1988 reunion transcript

[ph1l]

This is a transript of the 1988 Late Show reunion from the Ask Morty site. The whole segment would have been great to hear or better still, to see.
Some of the dialogue was hard to pick up but I know some clever people will be able to help out and fill in the blanks.

Hi. This is Morty of “Ask Morty”. In 1988 the cast of Gilligan’s Island got together on the Late Show with Ross Schafer. This is the last appearance that all seven castaways and Sherwood Schwartz ever made together. So sit right back for a fifteen minute tour with the original seven castaways, Ross Schafer and Sherwood Schwartz.

RS: Now was Gilligan a first name or a last name?
BD: Well on the show we never said. But I asked Sherwood Schwartz the writer and he said if we were ever going to use it, it would have been Willy Gilligan.
RS: Willy Gilligan?
BD: Willy Gilligan. Yeah.

AH: The Skipper has become my alter ego.
RS: When you got this script Alan and you saw the character was it one that you fell in love with right away or could you see yourself playing it?
AH: Well it was placed so very nicely. Actually you know it was rather an amazing story. I was in St. George, Utah, doing a picture with Audie Murphy and I got this call to come down. Well we had a small budget picture and it was kind of a difficulty as to how I was going to get there. There were no planes out of there. There were no rent-a-cars or anything. We weren’t up for studio cars. So I went out on the highway with my thumb and I hitch hiked out of St. George, got down to Las Vegas, flew from Las Vegas in to CBS and when I got in there they had had some procedure going on and Mr. Sherwood Schwartz, our creator, a man who I highly respect, he said Alan he said really in many ways, he said, I have written this story for you. Now he said if you’d like to be the Skipper, you are, but I would like to see you in contrast with some of the people that we’re going to use. So I did this test and it all seemed to work out very well He had a fine point that he wanted to work out between Gilligan and myself. The fact that I was always on him but the fact is, I loved him.
BD: …?…
RS: You’ve taken a lot of beatings on the head for that.
AH: So it was a kind of a fine point that he was after and he saw to it…to see in me what he wanted. In other words I did what I was supposed to do but he saw the way he liked it. So I became the Skipper.
RS: Now you’re very much like the Skipper actually in real life. You do love boats and…
AH: Yes. I’ve got to say my goodness sakes that’s nicely put, the way you put that.
RS: What are you doing today? I understand it’s something to do with travel, isn’t it?
AH: Oh I have yes, it’s so nice of you to mention it, I have a Alan Hale’s quality leisure and travel now. I’m very pleased with that and I also have a product that I’m putting on the market called Nulon which is a wondrous product. It’s a teflon based product like an additive for a car but it goes steps beyond so we really don’t say we’re an additive but we treat the car. In other words a Nulon treatment is really rather exciting because it delves into molecular reaction and all that. It dramatically changes the characteristics of an engine and I’m most pleased about it.
RS: …?…

TL: My pleasure.
RS: Yeah. This is …
TL. This is exciting.
RS: It is kind of exciting isn’t it? It’s exciting for us because we see you now after these many years.
TL: Uh huh
RS: What did this show do for you?
TL: Well I had a lot of fun
RS: Did you have some fun?
TL: Uh huh
RS: Uh huh
TL: And I had made a lot of friends out there
RS: Because you had…your movie career was going and this came along as I understand
TL: Yeah, I was doing a play
RS: You were doing a play
TL: “Fade Out, Fade In” with Carol Burnett
RS: Ok
TL: And one day I got a telephone call from Ethyl …?… she said do you think that you could do sort of a Marilyn Monroe-Lucille Ball character.
RS: Sure.
TL: And I said yeah. And so I left “Fade Out, Fade In” and…
RS: And that’s how … ?… happened.
TL: I thought it was going to last for one year and I spent three years.
RS: Three years there. Now you had gone on to other things. You have a new movie that’s out now, don’t you?
TL: Well no. I have a film that I completed this summer called “The Pool”. Well I did the film this summer. It’s with a…been done by a new director. He’s name is Luis Aira and we did it in Boston. It’s a very unusual film. It’s a…
(Audience member claps)
RS: I see Boston’s cheering
TL: Ah. It’s metaphysical very suspenseful love story. It’s a story that goes backwards and forwards in time and there’s a young girl who plays my part at sixteen and there’s a little boy who plays the leading man’s part. So it’s quite interesting. Very excited about it.
RS: Well good luck with that. Could you before…before we take a break here, could you give us a little bit of Ginger. Do you remember any of the…
TL: Oh yeah, yeah
RS: Ok
TL: Let me see. There was one time that the Skipper said to me, “you know Ginger, I’ve got a problem, I’ve got a real problem. You’re a girl aren’t you?” And Ginger said, “Well, if you don’t understand that Skipper, then you really do have a problem.”
RS: Thank you Tina.

