The show's ensemble cast features Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer, Tina Louise, Russell Johnson, and Dawn Wells.

Most episodes revolve around the dissimilar castaways' conflicts and their unsuccessful attempts to escape their plight, with the ship's first mate, Gilligan, usually being responsible for the failures.

Gilligan's Island received solid ratings during its original run and grew in popularity during decades of syndication, especially in the 1970s and '80s, when many markets ran the show in the late afternoon.

The two-person crew of the charter boat SS Minnow and five passengers on a "three-hour tour" from Honolulu run into a storm and are shipwrecked on an uncharted island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

In 1997, show creator Sherwood Schwartz explained that the underlying concept, people with different characters and backgrounds being in a situation where they need to learn how to get along and cooperate to survive, is still "the most important idea in the world today.

Mary Ann, the Kansas farm girl, was instead Bunny, Ginger's co-worker, played as a cheerful "dumb blonde" by Nancy McCarthy.

The pilot's opening and ending songs were two similar calypso-styled tracks written by John Williams and performed by Sherwood Schwartz impersonating singer Sir Lancelot.

After the opening theme song and credits end, the pilot proper begins with the seven castaways waking up on the beached SS Minnow.

This episode begins with the theme song performed by the Wellingtons and then the same scene of Gilligan and the Skipper awakening on the boat as in the pilot (though slightly differently cut to eliminate most shots of the departed actors) and continues with the characters sitting on the beach listening to a radio news report about their disappearance.

The plot thus skips over the topics of the pilot; the bulk of the episode tells of Gilligan and the Skipper setting off on a raft to try to bring help but unknowingly landing back on the other side of the same island.

The name Jonas Grumby appears nowhere else in the series except for an episode in which the Maritime Board of Review blames the Skipper for the loss of the Minnow.

[5] The shipwrecked castaways are desperate to leave the island, and various opportunities frequently present themselves but invariably fail, nearly always due to some bumbling error committed by Gilligan.

Among the actors who guest starred were Larry Storch, Kurt Russell, Rory Calhoun, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Hans Conreid, Don Rickles, Strother Martin, John McGiver, Denny Miller, Phil Silvers, Richard Kiel, and pop group The Wellingtons (folk group).

Another, the Bluejacket, was used in the opening credits shown during the second and third seasons and eventually turned up for sale on Vancouver Island in August 2006 after running aground on a reef in the Hecate Strait on the way south from Alaska.

[12][13] Bob Denver was not the first choice to play Gilligan; actor Jerry Van Dyke was offered the role, but he turned it down, believing that the show would never be successful.

He chose instead to play the lead in My Mother the Car, which premiered the following year and is frequently cited as one of the worst television shows of all time; it was canceled after one season.

Auditions were held for the revised role of the Professor, which included Dabney Coleman, but the part was ultimately won by Russell Johnson.

In addition to movies, Johnson had landed roles in multiple popular television series such as The Adventures of Superman, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

With six other leads, his agent had to talk him into going to the audition, but after meeting Sherwood Schwartz, he started to warm up to the idea of playing the Professor.

[citation needed] The music and lyrics for the theme song, "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle", were written by Sherwood Schwartz and George Wyle.

The second-season version, which incorporated more of a sea shanty sound, was uncredited, but according to Russell Johnson in his book Here on Gilligan's Isle, it was performed by a group called the Eligibles.

[22] The show's original pilot episode featured a calypso theme song by future film composer John Williams and different lyrics.

Although the sitcom's ratings had fallen well out of the top-30 programs, during the last few weeks of its third season, the series was still winning its timeslot against its main competition, The Monkees, which aired at the same time on NBC-TV.

CBS, however, had signaled its intention to cancel the long-running Western series Gunsmoke, which had been airing late on Saturday nights during the 1966–1967 television season.

Based on Sherwood Schwartz's verbal confirmation that the series would be renewed for a fourth season, some of the cast had bought houses near the set.

The plot involved Soviet agents seeking a memory disc from a spy satellite that landed on the island and facilitated the protagonists' rescue.

Bonuses for this set include a season-two introduction with Russell Johnson and Sherwood Schwartz and audio commentary on the season's third episode, "The Little Dictator".

[35] In August 2006, an executive at Warner Bros. announced plans that Gilligan's Island, in addition to other classic TV series owned by the studio, would be digitally re-mastered in HD.

The New Adventures of Gilligan, based on the short-lived cartoon of the same name and featuring all castaways, was manufactured by Milton Bradley and was released in 1974.

[39] A video game based on the series, called The Adventures of Gilligan's Island and manufactured by Bandai, was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in July 1990.