Sherwood Schwartz Almost Added A Dinosaur To Gilligan's Island

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The seven lead characters in Sherwood Schwartz's 1960s sitcom "Gilligan's Island" have become an indelible part of the world's pop consciousness, emerging as a new canon of distinctly American Commedia del'arte archetypes. The Professor (Russell Johnson) is the updated version of Il Dottore. Mr. Howell (Jim Backus) is the new Pantolone. The Skipper (Alan Hale) is clearly a modern Scaramuccia, and Gilligan (Bob Denver), well, he's Arlecchino. Additionally, Mary Ann (Dawn Wells) is likely Colombiana, Ginger (Tina Louise) is Gianduja, and Mrs. Howell (Natalie Schafer) is ... I guess another Pantolone.

It's hard to imagine a world where the seven stock "Gilligan's Island" characters were dramatically altered, as the seven characters audiences saw were downright perfect. One could always predict how one character might interact with any of the others.

Of course, it took a little trial and error to get the characters right. In the original, unaired (until 1992) pilot episode, Gilligan, the Skipper, and the Howells were the same, but Ginger, Mary Ann, and the Professor were different characters played by different actors. The Professor was a more flirtatious high school teacher portrayed by John Gabriel. Ginger and Mary Ann were originally a pair of gossiping secretaries named Ginger and Bunny, as played by Kit Smythe and Nancy McCarthy. It wasn't until Schwartz did some retooling that the familiar ensemble of seven would come into being.

It seems that during the retooling process, there was also almost an eighth character. According to Schwartz's invaluable memoir "Inside Gilligan's Island: From Creation to Syndication" one of the show's producers, Hunt Stromberg, Jr., watched the pilot episode and felt that the seven castaways should wash up on the shores of their uncharted desert island ... and find a small, friendly dinosaur already living there.

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Schwartz told the following story (here paraphrased for the sake of brevity):

It seems that Stromberg was watching the original pilot episode, explaining how the seven castaways came to be stranded. There was a scene where Gilligan, newly crashed, shimmies up a palm tree to get a better look of the island. It seems that Stromberg felt that Gilligan should spot a dinosaur in that moment and enthusiastically suggested the idea to Schwartz. "Just picture it!" he said, "It's our answer to Mr. Ed!"

"Mister Ed" was a popular 1961 sitcom about a talking horse, of course, of course. Stromberg wanted to replicate that show's success with a cute animal of his own. He even suggested that the dinosaur be taught to walk on a leash and become something of a pet to Gilligan. Schwartz, because he was beholden to the whims of the CBS executives, couldn't outwardly refuse. Indeed, he and his creative team immediately began researching the means required to envision a dinosaur on "Gilligan's Island."

Schwartz evidently called Disney's animation studio in 1964, knowing they could insert an animated dinosaur into the series and blend it with live-action actors. It seems that animating a dinosaur was certainly within Disney's capabilities, so Stromberg might have gotten his wish. However, it appears that the idea was immediately shot down when Disney told Schwartz how much an animated dinosaur was going to cost. It was way, way too expensive.

So, the dinosaur idea was abandoned and the pilot was reworked with a few new characters instead. Stromberg would eventually get what we wanted, though. In Filmation's animated 1970s spinoff series "The New Adventures of Gilligan," the castaways were joined by an "adorable" monkey named Snubby (voiced by producer Lou Scheimer). Then, in the 1982 animated sci-fi series "Gilligan's Planet," Snubby was replaced by a cute reptile alien named Bumper (also Scheimer). It's as close as Gilligan ever got to having a dinosaur.