RS: Two more people who were on that ill fated three hour cruise are with us. The Professor and Mary Ann. Would you please say hello to Dawn Wells and Russell Johnson. You two were really something. In the first season you were known as “all the rest”
RJ: That’s right. The rest.
RS: Yeah, and then in the second season it was (sings) the Professor and Mary Ann. How did that happen? How did you finally come to the forefront and get some credit in this?
RJ: Well they realised just how wonderful we really were. Simple as that.
RS: Why was it you were never interested in these women? They would be trying to…were you so interested in getting them off the island?
DW: I like that question
RJ: Well it was in the script. If the Professor had been interested in either of, any of the women, I think it would have made a whole different.. opened up a whole different can of peas. You had to keep the man asexual and interested in his lepidoptera and his flora and fauna.
RS: Sure. All the scientific stuff.
RJ: Sure
RS: All right. Now I want to ask…I’ll ask this collectively of the two of you. After you do a show like this are you typecast does it limit you to go on to other things or was that not a problem? I’ll ask you Dawn.
DW: Oh I think so. Very definitely. My feeder training was were I originally began so when Gilligan’s Island went off the air I went back to the stage figuring had I stayed in Los Angeles I probably would have been playing a character like Mary Ann for a few years. So I’ve been basically doing theatre for quite a while and now I’m too old to play Mary Ann so it’s all right. I rode the hurdle, it’s ok.
RS: Do people still recognise you Russell from the show?
RJ: Oh absolutely. I mean it’s just an ongoing thing. It’s absolutely astounding.
RS: What do they say to you? What do they want to know from you?
RJ: Oh they…the people ask me do you remember when you did this or when you did that or how did you do some of the…and I can’t remember any of that.
RS: Well…
RJ: It’s gone.
RS: Of course…?…
DW: And I get stumped on trivia, all the time.
RS: Oh you do?
DW: I don’t know the answers. You told me Jonas Grumby today on the television…radio show we did today. I’d never heard the Skipper’s real name.
RS: That’s the Skipper’s real name was Jonas Grumby. How many of you knew that?

