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By Kayla DeKraker
GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, the a beloved TV show from the ’60s, followed seven cast-aways on an island, a plot that executives of the show surprisingly did not like.
The show’s creator Sherwood Schwartz previously shared how James T. Aubrey, CBS president Frank Stanton and board chairman William S. Paley expressed disapproval of the plot while on set.
“Was Mr. Aubrey trying to tell me something?” Schwartz recalled. “Although this was Mr. Paley and Dr. Stanton’s first exposure to the concept of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, Mr. Aubrey and I had discussed the show many times. And we had a major disagreement.”
That disagreement came down to the fact that, as Schwartz remembered it, Aubrey wanted the show to break out from the island that Schwartz had so carefully envisioned as a venue for bridging the divide between characters.
Related: How GILLIGAN’S ISLAND Keeps Fans Coming Back
“Mr. Aubrey loved the idea of Gilligan, the Skipper, and their little charter boat,” he continued, “but he wanted me to call the series GILLIGAN’S TRAVELS.”
Schwartz said that executives hoped the storyline would lead the characters to travel around on their boat, the S.S. Minnow, rather than remaining on the island.
Aubrey said each episode would require “an enormous amount of explanation each week, expository scenes to explain why this group of people was marooned on the island.”
But Schwartz had the answer: the iconic theme song that told the story in an “entertaining way.”
TV Line previously reported on the hit song, saying, “‘The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle’ was written by series creator Sherwood Schwartz and George Wyle. The memorable tune underwent a slight yet meaningful tweak after Season 1, when series lead Bob Denver insisted that the lyrics replace the dismissive ‘…and the rest’ with ‘…the Professor and Mary Ann,’ to give proper billing to the characters played by Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells.”
Because the theme song conveyed all the exposition necessary, GILLIGAN’S ISLAND stayed on the island.
Earlier this year, Schwartz’s son, Lloyd J. Schwartz, shared more about the theme song’s creation in an interview with Woman’s World: “Dad explained, GILLIGAN’S ISLAND would have a theme song to introduce the premise. Aubrey and the network came back to him later, and Dad ended up writing the theme song himself. At the next meeting, he handed out copies of the lyrics. Then he said, ‘These are just lyrics. Songs are meant to be sung. His agent, sitting next to him, kicked him under the table and whispered, ‘Sing.’”
GILLIGAN’S ISLAND ran from 1964-1992. The show was canceled by CBS due to declining ratings and to make room for the show GUNSMOKE.
Read Next: How GILLIGAN’S ISLAND Brought People Together Across the Decades
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