http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/05/04/obit.wyle.ap/index.html

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- George Wyle, who wrote the theme song to "Gilligan's Island" and directed music for singers including Andy Williams, has died at the age of 87.

Wyle also wrote the Christmas classic "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" and more than 400 other songs.

He died Friday of leukemia at the Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center in Tarzana, his son Jerry Weissman said.

"The Ballad of Gilligan's Island," which Wyle wrote with the show's creator and producer Sherwood Schwartz, became one of the most popular television theme songs. The show debuted on CBS in 1964 and ran until 1967, but its reruns remained popular for years.

"America doesn't want great music themes," Wyle once said of the song. "Just something it can remember."

In recent years, Wyle wrote music and lyrics and directed choirs for community groups and schools in Thousand Oaks, just north of Los Angeles.

"Music is a learning process. It's a reading process. Everybody gets a book of words, and we learn. It teaches them to work with other people. It teaches kids to get out and sing," he told the Daily News of Los Angeles in 1998.

Wyle was born Bernard Weissman in New York City and began playing piano professionally at clubs in New York's Catskill Mountains. He moved to Los Angeles in 1946 to write and conduct music for the "Alan Young Radio Show."

In Los Angeles, he worked as choral director for television shows such as "The Dinah Shore Show," "The Jerry Lewis Show" and "The Andy Williams Show." He also handled music for specials by magician David Copperfield, Carol Channing, and for the People's Choice Awards presentations.

Besides his son, Wyle is survived by a daughter, sister and brother.

Thats sad :(


You had me scared there though hwne I first saw this topci, I thougth u were talknig about Sherwood:eek:

Who is Sherwood?

Umm...Sherwood Schwartz...the creator of Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch.

Originally posted by Istillgotit
Thats sad :(


You had me scared there though hwne I first saw this topci, I thougth u were talknig about Sherwood:eek:


I Didn't. Cuz It Would Of Been More Telivised.But Thats Still Sad :(

Hi..I've tried to get on but coudln't due to lousy internet service, anyhow, back on.

About 10 years ago we lost one of the longer lvied composed of the show, whiel we're on this, HAWAII FIVE O's Morton Stevens. He's not the MOST long lived composer of the show-Gerald Fried is-John Williams has the longest after island life and fame--all three lasted thru the color era..

Stevens and Fried alternate credit in the color eps and it became real odd for me to hear selections (instrumental score NOT songs) credited one week to Fried, the next to Stevens,--the spooky electric organ music that is first heard when Gilligan encounters "the ghost" (Richard Kiel) in GHOST A -GO GO (march 24, 1966), is reprised heavily after that (heard i9in pairs, twice two times a time, in the first one as if to really make its first presence felt). Fried's listed for the music here but the next two eps.later, we meet the FRIENDLY PHYSICIAN (April 7, 1966, with ALLERGY TIME from March 31, 1966 sandwiched inbetween), a real scary epsidoe with lots of oppurtiny for tht eerie descending music. This time Morton Stevens got listed! But in the NEXT, V FOR VTIAMINS (aka GILLIGAN AND THE ORANGES, GILLIGAN AND THE BEANSTALK to fans, April14,1966-Sarah Michelle Gellar's birthday 11 years too earlY!) the music, credited AGAIn to Gerald Freid, returns, very apt for this episode. Also making its appearances in these, again except for the allery one (wehre it wouldn't be needed anyhow) is a sinister tune with a simply five note-fanfare, very familiar,perhaps the most familiar stoch sitcom music outside the Capitol Library (that's the library for Screen gems, Hanna-Barbera,CLokey,MY THREE SONS, WB LOONEY TUNES in fall 1958,etc.) . This Fried/Stevens piece goes "Da,Da da da DA, da da da Da da dad adAAAA"/..it's used in scens of Dr.Balinkoff's (Vito Scotti,also JAPANESE SAILOR) castle and later MEET THE METEOR (1966) when the metewor is shown, when Rory Calhoun hauls Gilligan away,(HUNTER,19067) and just last night in HIGH MAN ON THE TOTEM POLE (1967) when Gilligan thinks he's a headhunter because of his boomerang talents and the scene flips over to Mary Ann reporting some suspiciouds behavior and again when our hero chops the Kupaki head off! The muic's used elsewhere and is in different arrangements..

