Lil Buddy Dead at 70

[cjolley]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/0....ap/index.html

Bob Denver, whose portrayal of goofy first mate Gilligan on the 1960s television show "Gilligan's Island" made him an iconic figure to generations of TV viewers, has died, his agent confirmed Tuesday. He was 70.

Work!?

[ZokesPro]

Used to watch that show when I was aged in single digits. RIP Lil buddy, RIP.

[Helevitia]

damn, that sucks RIP

[Dr Mordrid]

Busted a gut watching that show though much of its run.

RIP Gilligan...

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian R.]

I liked him better in the Dobbie Gillis show as Maynard G. Krebs

[degrub]

and now my kids are watching him on DVD reruns...don';t think i'll break the news. ..

[KvHagedorn]

He brought a lot of happiness to lots of folks.. I remember watching Gilligan reruns for years as a kid, and it was just a lot of silly, innocent fun. A lot more refreshing than cynical cartoons or sex and the city. The world now is just sad..

[cjolley]

Thanks, Gilligan: In praise of the blithe idiocy of Bob Denver

http://www.slate.com/id/2125880/

reel time
Thanks, Gilligan
In praise of the blithe idiocy of Bob Denver.
By David Edelstein
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005, at 4:46 PM PT

I know, I know: It's depressing in this horrible week in which thousands of real human beings have found themselves castaways in their own watery city to have two eulogies in the same magazine for Gilligan, Bob Denver, the ultimate sailor-who-never-was-or-ever-could-be. My colleague Dana Stevens has written well and truly on Gilligan's Island and its title character's blithe idiocy—and on the actor's relentless buoyancy despite, by all accounts, a fairly dark temperament. On camera, though, he was cheerfulness incarnate. His Maynard G. Krebs in Dobie Gillis was a sanitized, de-sexualized Beatnik. And his Gilligan was the perfect mascot for the ultimate escapist sitcom: one that flouted the rules of logic (all those clothes for a three-hour tour?); one that remained happily divorced from its tumultuous time and place; and, most important, one that suggested that Darwin's theory of natural selection—popularly known as survival of the fittest—needn't be as cruel as all that. Despite the castaways' efforts to go back to civilization, we knew that they had it much better where they were. They had created an ideal society in which every day was an occasion for sharing, in which the conflict consisted of being whapped by a cap and was never, ever bruising. ("Skipper, watch out for that—" BONK! "Thanks, Gilligan.")

That and an endless supply of coconut cream pies.

Am I being too fanciful? Ah, but there is a reality that slaps you in the kisser. In the days before TV actors saw anything on the back-end, the cast of Gilligan's Island never had a share of its immense syndication profits. Several would barely eke by—appearing everyday on television, beloved by millions, yet unable to work because indelibly typed: castaways of a different kind.

Years later, Dawn Wells (Mary Ann) capitalized on the popularity of the show with a tropical cookbook that contained no fewer than three recipes for coconut cream pie. But she was lucky. Tina Louise (Ginger) was so bitter (she signed up thinking the show was going to revolve around her) that she didn't even appear in the terrible late '70s TV movies and the short-lived Love Boat-esque revival. The Skipper, Alan Hale Jr., was reportedly the first to arrive at an autograph party and the last to leave. Gilligan was busted for drugs. Island sagas would soon traffic in different kinds of fantasies—adolescent sexual ones in The Blue Lagoon, yuppie-narcissistic ones in Cast Away.

And yet we cling to Gilligan's Island, among the stupidest shows ever made. We cling to it because the doe-eyed, brunette small-town girl is so much sexier than the curvy red-haired movie star—at least to my adolescent eyes and, on the evidence of her mail, millions of others'. We cling to it because there is an absence of any sexualized male to spoil this paradise. We cling to it because it shows us an orderly society in which the super-rich, the Howells, have their airs and their endearing obliviousness to those who labor on their behalf—but when all is said and done are literally in the same boat. Which is definitely not the society in which we live now. After all, says today's Mrs. Howell: Those people are so much happier in the Astrodome.

And so, my friends, repeat after me: "Skipper watch out for that"—BONK!

Thanks, Gilligan.