Who Is Still Alive From ‘Gilligan’s Island’?

It’s been over 60 years since we first sat right back and heard the tale of the fateful trip that led Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., and the rest of the crew to get stuck on Gilligan’s Island. The show thrived in reruns for decades, and is still minting new fans on streaming — but which of the castaways are still alive today?
Tina Louise (91)
Ginger

Everett Collection
The sad news is that Tina Louise, who played “the movie” star, Ginger Grant, is the only cast member of Gilligan’s Island who’s still with us. Louise, who was born Tina Blacker in 1934 in New York City, started acting in her late teens, and appeared on Broadway in plays including the 1956 musical Lil’ Abner. She also modeled, and was photographed for 1958 and 1959 issues of Playboy. She made her film debut in 1958 alongside Buddy Hackett and Vic Morrow in the film God’s Little Acre, before going on to star in a number of Italian films, and later joined The Actors Studio and studied with Lee Strasberg.
Louise had returned to Broadway when she got the call that she had landed the role of movie star Ginger Grant on Gilligan’s Island — another actress had filmed the pilot, but producers decided she wasn’t right for the part, and Louise was. Louise said in 2024 that she was encouraged to take the part by a friend, who told her the show would “only last six months,” giving Louise plenty of time to go back to performing in theater.
Though there were rumors throughout the years that Louise came to hate the role, and thought the rest of her career was ruined due to typecasting, she denied this in a 2020 interview: “I loved doing my part, especially after they really started writing for my character, originally billed as a ‘Marilyn Monroe’ type of character. A different director took over and really started to write for my character. I really loved my character.”
Louise never joined the rest of the cast for any of the Gilligan’s Island sequel films; the role of Ginger was always played by another actress. But she did reunite with Bob Denver, Dawn Wells and Russell Johnson, plus series creator Sherwood Schwartz, on a 1995 episode of Roseanne.
After Gilligan’s, Louise returned to film, appear in movies like the 1968 Dean Martin vehicle The Wrecking Crew, 1975’s The Stepford Wives, and the 1991 Brad Pitt film Johnny Suede. Her most recent film role is a 2019 movie called Tapestry.
Her post-Gilligan TV credits include guest spots on Bonanza, Kojak, CHiPs, Knight Rider, All My Children, and a five-episode arc on Dallas. Her most recent TV appearance was in 1999, on the police procedural L.A. Heat.
She’s also taken up writing, and released a memoir about her childhood, Sunday, in 2024.
Louise married once, to actor and talk show host Les Crane, from 1966 to 1971. They had one child, screenwriter and novelist Caprice Crane.
What happened to the rest of the castaways?

Everett Collection
Jim Backus was best known as wacky millionaire Thurston Howell III, but also appeared as James Dean‘s father in Rebel Without a Cause, and had one season of his own sitcom, The Jim Backus Show, in 1960. During and after Gilligan’s, he also repeatedly voiced the cartoon character Mr. Magoo. Backus passed in 1989, from pneumonia, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, at age 76.
Alan Hale Jr., who had a career in Western films and musicals (including It Happened on Fifth Avenue) before donning the Skipper’s cap, died in 1990, at the age of 68, from thymus cancer.
Natalie Schaefer acted on stage and in several movies before becoming the whimsical Lovey Howell on Gilligan’s. After the show wrapped, she had roles on multiple soaps, including Love of Life and Search for Tomorrow. Schaefer died of liver cancer in 1990, at age 90.
Bob Denver, who was already well-known as Maynard G. Krebs from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis before becoming the Skipper’s “little buddy,” passed away from complications following throat cancer surgery in 2005, at the age of 70.
Russell Johnson fought in World War II as a member of the U.S. Army Air Forces, before using the G.I. Bill to pay for acting school. He began his career as a guest star, making two memorable appearances in The Twilight Zone, before he became The Professor. Johnson died from kidney failure at age 89, in 2014.
Dawn Wells, who was Miss Nevada 1959 and a popular TV guest star before landing the role of cheerful Mary Ann Summers, published a book in 2014 called What Would Mary Ann Do? A Guide to Life. She passed away six years later, in December 2020, from COVID-19, shortly after it was revealed that she was struggling with dementia. She was 82.

Classic TV Shows of the ’50s & ’60s
September 2020
Test your knowledge, from Bonanza and Gunsmoke to I Love Lucy, I Dream of Jeannie, Star Trek and more fun TV of the 1950s and 1960s.
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