Some other Gilligan music is in TOPSY TURVY (November 1966), first appearance of a silly tropical piece that goes Deedle-deedle-DEEdle DEEEDLEE", very lightweight, Gilligan blows bubbles in next to last eppy, BANG BANG BANG (1967).

Like Hanna Barbera and Warner Bros.cartroons, the original live GILLIGAN, in the color eps.,anyway, had overlapping use of themes, and new ones were developed--by the mid-third season-----COURT MARTIAL (Jan.9, 1967-Bob Denver's 32nd.) the score was new for that episode (else it was introduced during the fall1 966 season--there WAS after the open, the tuba underneath the forlon skippr hwo thinks due to the braodcast that he's to blame for the shipwreck of the minnow).This tuba music goes ALL THE WAY BACK to the FIRST COLOR episode-Gilligan;'s MOTHER IN LAW when the skipper goes into a cave,thinking those beady eyes are Gilligan..It';s used in WILL THE REAL MR,.HOWELL that season when the impostor lugs himself onto land
. It also turns up in MEET THE METEOR also in 1966, when the Professor, Skipper and Gilligan are first seen in their anti-Meteor ray makeup! It returns (this tuba theme) in COURT MARTIAL under the skipper..even though the rest of the episode's underscore ahd just been introduced or was new to this.Oh yeah, at the end there's the afore-discussed GHOST A GO GO eerie organ music.I'm watching Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and Cruise is in front of the house to some eerie music that this movie itself has..(composed by a composer named Gyrogy Legiti).How ironic Gillig
an would have some goose bump music of its own (along with laughs in-betwenl-btw the haunted-castle iN FRIENDLY PHYSCIAN is DEFINITELY a goose bump scene..).Speaking of such stuff...the piano music of EYES WIDE SHUT's (whcih aside from some humorous moemnts IS a dramatic often thrilling flick) appearing on..very good job..it was always interesting how, like Kubrick, Schwartz for what was apparently a FLUFFY show, got some good unqiue music and compsoers..and let's also mention combining spooky music with (in GILLIGAN's case) laughs, a castle shot in V FOR VITAMINS-the "giant skipper" cast;le (as I said, following the untoppable FRIENDLY PHYSCIAN-this goes back to the Three Stooges,ABbott and Costello and laurel and hardy)...interesting how the music on the show was both funny and straight, even sexy when Mary Ann or Ginger came on the scene! By the spring of 1967, only the "spooky" Gilligan music remains from 1965-66, and the rest is more recent scoring. The 1964 B&W's seemed REAL stuck in a world of their own musically.One fianl thing: In the middle season, the episodes starting with the second color one broadcast, BEAUTY IS & BEAUTY DOES, a speeded up version of John Williams's cheery DadadaDAdadaDa that ends most epsiodes.

(BTW given the fair share of "spooky" Gilligan episodes and the use of music, I've ralways wondered what it would be like if say, Hitchcock, M.Night Shyamalan is), or Kubrick had written an episdoe in their own style,esp,with John Rich (who directed more acclaimed shows like ALL IN THE FAMILY & DICK VAN DYKE as well as Schwartz;s own BRADY BUNCH) , Jack Arnold (Many B flicks) an Richard Donner (:ETHALWEAPON) having directed some.

A lot of the music Gerald Fried wrote for the show sounded spooky to me. Even when it wasn't meant to.

I think Fried did more of the later shows (whereas Morton Stevens' music was more familiar sounding). His style was kind of like French Impressionistic music from the turn of the century.

Just the thought of that kind of music written in the 1960s was kind of scary. It was a ripe time for music.