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Gilligan's Island was an American TV sitcom from the 1960s. Early episodes were filmed in black-and-white; later episodes in color. The theme song for the show 'Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip...' is familiar to many, and was intentionally written to give new views a capsule summary of the unusually situation the castaways find themselves in. A ballad was played at the closing of the show after the invariably unsuccessful attempts of the castaways to leave the island.
The Gilligan of the show's name is the hapless deckhand. Other characters are the 'Skipper' (referred to as Jonas Grumby in the pilot), the 'Professor' (referred to as Roy Hinkley in the pilot), millionaires Mr. and Mrs. Thurston B. Howell III, movie star Ginger Grant, and farm girl Mary Ann Summers. The show's plots revolved around the characters' failed attempts to get off the island that they have been shipwrecked on.
In Episode 96, "The Pigeon", the island was said to be located 300 miles southeast of Honolulu. The Great circle geodetic equation places this at 18.2N 154.7W, only 75 miles from the Big Island. In one episode the fictional professor quoted an exact position of 10N 110W, which is generally discounted as it places the island closer to Mexico and 3100 miles from Hawaii.
One of the astounding things about the show is that the Professor is a genius able to construct practically anything from palm fronds and coconuts, but he is unable to build a boat. Another strange and puzzling fact is that the S.S. Minnow was on a three hour tour—so why did the passengers carry all of their luggage on the trip?
According to the show's creator and cast the name "S.S. Minnow" was actually named after Newton Minow, who was chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission in 1961. In a much-publicized speech, he called television a "vast wasteland." The boat was named after the man who, Gilligan's Island producer Sherwood Schwartz insists, "ruined television." Minow gave networks authority and placed the power of programming in the hands of the networks. He did this after Gilligan's Island was started.
The last new episode of the show aired on September 4, 1967. In the series, the castaways never succeeded in leaving the island. However, in later made for TV movies, the castaways did successfully leave the island, but they had difficulty reintegrating into society. After being marooned and rescued once again, the Howell's converted the island into a resort which was saved due to the timely intervention of the Harlem Globetrotters.
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