RS: What surprised me most about you Natalie was when we were talking backstage, you have a genuine rich accent.
JB: She sure does
RS: She does
NS: Well I have to have. It’s in this book
RS: It’s in this book. Was this a fun deal for you.
JB: It was just fun
NS: I adored it
JB: We had such fun together and we miss being…?…
NS: We worked so well together. All those years we never had one word that was…one cross word, one word where…nothing…we agreed on everything.
RS: Did you really?
NS: And I learned to ad lib from him.
RS: Did you ad lib much in the series?
JB: Yeah, a lot of that.
RS: Did you really? Just throw a script out.
JB: …?…The words were so delightful.
RS: Yeah
NS: Sherwood’s here.
JB: He is.
RS: Yes. We’re going to talk with the creator in just a little while. Now how did you juggle being Mr. Magoo and the series all at one time.
JB: It was very easy. Magoo I did in about an hour. They’d show me the figures and what I was supposed to do and I’d do it.
RS: Really?
JB: Yeah. And the things that Magoo ad libbed and you couldn’t hear the things that were good because a lot of Mr. Magoo is very dirty.
RS: Oh
JB: They never thought to censor a cartoon and I say “Oh by George, heh heh heh”
NS: I’m sorry I missed it.
JB: …?…
RS: I’m curious how much money the Howell’s took on this three hour cruise because you were trying to pay off everybody. Throughout that entire series they had a hundred thousand dollars for every cast member once and fifty thousand dollars if Gilligan would carry something for you and there were some things…these are things a Howell doesn’t do.
JB: What is that?
RS: A Howell never does any work requiring manual labour.
JB: Of course not.
RS: A Howell is always first.
JB: First, last and always.
RS: First, last and always. A Howell is a servant to no man.
JB: Oh God, say it again.
RS: You really didn’t overact. You were…everything that you said really fit your character.
JB: Yes. We had a license to steal.
RS: Yeah
NS: Yes but that’s what acting is.
JB: It’s really having fun. I think the critics may have fooled themselves when they taking us too seriously.
RS: Well that’s what we were talking about here. Why the critics weren’t that much in love with it. It just proved year after year it’d stand up.
JB: I found out that Gregory Peck was a big fan of it.
RS: Oh was that right?
JB: Yes. He came up to me one time and I never met him before and he says, “Thurston Howell?” and I said yes. He said my favourite show, I wouldn’t miss it.
RS: Really?
NS: I think that’s awfully polite.
JB: I wrote a book during our….
RS: You wrote a book here.
JB: It’s called “Forgive us our Digressions” by Jim and Henny Backus. That’s my other wife.
RS: And that’s your book. That’s your other wife.

RS: You know we have the creator, the man who was behind Gilligan’s Island. He’s here tonight. I want to introduce you to him. He is the producer and the creator of Gilligan’s Island. His name is Sherwood Schwartz. Everybody out here has glowing reviews about you. They all love you.
SS: Well they’re sensible people.
JB: The Mary Poppins of Gilligan’s Island.
RS: Of course, you know, the writers strike that we have on now has crippled television for all in tense and purposes. You had the scripts ready how far in advance for this show?
SS: Well we always had …?…at least 6 or 8 final scripts in hand.
RS: Ahead? You were that far ahead
SS: Plus many story lines and synopses.
RS: So what? Would you allow…now we talked with Jim here. He said he could ad lib. Did you allow that now and then or?…
SS: He’s very rich.
JB: That’s very funny.
RS: So that was…was that a part of it? If they had a line that they work with it?
SS: If they had a better line, it was fine with me.
RS: It was fine with you?
SS: Yuh
RS: You know I also asked them what episode they remembered most and everyone of the castaways said it was the lion episode.
SS: We almost lost Bob Denver in that episode.
BD: Lion food.
RS: Lion food, yeah. What happened?
SS: Well we had a great big real lion. It was washed ashore. A lot of things got washed ashore.
RS: Yeah.
SS: And this lion was washed ashore and Bob was terrified and hid in a hut and packed everything in the hut against the door so the lion couldn’t get in.
RS: Sure.
SS: The only problem was the lion was in the bed in the hut. So then when he went to sit on the bed he reaches back and begins to feel this furry…something and takes a look and leaps off the bed. You can not leap when there’s a lion around.
RS: Oh no. Of course not.
SS: They don’t like it. And he leaped for Bob and except for the fact that the bed was not secured, it was moveable.
RS: Oh I see.
SS: And the lion lost his purchase on…in that move and leaped for Bob and missed by about two or three feet or he’d have landed right on him.
RS: Oh my.
SS: I said, “Bob are you ok?” He says, “Yeah, let’s do it again.” That’s exactly what he said.
RS: Really? Well there’s a paycheck hanging in the balance, that’s why.
SS: Oh I wouldn’t want to think…
RS: I love these kind of stories when you…of things that happen behind the scenes. Bob you remember anything else that…
BD: I remember Jim Backus had to work with a big parrot, you know, big live parrot and he didn’t really want to work with it too much. Did you?
JB: No, no
BD: No but he…but all morning he had him on his arm here and he was feeding him sunflower seeds.
JB: …?….
BD: Near the end of the morning he didn’t have the seeds in his hand and the parrot, instead of taking his seed, took his thumb. I never heard that language in my life. That parrot went whoaaa.
JB: The parrot gets residuals.
RS: I also heard there was a story that you fell out of a tree Alan?
AH: Yes that’s right. There was a branch that was supposed to, kind of, break a little and throw me and so forth and so on. Well it broke a little but it broke at the wrong time and so I was twelve feet up in the air and I fell down…fell out of the tree backwards and of course broke my fall with my right wrist, so to speak, and it fractured my wrist but I finished the season and then I went to see the Churchill Downs …?… the Kentucky Derby and I had this big cast on my arm and of course my dear little lady had to wear a football helmet at night because everytime I rolled over…
RS: Bang her on the head.
AH: So she was doing Gilligan all over again.

