by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 15, 2008   Last Updated: February 16, 2008

It was 34 years after "Gilligan's Island" left the air - and just four years before the death of its star, Bob Denver, at the age of 70. In 2001 "Surviving Gilligan's Island" reunited three cast-members - Dawn Wells, Russell Johnson, and Bob Denver - to remember their days creating a television classic.

In its own way, the shows actors were thrown together, just like the castaways on their fictitious television island. The two actors playing Mr. Howell and The Skipper are shown in flashback bonding over games of golf - and found their own moments of real-life comedy. ("Mr. Howell" concedes a contest to see who could hit the golf ball furthest - but only after a stranger arrives to complain that a golf ball smashed his car window!) Dawn Wells, the actress who played Mary-Ann, later worries about the health of the aging actor, and in the next decade Jim Backus reveals that he's developed Parkinson's disease. When the 68-year-old actor arrives for the filming of "The Harlem Globetrotter's on Gilligan's Island," there's a strangely poignant moment. When the camera lights go off, the aging scene-stealer asks with bewilderment... "Am I through?"

"You'll never be through," Wells replies.

And it wasn't just Gilligan's character that charmed the others on the island. The actor who played him, 29-year-old Bob Denver, single-handedly changes the lyrics for the show's opening theme song. It ended by introducing "The Professor and Mary-Ann" in its second and third seasons, but the singers had originally simply ended the list of castaways abruptly, singing "And the rest." Denver threatened to demand that his name be removed from the front of the credits, and moved to the end - unless the characters of his two co-stars were equally included in the theme song!

The movie includes an inspiring story about Natalie Schafer - who was nearly 70 by the time the show left the air. And one of its most charming stories involves Alan Hale, the actor who ultimately played the Skipper. He's asked to audition after the show's producer overhears his wonderful laugh in a Los Angeles restaurant. Trapped on the set of a cowboy movie in Arizona, he hitchhikes to Las Vegas and catches a plane to Los Angeles to shoot his audition - still laughing delightedly at the show's script. As the director insists that he's looking for chemistry, Bob Denver leaps into the Skipper's arms. Hale laughs again, then ad libs, "Hey there, little buddy!" And the rest was TV history.

Ironically, the actors on "Gilligan's Island" are played by...other actors. But the stories they recreate are genuinely intriguing and entertaining - and the film finds a use for its original cast members. Russell Johnson, who played the Professor, joins Denver and Wells to introduce the recreated scenes with his own humorous commentary. He responds to one of the most frequently-asked questions about the series: why a smart man like the Professor couldn't patch the tiny hole in the castaways' shipwrecked boat.

"If you were marooned on an island with Ginger and Mary Ann," he answers, "would you be trying to escape?"

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