sequence because the castaways tried to repair it on numerous events. Alas, the small vessel was by no means totally restored, even after a valiant effort from the Professor (Russell Johnson) to attach the broken ship collectively within the season 1 episode “Goodbye Island,” which resulted within the ship falling aside once more after the glue turned out to be short-term.
All of which is fascinating sufficient for followers of the sequence, however the inspiration for the ship’s identify is maybe essentially the most fascinating tidbit in regards to the nice S.S. Minnow.
The S.S. Minnow is known as after a authorities regulator
Minnows are, in fact, small freshwater fish, which appear nearly as good an inspiration as any for the identify of the “Gilligan’s Island” boat. However these fish usually are not, in truth, the true motive why the S.S. Minnow is known as as such. As an archived publish on the web site of the College of Texas Faculty of Legislation explains, Sherwood Schwartz really named the boat after the U.S. Federal Communications Fee Chairman, Newton Minow, who in 1961 delivered a speech on the thirty ninth Annual Conference of the Nationwide Affiliation of Broadcasters (NAB). In that speech, Minow decried the business for making a TV panorama that he dubbed a “huge wasteland,” and implored networks to try for higher-quality programming — which they dutifully did.
For Schwartz, nevertheless, this capitulation to Minow’s calls for robbed particular person creators of their independence as networks had been all too pleased to stick to the calls for of the Federal Communications Fee Chairman. The “Gilligan’s Island” creator mentioned, “The yr [that I began working on ‘Gilligan’s Island’] was 1963, and the three networks [ABC, CBS, and NBC] had been already starting to make use of the dictatorial energy Newton Minow, Chairman of the Federal Communications Fee, had handed to them.” Schwartz’s response was to call the doomed vessel on his sitcom after Minow, with one crew member being quoted as saying:
“Nobody can say ‘Gilligan’s Island’ was with out hidden that means. I used to be stunned to seek out out not too long ago from Sherwood Schwartz that our shipwrecked vessel, the S.S. Minnow, was really named for somebody. It was so christened in doubtful honor of the person who, Sherwood insists, ‘ruined tv.'”
Sherwood Schwartz added an ‘n’ to Newton’ Minow’s identify for the Gilligan’s island boat
The Professor actor Russell Johnson additionally wrote in regards to the naming of the S.S. Minnow in his e-book “Right here on Gilligan’s Isle” (by way of MeTV), confirming that Sherwood Schwartz did certainly identify the vessel after Newton Minow. In the meantime, the present creator spoke to the Tv Academy Basis, revealing that CBS, on which “Gilligan’s Island” aired, had tried to govern the sequence behind his again, including further footage to the pilot — which Schwartz had already endured nice ache to write down — and yielding poor viewers testing because of this. Schwartz defined:
“[CBS] examined it as a result of they’d added footage with out making me conscious of it, as a result of I had resisted something besides the tune to open. Hunt Stromberg [then head of CBS programming] had employed different writers with out my information to write down scenes the place they had been packing, all of the totally different folks packing to go on this little boat […] and I used to be livid […] it was actually horrible.”
Schwartz ties this expertise on to Newton Minow, whose urging for networks to exert extra management allowed CBS to deal with “Gilligan’s Island” on this method. “That is community management for you,” mentioned the present creator, “which they by no means used to have earlier than Mr. Minow, who the boat is known as after by the best way.” Schwartz particulars how he named the S.S. Minnow after the FCC chairman himself, who he says is “the one who gave management of tv to the networks.” He continued:
“That is the place you bought the identify. It isn’t named after the fish, no. It is spelled in a different way, his identify. I spelled it just like the fish as a result of I could not spell it together with his identify. His identify solely has one ‘n’ in it, S.S. Minnow has two ‘n’s however that is what it is named after.”