RS: I’ve got some questions. These are trivia questions I’d love to ask.
DW: We’ll try.
RS: Now Sherwood, you probably know the answers to these.
SS: Maybe.
DW: Maybe not.
RS: All right we’ll see. How many college degrees did the professor have?
RJ: I haven’t the slightest idea.
RS: Do you know, Sherwood?
SS: Yeah I happen to know.
RS: How many?
SS: Six.
RS: He had six college degrees and couldn’t get…
BD: And couldn’t build a boat.
RS: Couldn’t build a boat.
SS: One of the degrees was not in boat building.
RS: Right.
SS: None of the degrees was in boat building.
RS: None of them were in…let me ask another one. How about the…who was Ginger’s room mate in Hollywood? Back in Hollywood. She talked about it…she talked about a room mate…you don’t remember?…yes, it was in several episodes.
TL: I’ve got no idea at all.
NS: Who keeps track of room mates?
RS: Debbie Dawson was the answer..
JB: Debbie Dawson.
RS: Debbie Dawson. How about this one. You may know this one. Who…Mary Ann belonged to a club. What club was that?
BD: Farmers…
DW: Four Eight
RS: You got that one. I’ll put Bob on the spot. You had a pet back home and it was a turtle. Do you remember the turtle’s name?
BD: Walter.
DW: Herman.
BD: It was Herman.
RS: Now …?…what was the perfume that you used? Yeah that’s really tough.
NS: I never used anything but …?… .
RS: That may have been but you also used one called “Gold Dust”
NS: Oh well of course I had to use that.
RS: Yeah, ok, all right, I’ll ask you another one. Listen, do you know where you kept your money? In which banks, Mr Howell.
JB: …?… National.
RS: No
JB: And Fort Knox.
RS: This is very…this is really funny. He kept it in the First, Second and Third National banks. I like that, I like that one. How many blankets were on board the Minnow? Do you remember Alan?
AH: Ah well, we had a blanket policy, we had…
RS: You remember?
AH: Gee I don’t know what. Five blankets
RS: Missed by one. There were four blankets. And they did everything with four blankets. Well not quite everything but enough for their cabin anyway.

RS: I tell you, this has been a lot of fun, you guys. This has been a delight for all of us to see all of you back in one arena again. We thank all of you.

That’s all for Gilligan’s reunion. Check back at www dot ask morty dot com for more talking trivia.

[gilligan fanatic]

thats great ph1!. Thats to bad that we can't see it. Maybe some day we will all be able to see it. A few months ago on Ebay somebody had it on DVD. I wish I had bought it. Maybe it will be back again

[Munsters#1]

I know this is silly, but back in high school in the late 70's, we used to goof around in class. Some kids were throwing spit balls, and I shouted "Gilligan" in the Skipper's voice. The teacher turned around and said, "Go to the office, little buddy." I laughed all the rest of that day. Of course, my mother didn't laugh when she had to sign the little yellow slip, so I could serve the detention the next day.

[gilligan fanatic]

Originally Posted by Munsters#1

I know this is silly, but back in high school in the the late 70's, we used to goof around in class. Some kids were throwing spit balls, and I shouted "Gilligan" in the Skipper's voice. The teacher turned around and said, "Go to the office, little buddy." I laughed all the rest of that day. Of course, my mother didn't laugh when she had to sign the little yellow slip, so I could serve me detention the next day.